Things that are meant to be better but are not better

When we have powercuts, the mobile phone mast on the hill stops working too!

Sadly we are now digital on our phone. Which is hilarious as the WiFi still comes down a copper line from the exchange two miles away. And when a tree falls on it, it's four days to get WiFi back.

I am the same. I ended up using bone headphones. What did you find works for you?
(Sorry for derail)

@CrocsNotDocs for me its soundproof headphones. Drives me insane I cannot rouse anyone in my house. They are all closed in their little bubble of soubdproofness.. thank heavens for the dog

Unless you have a phone that you can charge wirelessly honestly the cure is worse than the disease at this point 😂

Good! DH and I have had this conversation.

I also hate displays on the windscreen. We had one in a courtesy car and it drove us both mad.

This. And if you try and discuss it you do just get treated like Nancy the Negative dinosaur.

Everything is held to ransom by technology, and we're almost engineering our own obsolescence.

Data is just about the worlds most valuable resource, so if there are infrastructure failures (or attacks) the knock on effects are potentially catastrophic. Theoretically it could cause economic collapse. Not to mention the surveillance.

We were all lured in via entertainment and shopping, and perhaps it is the law of unintended consequence, but things are completely out of hand. See China's Social Credit system for where this could go. And it's much admired by some people in power in the West.

Today it's the irritation of constant "upgrades" to just live in the modern world. Tomorrow - who knows?

Unless.you have wireless charging

Also hate those capsule coffee machines. All that noise, fuss and landfill waste for a thimbleful of indifferent coffee.

Parking (and EV charging) apps. Why do I have to give up so much personal information just to park my car for 30 minutes?

Tumble drier and washing machine ‘menus’

You can buy a converter from the usb to headphone jack.

Appliances with personality disorders.

Touchscreen hob starts freaking out if anything is put anywhere near it. Microwave gets more and more distressed if I don't remove my food then second it tells me it has finished heating. Washing machine has an attitude problem. Ask it nicely to start by pressing the screen and it refuses to acknowledge me. Lightly brush past it on way to the sink though? Oh you can bet that bastard is going for recognise that as a command to change settings...then is has the audacity to loudly announce it has finished , every couple of minutes until I take the clothes out.

Is it even possible to keep it?
We moved digital already. We were upgrading internet and did it together, I was very against it but DH persuaded me that all would go digital by end of this year.
I absolutely hate the fact that as power cut will affect my phone. It’s so not me to rely on one source (WiFi) for everything and not to have a back up. I have a power bank and keep it charged but it doesn’t feel the same.

Unfortunately tech is being used against us now. The big question about whatever form of tech used for any purpose is ‘who controls it and why’. It’s being pushed solely to make the rich richer and look good, with no thought for any social consequence whatsoever. Restraints have gone. Democratic thinking has gone. Even the basic idea of asking all consumers what they want has gone.

The public institutions that used to be able to get serious discussion shouted at those in charge have all gone. Even practical considerations of security have gone, there are as a pp says serious vulnerabilities in the internet of all things.

The reduction of decent news, now that the libraries have gone too, and the forcing of tech onto schoolkids particularly get my goat. God knows what the future holds.

I hired a car the other day that had a backwards camera and screen instead of a rear view mirror. Bloody awful.

When you flick your eyes from looking through the windscreen to the rear view mirror it's all distance focused, very easy to flick quickly to mirror and back. With a screen your eyes have to adjust to near focus to see the screen and then back to distance for the road ahead. Slower to change between the two and harder for older eyes.

And let's not even think about varifocal wearers who can't focus on near things through the top of their lenses and now have to move their whole head to use the rear view! Madness!

I agree with everything mentioned! And the most annoying thing for me is that we're supposed to believe that we have much more choice now, but it's the total opposite. They phase out things that a lot of people are perfectly happy with.

Sky Glass!! Useless crap that's way worse than previous set up.

All the different apps you now need to watch tv that all fast forward and rewind differently to each other but work using 1 remote control.

Parking apps!!
Electric car charging apps!!
Restaurant apps that then have the cheek to charge you for using the app!!
Touchscreen cooker that sets a timer because my t-shirt accidentally brushed it whilst I was cooking something on the hob! Fuck off!!
The touchscreen stove that beeps at me because I put a tray on top of it for a minute so i can dish up dinner!! Stop attention seeking!!

I can barely use a touch screen due to dyspraxia and visual impairment.
My late mum couldn't use one at all as her fingers were distorted by arthritis and dypruytens, and no matter how hard she tried, no screen would recognise her touch.

I have a little Bluetooth transmitter/receiver for my wired headphones. It is another thing to charge, but I like it, because its so lightweight. I can keep my phone somewhere safe (or plugged in to charge) and move around.
Because it's so light it doesn't fall out of my pockets like my phone.
Agree with your general point though OP. I only got this gadget because I already own nice headphones and didn't want to have to spend loads of money replacing with wireless versions. I don't like replacing things unnecessarily.

I am refusing to upgrade my iphone entirely due to fact it is the last apple phone with headphone jacks.

I don't know anyone who hasn't lost a bud, misplaced the charger even driven over one in one case...

As much as I think our lives have been enhanced by the advancement in tech, I feel customer care has declined as a result.

The bridge is a lit quicker than it used to be. The tunnel is variable... but they can't improve that without building an extra one for some extra lanes!

Hang on a what now? No headphone socket? What nonsense is this?

I don't like online ordering in restaurants, but the other day I went somewhere where I thought they had it just right.

Order with a person, then to pay you scan a QR code. No logging in, and you could select the items you paid ate and it added your share of the tip to them. It was SO easy for a meal with friends. I paid for another friend as she was in a hurry and within seconds she had paid me back as we both have a Monzo. Seemed a really good example to me of modern tech making stuff better/easier.

Was just coming on to say this. So dangerous and bloody annoying. We recently got rid of an electric car we’d had nothing but trouble with. Dozens of different screens for everything.

Alleged ‘safety’ devices that couldn’t be switched off automatically without going through a giant palaver each and every time you switched the car on (90% of my driving is on remote rural roads and the ‘twitch’ function on the steering wheel almost caused accidents countless times due to the car misinterpreting my intentions or reacting incorrectly to road markings). Being basically a gigantic laptop, it was off the road more often than on it because of battery problems. I really hated that car!

Now got an old mini. Dials and buttons and an actual mechanical engine, where one bit can be mended or replaced without the whole sodding thing shutting down and costing a fortune. So happy to go back to an analogue car.

All of these things are just ways of extracting money from people.

Phone companies don't want you to spend £10 on a cheap pair of headphones, they want you to spend upwards of £30 on their branded earbuds.

Apps for parking, train tickets etc. are a case of third parties inserting themselves between you and the service you want to purchase to take a cut of your money and/or the company's money.

Digitising household goods is a way to speed up built in obsolescence.

TV subscriptions - speaks for itself.

Cashless everything is a way of collecting data that can be sold on.

We can resist this, but sad to say the tide is probably too strong and too far out now and the few of us that are swimming against it will ultimately be stranded on an island of not being able to do anything because we don't have the right apps to complete the basic tasks needed in everyday life.

The Dartford crossing.

You used to : queue for miles, go to a kiosk, then lob eg 1.50 into a basket or pay by card.

Now: queue for miles then pass 485 signs telling you to remember to pay the charge.

The experience while driving is largely the same - you're stuck in a slow moving queue for miles but I imagine they make more money by people forgetting to pay!

Agree with headphone jacks and touchscreens in cars. And parking apps, and the fact you need a password for virtually everything- even one off experiences.