Search engines that work.
Oh god, yes.
I could type in a question ten years ago and could usually get an answer in the first page or so.I asked a question yesterday (about floor tiling) and got “Tiles? You want tiles? We’ve got tiles! Get your tiles here!”
“No, I want an answer about flooring.”
“FLOORING? You want flooring? We’ve got flooring! Get your flooring here!”“Ok, fucking hell. Ok how do I join 2 types of substrate together…”
“MUTHERFUCKING, substrate? You want substrate? We’ve got…”Then I gave up looking. Maybe it was always like this and I used to be more tenacious looking for answers.
Even when you get to the actual website results you now have to wade through the AI slop sites
For that matter, it felt like a peak for the rest of the internet, and everybody loved silicon valley and wanted to be Steve Jobs. Then the enshittification started.
ITT: People not realizing 10 years ago was nearly the end of 2015 and listing technologies that were popular 20+ years ago.
2015 still feels like a date from the future to me
Optical disks. It was almost a necessity on laptop to have an optical drive, now there’s maybe one or two models out there that comes with one.
10 years ago was 2015. I went to buy a laptop from Dell in 2014, and they didn’t have any models with a disc drive. I looked.
Even 10 years ago, disc drives seemed to be out of fashion. But if you laptop was 5 years old, it likely have one anyways.
I used a MacBook for 10 years that was one of the first models to come without a disc drive, it was a 2013 model.
I recall it being a bit ahead of the curve at the time, but it was a pretty fast curve before you really couldn’t find a laptop with a disc drive anymore.
Maybe 1/100 people I see using headphones have wired headphones, certainly wasn’t the case 10 years ago. Bluetooth technology and quality has come a long way.
I’d still have wires IF MY PHONE HAD A PLACE TO PLUG THEM IN.
I refuse to buy a phone without a headphone jack. I’m not sure if I even have a choice anymore tbh… Really I only use my phone for music and text/call. A dandy map if I need one, but not usually.
I compared a tonne of flagship smart phones not that long ago. The Sony Xperia series was the only one to still have an audio jack. They’re quite expensive tho, so ended up with a phone sans the jack. I miss it dearly.
See how they massacred my boy…
People really will copy anything Apple does.
Buy a USB-C to headphone jack dongle. They’re about $5 and work on any phone.
Did that. Still annoying. Have to bring it everywhere. Will wear out the Usb C jack faster (pretty hard to wear out an audio jack tho). Can’t charge and listen to audio.
USB-C puts the springy bits that can wear out in the connector end, not the jack. The jack is just a piece of circuit board with bare traces on it, it’s very sturdy.
You don’t have to bring it everywhere, you attach it to your headphones and then it’s part of the headphones that you want to wear.
Fair point about the sprongs. But. Coz phones are so big, when phone+dongle is in my pocket it often puts a lot of pressure on the USB. Which A, doesnt seem good and B, can easily cause the jack to very slightly disconnect and pause the song. Also, when the sprongs fail on the dongle it starts doing crazy shit like play/pausing song or adjusting volume.
I’d need to buy like 3 more dongles in that case…
I’d much rather just have an audio jack on my phone.
You guys are only $5 away from the good ole days…
I would love that if it wasn’t another cord that I would absolutely lose.
You can buy headphones with a USB-C connector too. That way you’ll lose the headphones too, so you don’t need an adapter anyway!
I could NOT be bothered with charging headphones daily.
A decent set of headphones will have an effectively all-day battery, and most people probably aren’t listening to their headphones for 8+ hours a day.
I’ve had my headphones for about 7 years now and they still last for several hours on a single charge, and they support fast charging. If they’re at 0%, I can plug them in for 10 minutes and they’ll have about 2 hours worth of charge. I charge them maybe once a week with casual use.
My Marshall on-ears have a battery life of like 80 hours or so…
They usually charge themselves in their case (small pods) or have big batteries (over ear). I use my pods probably 8 hours a day, and just need to charge the case once or twice a week.
The battery will wear our within a few years and become unusable. My Bluetooth headphones now last about 30 minutes.
I got my headphones over 6 years ago, the battery last as long as it always has. And I use them a few hours every day.
Bluetooth isn’t the technology that’s come a long way, it’s still the same shit it was decades ago. It’s batteries.
That’s just not true, Bluetooth codecs have improved sound quality DRAMATICALLY.
And I say this as someone who’s not a big fan of wireless.
it’s still the same shit it was decades ago.
The engineers at Bluetooth SIG busting their ass to give us Bluetooth 6.1: “am I a joke to you?”
Kinda, yeah.
Headphone jacks and Micro SD Card Readers.
Cd roms. Network ports on laptops
Dedicated GPS unit in your car
My parents gave me a GPS unit for my car about 20 years ago and I used it for the longest time. It was great help when driving in cities and big towns or locations I had never gone to before. We used it all the time and I think I updated the maps … I think it was a Garmin device … I think I updated the maps 2 or 3 times over the years. Then it went unsupported but I kept using it for the longest time.
Then I started buying better smartphones and my phone just eventually replaced the GPS unit.
I still have it and it still works and the battery on it is still good … I just don’t need it any more and the maps are about 10-15 years out of date.
I have an old garmin gps in my car. Use it all the time combined with a phone. The garmin doesn’t need cell signal so it works everywhere. Funny when going places where the street didn’t exist back then, but it’s kind of cool to see how the city grows. We mainly use it as a backup. It’s also louder than the phone talking and easier to understand.
You can download maps on your phone, so you can use it in areas without service.
Used that when I went to the state’s and didn’t pay for roaming/data. Just downloaded Oregon/Washington.
I have OsmAnd and organic maps and the maps downloaded offline, but the garmin GPS also shows the speed limits, my speed, bigger screen, louder speaker.
I can say the same about my ipod. I used it everyday for the longest time until I realized I can put a 126gb micro sd card in my phone which is more than double what my ipod had. Now it’s sitting in a box somewhere in my closet. Probably still works too.
It’s a shame modern phones have been losing both micro SD card slots and headphone jacks and often don’t have a substantial amount of storage. Still better than carrying multiple devices, however.
Office phones.
Headphone jacks. They certainly still exist but every device I owned that made sounds had one in 2015, no longer the case
For PC gaming and any sort of production/studio environment they’re still ubiquitous. Although yeah, not a daily driver for the public nowadays.
Ubiquitous might be a stretch for 2015, but DVI cables come to mind.
Independent portable media players. Most of those functions have been susumed by phones.
Which makes me frustrated that all the manufacturers have gotten too cheap to toss a miniscule DAC and headphone jack in phones anymore.
Headphone jack and micro SD cards and the biggest losses for me.
URL shorteners, AMP? Micro USB?
Edit:
Thinking of things that weren’t made obsolete but just unprofitable…
Physical menus at restaurants, useful search results, human support staff, non-subscription software, open APIs, useful product reviews
I hate with a burning passion QR code scan menus.
I saw on Kitchen Nightmares one time where the QR code pointed to http://localhost/ haha
Haven’t watched such an episode yet, but the developer likely said “Works fine on my machine!”, LOL.
Portable handhelds, I mean form factors like the PSP and Nintendo DS. The downside of the console/handheld convergence is that the handhelds need pretty big screens.
Pay phones, Public water fountains, Coffee grinders in grocery stores, all the hundreds of gadgets that our smart phones replaced, Tons of random accessories for everything were all over stores and eBay but sadly all gone now.
all the hundreds of gadgets that our smart phones replaced
In 2015, at least in Canada, smart phones were already ubiquitous.
Interesting point about the grinders, I’m just realising I haven’t seen any in forever.
Oh yeah, coffee grinders in grocery stores. I rarely see those anymore, but they used to be everywhere.
I don’t eat at QR code restaurants.
If you don’t have a menu, I don’t pay.
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I was in the mainland. They lead to a “mini-program” within WeChat instead of your web browser so you cannot even auto translate that.
I much prefer some of the QR code restaurants we have in my city. I don’t want a waiter hassling me throughout my meal.
It’s worse in China. They lead to a “mini-program” within WeChat instead of your web browser so you cannot even auto translate that
