What's Some Tech That Was Better Than It Is Now?
What's Some Tech That Was Better Than It Is Now?
When you connect a new device to a 'smart' tv, you must pay homage to the manufacturer with a ritualistic dance. Plugging and unplugging the device. Turning them on and off in the correct sequence like entering a konami code.
Every time you want to switch devices, the tv must scan for them. And god forbid you lose power, or unplug something. You are granted the delight experience of doing it all over again.
I have fond memories of the days of just plugging something in, and pressing the input button. Instant gratification. It was a simpler time.
What is some other tech that used to be better?
Instant messaging.
20 years ago, there were half a dozen competing major platforms (AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN, etc), like today.
The difference is that you had your choice of half a dozen clients that could each talk to ALL of the platforms. Adium, Trillian, Kopete, etc.
Today's kids have no idea what we lost to the god of profit.
I feel like the problem is less with the technology itself and more with some of the stuff within and around it. So let me list my favourite bugbears:
- Buttons!
Here's the thing about buttons and knobs: they are definite. When you press them, you KNOW you pressed them, you can use your finger to feel for them without activating other stuff by accident. Back in the day with my cheap-ass chinese MP3 player, I could change tracks and playlists without taking it out of my pocket just by using tact and muscle memory.
Nowadays with my smartphone even something as basic as skipping a track requires me to take it out and unlock the screen. It's like. Sure, the phone does a lot more stuff, and can stream stuff from the internet so I don't have to download every track (even if I keep a local library for my favourites in ogg format), it has bluetooth for wireless headphones, a lot of good shit -- But that little bit of user experience is just dead and buried.
Heck, my older sister tells me she used to text her friends in class without taking her phone off her pocket. Imagine! IMAGINE typing a text on one of those old phone number pads, just by muscle memory and tact! It may not be the ideal user experience, but holy shit, it was possible! Try doing anything even close to blind typing on a modern smartphone.
Another point: when something goes unresponsive on a device with just a touchscreen, you experience a confusing and annoying experience as all you have feedback-wise is the screen and sometimes it freezes and you're swiping and tapping and just praying something happens.
When a computer with keys and buttons goes unresponsive you can do the three-fingered-salute and that usually gets it to do something, and because the keyboard is a physical object, it can't be hidden from you by a crashed OS.
Nowadays even kitchen appliances are dropping buttons and knobs. My parents' dishwasher is all touch-buttons, sometimes they brush against it while walking around the kitchen and lo and behold, their butt pauses the washing cycle. Something that wouldn't be an issue with a much cheaper set of regular-ass buttons.
To say nothing of cars and the horrid security issue that fusing a tablet to the dashboard and replacing every control with just that has proven to be.
- Customization!
Used to be, Windows 9x let you change every colour of your UI right from the built-in settings app and came with a dozen colorschemes built-in, and Windows XP came with three built-in themes and could with just some changing around (you replaced like ONE dll file, a single copypaste), support themes that totally changed the look of the OS. Nowadays you get "White" and "Black" and that's it.
And like, that's windows, a corporate-ass proprietary system for corporate jerks -- But even Linux -- Linux! the darling of nerds who like to change everything in their computers (like me!) has caught this illness -- And you'll see people defending this. Saying that having no theming support and only having users be able to change highlight colours if even that is the "right way" to do it.
On the note of customization -- In the back-then times, chat applications let you set fonts and colours to give your messages "your look", and your friends could do the same. -- Fuck! The application me and my mates used for playing RPGs by text back in the early 10s supported not just font colours, but also complete rich-text, and would let you set different colours for like, things said by a character vs. narration, resulting in an utterly beautiful formatted text.
Don't get me wrong, we use Telegram/Discord for that now and having a fully searchable archive of everything that we did and talked about is great and I wouldn't trade it for the world. But the most customization you get is -- Setting a profile picture. The most formatting you get is bold/italics.
Webforums would let you have an avatar, a user title under the avatar (that many forums let you customise!), and a signature. Nowadays with things like Lemmy you have to squint to see a person's username.
And like, it's not like there is something about the modern technologies unto themselves that prevents these bits of customisation: Computers are better at drawing shit on screen than ever, internet connectivity has only gotten faster, and we figured out 'sending some markup codes to make rich text' as a thing way back in the 80s. We lost all that simply because the people making the applications don't want to have it.
I feel like for every neat thing that new technology provides us, it takes three steps back for entirely human and not at all technological issues. read: capitalism
Google keyboard before they went all in on machine learning for spelling and grammar. It was freaky good at correction, then immediately fell off a cliff. It still replaces my son's name, which I type multiple times a day, with a less common name even when I type it correctly. I've removed the wrong name from the dictionary but no dice, still gets it wrong.
- email. Before Microsoft fucked it up with html and “some asshole would like to recall this email” type bullshit.
- web search, obviously.
- any fucking software that you have to rent.
- so, so much more.
- Facebook.
- OKCupid.
- Netflix
- Amazon Prime Video
- iTunes
- Patreon
- Everything Adobe
- Google Voice
- YouTube
- Most search engines
ALSO
- MySQL
- Redis
ALSO
- Wordpress
ALSO
- Vacuum cleaners
- Refrigerators
- Every power tool ever
- Most cars
- Airplanes (looking at you Boing)
ALSO
- Apple products
ALSO
- The fricken Artemis Program vs. the Apollo Program. (I consult with the space industry a lot, so this makes me feel things)
Car stereos.
They used to have buttons and tape decks and cd players in em. From the factory.
I don’t want to do a complex install of some aftermarket thing. I want a car stereo with buttons, knobs, a tape deck, cd player, am/fm and aux input that looks like it belongs in my cars interior and is designed with the same ideas as the rest of the cars controls.
Roomba. It got better in ways that made it worse. Really just want to put it in a room and let it wander around and vacuum. It doesn't need to map the house and then get confused if a door is closed. It doesn't need to tell me the filter is old. The old ones you could just put them wherever and close a door or put a box in the way to keep it corralled where you want it.
Better and smarter are two different things. Sometimes they intersect, other times they don't.
So much. So, so, SO much.
Websites in general. More bloat, more CPU usage, worse design, less content. This is even worse for shopping sites, USAians probably only know Amazon, but people from other countries definitely know a big local name that used to have a much better site years ago compared to today.
Smart TVs are the worst. You're better off buying a shitty china android tv box than a smart tv, both will suck up and sell all your data, but at least the latter can be kept off when you don't need the "smart" part.
Smartphones. Not only the whole "LETS COPY APPLE" on hardware and software design, but also on how fast it's doing a lot of the stupidity that followed PCs: phones keep getting more powerful, programs keep getting slower and more resource intensive because
fuck you"new features"Ad tech. Yes, I'd glady go back to shitty popups over clickjacking, infinite redirects that don't show up on the "back" button, annoying anti-adblocks, 70% of pages being advertising and fingerprinting bloat, javascript/css having control to FUCKING HIDE AND DISABLE MY SCROLL BAR
Tinder. It was good 10 years ago, enshittification accelerated aroudn 2017. Free accounts have had a hard time getting any matches as far back as 2019, as I recall from experience. Nothing like having received "41" likes, going through 300 profiles with "nope" and not losing a single match.
Dude. Everything?
I’m exhausted with how much stuff I can’t use like I used to because a dev or manufacturer updates software. Granted, the speed of things is much improved thanks to chip technology. Software, in some cases - many cases in my experience, is getting worse.
A big one for me is music. I prefer FM radio and my own music library (digital, iPod, cd, vinyl). Because, as it’s increasingly becoming the case with everything else, you’re relying on someone else or some algorithm to do the thinking for you. And when you finally get used to something, they break it or add needless complexity.
Another one is cameras - they just do way too much crap now. Lots of people might find added features and improvement but for me it just gets in the way of iso, aperture, shutter speed. And then they’re outdated in five years anyway.
I still have a dumb tv from ~2012. The back lighting is starting to go and I’m terrified of getting a new one.
Google Assistant/Google Now (RIP).
My phone 10 years ago used to have a component called Google Now on Tap which would show me useful information like where I parked my car, when my next appointment is, what my commute looks like, what the weather is going to be, etc.
It was so context aware and good at predictive algorithms, I never really had to do more than swipe left to get what I needed. But of course now that's in the "Killed by Google" graveyard because it didn't enforce enough "engagement" with apps and services that could feed you ads.
In general, I find Google Assistant to be less helpful overall and worse at understanding what I am trying to do. It used to be a daily convenience for me, but now I can't remember the last time I ever bothered with it. Not to mention every time you use it these days, it has to throw in a "By the way,..." suggestion that just feels like an ad for itself, because it is never related to anything I want to do.
Yo just turn off that TVs version of HDMI control. (CEC, magic remote, etc) To avoid the scanning bullsh. (Sounds like Samsung)
Outside of that I kinda miss old copper phone lines to a certain extent. Analog stuff in general
Everything being digital removes any possibility of a signal being able to still be discerned even if it's not absolutely perfect.
Old tech would be subject to static of course, but you could possibly still make out the TV channel or radio station, even if it's not perfect.
These days, you hear or see a little tiling for a second and the media is gone until a good enough signal comes back.
Anything with asbestos in it. It's just a truly amazing material, with the one catch that it happens to dangerously irritate lung tissues. Relevant XKCD.
Hi-fi stereo systems with amplifiers, speakers and cables.
I could be wrong, but I think that old stereo systems generally have way better sound quality than Bluetooth systems, soundbars and the like. Physical media such as CDs or even Flac files (etc.) are of course impractical compared to streaming, but the audio quality is much higher.
However, since you can also stream audio without any problems, I would recommend every music fan to buy a used stereo system with high-quality speakers from the 2000s or even from the late 90s - in my opinion, excellent audio quality at a low price.
Video games. Don't get me wrong, there are still some great games, but the entire experience has degraded on average.
- The inclusion of obnoxiously long, often unskippable, intro sequences with studio credits and such. There used to be maybe a logo, maybe a very short sequence at worst, and almost always skippable.
- Most of the big budget games are intended to be a grindy slog, often to get you to spend more money on micro transactions. Fun takes a back seat to intentionally addictive but objectively less enjoyable experiences.
- Others are intended to be cinematic experience. Some of that can be fun, but sometimes I just want something like the old Sonic or Mario games that I can just pick up, play for a bit, and put down.
- Enjoy a game? You could talk to friends about it at school, or buy a magazine that talks about it. The experience now is largely an unregulated online wasteland... If you find a community, it may quickly be beset by people that you really don't want to associate with, posting crap that no magazine ever would have published. Except for some of the funnier magazines, which may have published it just to rightfully mock the person.
The graphics have improved. In some cases the gameplay has improved. I don't want to downplay those. I'm just annoyed with how the overall experience has gotten worse on average.
I don't know if it counts as tech per se, but phone calls. It used to be the case that many if not most phone calls people received were important, so they would have a good reason to answer the phone. These days most calls are spammers or scammers and a lot of people don't answer the phone because of this. With spoofing, even calls that appear to be from a legitimate number can easily be a scam, and it's hard to trust any calls these days.
Oh
I for-real misread this, as asking what is an example of tech that actually has gotten better, because the general rule is that things become more shit over time, as capitalism gets its hands on them
I was gonna say programming languages. Having come up in the time of C++ and Java, having Python and Go and Rust around is fuckin fantastic. Even Typescript is… well… it’s not JavaScript! See, things are getting better.
Literally everything else is getting worse over time.
My knees
When you connect a new device to a 'smart' tv, you must pay homage to the manufacturer with a ritualistic dance. Plugging and unplugging the device. Turning them on and off in the correct sequence like entering a konami code.
Every time you want to switch devices, the tv must scan for them. And god forbid you lose power, or unplug something. You are granted the delight experience of doing it all over again.
This drives me up the wall with my TV speaker - having to remember name of the settings that get reset for each power outage. If I was smart, I'd note the procedure down somewhere, but nah
I'd add any software that has switched to a subscription or SaaS model. Shit used to be super expensive in the past, but you could at least buy a software and keep it indefinitely for home use. It feels like everything is a subscription model. I have a family budgeting software that is no longer sold as a one-time purchase. I guess new users have to include the monthly cost of the budgeting software in their family now! Sure, the sub version has fancy ways to integrate your bank accounts, but doing it by hand every couple of weeks really makes you aware of what you are spending.
I sound so old lmao
The physical aspect of laptops - the old ThinkPads were fucking amazing and while their specs may not be much to look at today they were equipped with adequate cooling and could take a fair amount of beating.
I don't want a light thin laptop that I could snap in two with one hand... I want a laptop that isn't going to overheat and can survive a few tumbles when someone trips over the power cord.
Depending on your definition of 'better' . In terms of repair ability and ease of maintenance, pretty much all old tech. In terms of price... There is no chance, it's insane how cheap tech has gotten.
The power consumption of old stuff is also extremely bad compared to now. So yeh you can have fridges, washing machines, or whatever appliances from the 70's that still work and are easy to maintain.. They use way, way, way too much power for what they do. In an ideal world where energy is free, sure that stuff is better. We don't tho.
Also, basically everything that uses software while it shouldn't, has a worse user experience than before.
Connectivity or rather the lack of it...
I have a Samsung TV and recently got a new cooling fan and now when I start the fan when my TV is on, it says it detected a new device. I don't know what my TV would want with a fan maybe control the speed for more immersion?
But there is also no way for me to disable that. I also got regular requests of my neighbor's to connect to my TV until I disabled the notification for it. No, I couldn't disable that my TV doesn't even allow it to be seen, I had to enable to not automatically connect devices and disable that notifications are being shown. That thing isn't even connected to the internet.
Doorbells. I had to replace a relative's doorbell recently and the old one that lasted 60 years was built 10x better than the incredibly cheap model that all the hardware stores carry.
The options are either a cheapo doorbell that has an LED in it for no reason, a Ring surveillance doorbell, or a very expensive reproduction doorbell sold on some random website.
I have fond memories of the days of just plugging something in, and pressing the input button. Instant gratification. It was a simpler time.
Dunno what kind of TVs you're using, but my Sony OLED pretty much behaves exactly like this. The Smart TV features are laggy and shit as usual, but those are still features that didn't exist in the old days so it's not a 1 to 1 comparison.
But with regards to just plugging in a blu ray or PS5 and hitting the input button, that's exactly how my modern TV works.
In fact, I don't even need to turn it on or hit the input button... Since they're both Sony, all I need to do is press the button on my PS5 controller and it turns on my TV and PS5 and switches to the correct input, without having to touch the remote. And vice versa (can turn on/off and control PS5 menus with the TV remote).
Printers
Most electric appliances in the second version. Always some lock-in anti repair bullship.
Books and authorship in general. To make a living these days many feel pressured into using closed source corpo messaging systems like tiktok, twitter, instagram, etc to promote some bs brand to sell books because the market is flooded with so much garbage from AI generated to auto translates to just poorly written unedited gibberish.
I have a smart TV and, while I hate that fact with every fiber of my being, I've never been through any of the particular bullshit you're describing. I absolutely can just plug a thing into it and it works when I switch to that input.
I'm going to go with video game console disk trays. Back on the PS1 and GameCube, you just hit a button to release a lock and then a spring popped the lid open. Now, I'll admit these newfangled interior conveyor belts we've had for checks calendar almost two decades have never actually broken on me, I resent the fact that if they were to break then I'd have no actual ability to get disks in and out of the machine.
That is, of course, assuming your console has an option for physical media at all, which is a very troubling direction in itself.
One wheel
The original
-
easy to replace batteries,
-
easy maintenance,
-
most important: highly customizable
(I mean, yes, you could blow yourself up with the gigantic lithium pack in your garage, but the community around one wheel has a lot of rich guidance to prevent you from doing that)
Entered version 2
-
batteries are now locked to the device.
-
hey! Ride carefully! Battery pack unplugging (even by accident) bricks the device 😆
-
uuuh, I bricked the device. What now? Send the device across Atlantic ocean to HQ in the US to plug it back in 🤣 🤣
-
I remember back a decade or so ago when phones had a fully customizable ringtone option, wouldn't constantly tell you they're overheating when it's only thirty degrees out, had a block function that actually worked, didn't dump spam calls on you, wasn't always spying on you, and didn't cost so much per month, often coupled with the possible fact you don't actually use it everyday and maybe only have it to keep your overworried parents pleased.
I don't know about you, but for the unforeseeable future, mine is, for the large part, ghosted. I remember being in a dispute with someone where they asked what my number was as a form of feeling secure about me. "What age do you live in" he bitterly asked, "everyone uses a phone, are you a fake zoomer who is BSing me". This is the pedestal the existence of phones thrives on. Imagine if I was Amish, do you think I would survive past the job interview stage of finding a new job?
Even when I had high hopes, the way people would market the thousand-app aspect of it was absolutely fierce, you couldn't go tech shopping without the person selling you stuff going on and on about the smallest nook and crannies in each extra feature like they were Steve Irwin trying to teach you the beauty of whatever animal you just happened to step on (RIP Steve Irwin), and you couldn't do so much as go to a festival without a business person from the phone stall running up to you asking to pay for new plans like a Jehovah's Witness on a leash (always stood out to me because they were the only ones who would operate like this).
Holy shit rose tinted glasses all up in here. Let me be straight with you guys, televisions are definitely better, cell phones are much better, I don't think there's a single (consisting mostly of) electronics (some coffee grinders, maybe some other kitchen appliances) device that existed in the 90s/naughts that I would take over it's current iteration.
TVs
Yeah ok having both makes sense as it allows easier controls for the passenger to use or while being stopped