What's something you wish would "come back" but you feel like you're the only one that cares?

User friendly and logically designed interfaces. The crap that is designed now is stupidly designed and I've seriously lost my enjoyment of using electronics.
- 🏆

Windows 7. no ads, no sudden candy crush, no cloud data stealing.
- Windows 7 business philosophy but with modern windows features would be great.
- For me it's Vista. I've always felt like I'm the only person who actually unironically liked that thing. It just looked so good, and for my computer at the time at least, it also worked so good (I got a new one specifically for Vista anyway, so I didn't have the complaints most people had).
  7 felt like it improved in some areas (performance on weaker hardware, lack of bloat, better customisability, and so on) while in contrast it was basically nerfed in other areas (more generic design language, worse taskbar by default, too few new features, etc). It took me a short while before it would end up growing on me.
  
  Vista was FULL of security issues though. I did PC support in that era and I kept going to one house in particular because they would pick up some crazy virus / Spyware from thier kid visiting sketchy porn sites. Didn't matter what I did or how I locked it down, or what AV I installed he would manage to get it reinfected. After the 8th time or so I just made them buy a XP license and told them they need to have a hard talk with thier kid about all the sites he was visiting. Once I had XP installed and appropriate AV, it stopped being an issue.
  Edit: Whoops, nevermind it was Windows ME. Carry on with your Vista love (though I'm still not sure why you loved it)

I know I'm not the only one but I'll say it anyway:
Altoids Sours.
- Those were the bomb!

Buttons.
Have you ever used an apple TV remote?
You can't even navigate without swiping on a little touch pad.
Modern Samsung remotes have changed to a toggle sort button where you move it up and down and then depress for mute.
Good compromise but difficult for the elderly.
Almost every tv has gone to a digital number interface. Remotes do not have numbers on them unless you're using an antiquated cable reciever with a dedicated remote. Alternatively you can buy third party remotes but with the digital interfaces it will only work on some models.
Think the best modern compromise are the Samsung universals and the LG magic remote. Superfluous wii remote esque arrow navigation so replacements cost $50. However, perfect hybrid of modern design and function.
Thank you for coming to my television remote Ted talk.
It is not necessarily a niche opinion here on lemmy, but the direction tech design is going is overengineered for a problem that never existed.
- I own an Apple TV and you don't have to use swiping. You can tap or click the buttons. I'm not able to confirm it right now, but I also think you can turn off the swiping gesture.
  
  You can turn off the swiping gesture. I've done it on my AppleTV, and it is WAY better.
  Yes, swiping works well on a phone...because there are no buttons. I don't want to swipe on my TV remote, my car radio, my laptop screen, and fridge, my door handle...
  
  Never knew this!
  Thank you.

My ex wife.
That’s sarcasm. But when I was in college, there used to be Popeye’s all-you-can-eat buffet locations and also a “Super Popeyes” that sold liquor and fajitas when you were flush and had $20 bills. I don’t want to eat unlimited fast food today but I wish young people today could have the experience of being lit and eating all the Popeyes.
- I'm not young but I still missed out!
  
  The pandemic stole the last Popeye’s buffet from us: https://nola.eater.com/2021/12/8/22823504/last-popeyes-buffet-closed-lafayette-louisiana
- Not too many Popeyes in my area. That sounds insane though. Not a fan of the food but college-age and drunk I'd eat almost anything.

I don't know how to explain it, but classic Pizza Hut. Going to Pizza Hut with the family was always great sir down experience and there was usual a small arcade. The pizza was way better than the comparatively tasteless junk they serve now.
Also, arcades. I'm not talking about the "arcades" now we're you tap a card so you can spend a few bucks for some shit experience. It'd be really cool if there was like a millionaire out there that was just an nostalgic and open up a classic arcade, with actual quarter machines. Probably wouldn't make money (probably would be a loss) but it would be an experience I think many would welcome back and would be brand new to a whole new generation of people.
Adding in some things as some people have made recommendations
Cidercade - Texas (multiple locations). Pizza is described as divine!
Galloping Ghost Arcade - Chicago (see photos below). 972 games!
Pinball Hall of Fame - Vegas, 358 different machines!
- There's a place by me that has a ton of old arcade machines but they're all free to play; you just have to pay $25 to enter the place.
  
  Omg yes, where is this place? What's it called? I recognize many of those cabinets.
- so you'd like your childhood/early adolescence to make a comeback
  
  Yeah. For sure, that’s my vote. No one else seems to know or care about my childhood/early adolescence, though.
- Closest you can get to that experience that I know of is the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. They got all kinds of machines, old and new, that only take quarters. Isn't just pinball machines either, they got a sizeable amount of arcade cabinets.

Frutiger Aero design
The modern trend for flatness and shape-y icons and such was cool for a bit, but I'm officially tired of it.
I'm just about ready to go back to skeuomorphic pre-rendered 3D models as icons and gradients & textures & transparencies everywhere
Especially since computers have only gotten better at drawing this stuff. A modern PC would be able to render the "Impossible" looks of those old Windows Longhorn Concept Videos without breaking a sweat.
Also -- FUCKING BEZELS.
The current trend with -- Mobile devices in general. Phones and Tablets, is to have the entire front of the device be screen. To the point that people hiss at seeing even the little dot for the front camera (or the notch, w/e)
I find this tremendously stupid, leaves you with far less ways and places to grip your phone, and makes the "I was using my phone in bed and dropped it straight into my nose" scenario straight up inevitable, since you can't grip the thing tightly without accidentally activating something on the touch sensitive screen. Just give me a border of plastic that I'm safe to put my fingers on, dammit.

Proper Compact phones. Think Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact or iphone mini size. Screen size of less than 5", none of this phablet sized monstrocity. Yes, the Samsung Galaxy S24 or the Zenfone 8 - 10 exist (I'm typing this on a Zenfone 8), but I personally bo not consider them compact in any way.
Rant over. :p
- If the CPU kept up with modern apps I'd still be using my Galaxy S3 Mini.
- The Samsung flip z fold up really small, also very durable to drops. My wife has one and loves it. Pricey though (the flip 3 is good used though)
  
  Yeah, the price is a big turn off for me.

Careful what you wish for. There were these delicious milkshakes that were flavored like some mediocre chocolate but it actually tasted amazing (kind of like how classic coffee crisp didn't taste anything like coffee) I bought them all the time and then they kinda discontinued. I wanted them back and when I heard they were I ran to the store to buy one. Big mistake, shit tasted SO BAD. They completely changed the recipe and I didn't even care when they discontinued it the second time.

3D TV. It was so cool. Games actually had heads up displays. Movies were especially immersive. So much potential for development. But people didn't like wearing glasses to use it :(

I found Blue Nehi exactly one time in my life! It was at a little convenience store tucked away in a neighborhood in like 2006 lol
It was one of the most delicious sodas I ever tried, but I never found it again anywhere else...
One thing I really miss is old wood console CRT televisions. The kind that looked more like a piece of furniture than an appliance. Aside from just looking cool, I just miss how the picture looked on those old TV's too! The one we had when I was a kid had a big warning on the back to call a repair technician if anything wasn't working right, and to adjust the picture you had to stick a butter knife into a hole in the back lol
- I remember the one I had as a kid. Picture wasn't great of course but there was something really satisfying about those big, heavy dials that clicked when you changed channels.
- For what it's worth I had it too and while I liked peach much more I remember blue as a cream soda variant. So maybe try some of those and see how close they are

I was a huge "1000 Blank White Cards" fan in college and I maintained a drinking deck and a sober deck and we played all the time. Everything got lost when I moved home so I never played again and I've never even heard of anyone else playing.

A show called Almost Human.
- That show was so good!

Lemon Lime Slice. Starry is kind of close though.

TIL they still make Nehi at all! Gotta get me some now, been too long. Need a grape Nehi to cosplay as Radar O'Reilley.
"Orange juice sirs? Freshly squozen."

This isn't gone quite yet but Macy's closing stores is really sad for me. It has the best clothing deals ever, you could come out with several bags worth of stuff for only a few hundred dollars and it's all very good quality and often brand names. I saved a bundle shopping there and I'm terrified the one closest to me will close.
- I care actually, though for different reasons. Where now will I go to smell new colognes before buying them online? Admittedly this isn't something I do often, but every so often something gets discontinued and I have to find something new. And I'm picky, gotta be a light scent that you kinda have to be close to smell and half of em smell not so great, need the testy thingys.
  
  Exactly. Like I just love a good department store. Best deals and best service.

The final seasons of Colony. It was getting intense then the show was cancelled
- Yes! I really enjoyed that show.

Marvel Heroes Omega for me, and City of Heroes for the homies.
- Ditto for City of Heroes.
  Also, I miss Avengers Alliance. It eventually turned into a blatant play-to-win, microtransaction nightmare but it could get quite intense and you legitimately needed to think about your strategy to beat certain foes.

Potato cakes at Arby's
- w h a t

The cartoon class of 3000.
Every episode has the standard problem in beginning and resolution at end kind of story, but it did something that I've seen no other cartoon do before. Each episode had a different song that played, and the were pretty much all different genres. You had blues with Richer Shade of Blue, (watered down kids) rap with All We Want Is Your Soul, and jazz with My Mentor, and others as well.
Closest I've seen are cartoons like Phineas and Ferb who do songs in the middle of an episode, but it's not the same since the genre is usually more pop like.
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  Richer Shade of Blue
  All We Want Is Your Soul
  My Mentor
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

"Black Pepper Jack" and "Four Cheese" Doritos. They were both so good in their own way.

I usually cut my croutons in half

Cuba lima monster energy. So many good memories of getting out of school and going to my buddy's house, we would just hang and drink so many of these. Granted it was no doubt terrible for our health and was a bunch of money we probably could have used for better things, they remind me of a simpler and better time.

Joe's O's, the way they used to be. They were basically Cheerios but 10x better. Then sometime several years ago, they updated the recipe and it has a weird bad taste to it. Singlehandedly took it from my favorite cereal of all time to have not even considered it in years.