Headphone jacks and Micro SD Card Readers.
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
I’d say audio CDs, but those have been back on the upward trend since streaming and download services started getting hostile and people started wising up to that hostility, in other words, people want to own their music again and so started buying CDs again recently vs. having a streaming or download service randomly yank content they paid for from their libraries.
Cd roms. Network ports on laptops
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.
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.
Even when you get or the actual website results you now have to wade through the AI slop sites
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.
Oh yeah, coffee grinders in grocery stores. I rarely see those anymore, but they used to be everywhere.
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.
The grinder thing is because Keurig K-Cups came out, and the entire industry shifted towards selling those instead.
TIL.
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.
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 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.
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.
See how they massacred my boy…
People really will copy anything Apple does.
I do like my AirPods, but I’m still pissed off that the duopoly killed the headphone jack. Give me back my headphone jack!!
Bluetooth isn’t the technology that’s come a long way, it’s still the same shit it was decades ago. It’s batteries.
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.
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.
I could NOT be bothered with charging headphones daily.
My Marshall on-ears have a battery life of like 80 hours or so…
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.
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.
I’m sure that’s true, but I’ve never managed to keep a pair of earpods for more than a couple of years. I always end up losing them, generally while travelling.
Got the AirPods Pro 1st Gen in 2019, still going strong. Usually have to recharge every 1,5-2 days and I use them pretty every day for commute from home to work and back (in total about 1,5H).
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.
“Closed. Cannot reproduce”
Love it
Ive been on a restaurant where that happened
I don’t have a smartphone, so QR code menus mean I don’t eat there.
QR codes are great! They let hackers replace it with their own so they can infect your phone 🫠.
Bonus points if they offer an app to download and really get at stealing your data. /s
I almost never came across a restaurant without physical menus here in Germany🤔
I don’t eat at QR code restaurants.
If you don’t have a menu, I don’t pay.
If you come to Taiwan you will starve.
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.
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
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.
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.
True yeah… Garmin devices were so revolutionary for driving when they came out. Then phones with Google maps came along and that was easier
USB drives, dvd/blu ray.
I’ll die before I let go of my 5 USB drives (yes I use them all)
i had a usb from 2016ish-19, so i was using a university school computers for writing resumes and applying to job sites, plus, and sneaking in a game installer, since the school computer blocked it that the time the usb bypasses it.
I bought a 5-pack of 8GB USB drives for making live USBs, many years ago it feels like, and have somehow managed to hold onto all of them. I tend to use Green and Black the most for file transfers and they have started to fail pretty regularly but I can’t throw them out, they’re a family. Funnily enough Purple, the one that got assigned “Permanent Ubuntu Live USB” duty and has seen more than its share of writes, is still rock solid.
Office phones.
I had to fill out the number for my HR department on some paperwork. Tried to look it up. My large employer doesn’t have a phone number at all for any department - even HQ.
Sounds about right. Last time I had an office phone at my desk was 2021.
I have an office phone, which is at least 10 years old at this point. One call every couple of months and it is spam.
Sysadmin at my last gig, ushered in VOIP phones as I was starting in 2019. Only tech support used them, rest of us used our cell phones or Zoom.
When COVID hit and we all went WFH, almost no one took their phone home. :) I thought about it, but why?
Hell - I question if home phones are really hanging in there.
Our home phone is an extra line on the cell plan. That phone sits at home most of the time, and is a games phone for when kids come over with parents.
CD’s & Mp3 players
