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?
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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 AIM was the de facto god-emperor of IM platforms and the rest were just also-rans.
Maybe that was just my experience tho, but I feel like ICQ and IRC were older but more clunky, MSN and Yahoo were newer or contemporary but less dependable and had less buy in from the community.
Maybe it's just my personal era, but MSN/Messenger was used solely in the group I grew up around. With maybe an addition of trillium eventually
In my bubble, MSN was the first messenger used by non-nerds. For me it was the third messenger after IRC and ICQ that i really used. Nerds were on IRC, Gamers on ICQ
MSN was for your friends and friends of friends, ICQ was gamers and pre-MSN friends, IRC was for pretending you were a 17 year old girl from California.
Text Messages killed instant message programs. Same "format", but infinitely portable and won't crash out your full screen game when you get a new message.
This is an American thing. In the rest of the world WhatsApp and the like still reign supreme.
WhatsApp is the same as texting in this regard.