Times technology has made life harder...

[Sparklfairy]

I recently got a new phone with fingerprint recognition. I've never had one before and I liked the novelty sad I know

A few weeks later I burned the finger and the skin came off... fingerprint recognition no longer worked to unlock my phone. It had prompted me while setting it up to set a 'back up' pin but as I never used it I promptly forgot it. Had to wait until the fingerprint grew back enough to unlock the phone again. Luckily it was only a day or two (albeit multiple attempts at a funny angle!)

Has anyone else got any weird technology gripes to make me feel less of a moron? I will be guarding the finger with my life in future!

Graphista if your internet isn't absolutely terrible, it really shouldn't take that long.

1 boring/ stressful OS update and the update each app as needed.

At least you won't be without a phone for too long in one go.

Definitely keyless cars. My car is entirely keyless. And the battery is inside the car, under the passenger footwell. So, when the battery went flat, and the central locking therefore wouldn’t work, I was locked out of my own car. I had to prise a gap in the window with a butter knife, wedge enough of a gap with a door wedge and then push the long pole with a hook on the end which I use to unwind the drive away awning on my campervan through the gap and hook the door handle to open it from the inside.

The campervan to which the long pole belongs, incidentally, is entirely tech-free and gives me no grief. Everything just... works.

"A completely new approach to account security is required which doesn’t rely on ever more complex passwords." Not sure I agree with that given one of the newish security "thingies" (technical term 😉) is that bloody captcha bollocks! My eyesight isn't great, not awful, not legally impaired or anything (just the normal deterioration due to age and us using screens so much now) and I REALLY struggle to pick out "all the pictures with a car in" where one or two of the cars are TINY distance shots, or to correctly guess the "obscured" letters/numbers in that version!

CheshireChat Apple have said it will likely take 4+ hours I'm bloody dreading it!

1998: if I had work expenses that needed paying, I’d fill in a handwritten form, staple on some receipts, take it upstairs and get a cheque. This took about 20 mins. Then go to bank at lunchtime.

Now: fill in online form, allocate appropriate codes, categories etc to ever expense from a drop down box. Scan receipts and attach them. Submit. Get paid 3 weeks later.

Sorry meant to say Re the captcha thing - I think site managers are FORGETTING we are doing this shit on phones or tablets often, not the large vdu's THEY are designing this shit on!

Bikerunski - ahhh yes i suspect your ages with me and can remember getting your wage IN CASH. In a wee square brown envelope?

My dd first few months in her job her pay was late/screwed up! Much easier to pay on time/rectify mistakes if in cash and you just go to paymaster and say "you've forgotten my overtime" and they say "oops sorry, I'll sort it now" and they'd just go to the works safe, record what they were doing and give you the money!

I find it annoying that I can’t read a proper book or magazine without trying to tap the page (a la kindle) or swipe up!!!

Our house has smart lights which are controlled from our phones. They're brilliant and I love them, when it is just me and DH in the house. They can be controlled by Alexa too which is a lifesaver when I have my hands full with baby.

HOWEVER if you press one of the actual light switches, it knocks the whole system funny and you have to reset it so an absolute bloody nightmare when you have guests. No matter how many times you say 'don't touch the light switches', people always do because it's just a natural thing to do.

A million fucking apps. No, I don't want an Outlook app. Same with reddit. I just want you to work in my browser. Outlook is shit on my phone but I refuse to get the app.

Yes the bloody passwords! I have to write them down because I'll never remember them all. And online shopping where you have to register and create yet another bloody password for a one-time purchase. We know it's just so you can harvest our data.
I love my keyless car though .

Get a password manager. I use the one by Google and find it so much easier!

Yeah, my password gripe is websites that don't let you use your own password method but impose their own. My method works and has never been broken but obliging me to add useless extra elements just means I won't be able to remember it. It would help if they reminded you what their rules were before making you jump through the hoops to reset the dratted thing. And banks that 1) force you to change your password every six months and 2) remember all your previous passwords and refuse to let you recycle them.

I have a new (to me) modern car. Some of the tech in it is great, however I am extremely distrustful of the electronic handbrake.

I have always had very good clutch control as I learned to drive in a very hilly city. Why did they have to replace a straightforward, manual handbrake with something that you can't control and are never quite sure if it is going to work or not? The car is supposed to have something called 'hill start assist' to stop it rolling when starting on hills, but it certainly does roll a little, each time. It's like the auto hand break disengages just before you hit biting point, instead of just after.

My worry is that several multistorey car parks near me have ticket barriers at the top of steep ramps. If anyone pulls up too close in the queue behind me I am worried that I will roll back into them! It's the one thing on this car that I wish it didn't have.

"websites that don't let you use your own password method but impose their own" exactly!

I don't use the same password for everything I have unique for each site BUT I have a way I create them which helps me remember them but lately that isn't bloody good enough!!

Trillis - yet another case of "if it ain't broke LEAVE IT WELL ALONE" 😂

Another vote for work emails! Every so often I'm struck by how bizarre it is - in so many jobs we spend and expect others to spend the whole day glued to Outlook. Such that you can get an email on a new (not urgent) matter and get an "any thoughts?" chaser an hour later. There must be another way 😩 bring back post and fax and Friday afternoon beers

DH's laptop uses the webcam for face recognition.

Teen DD was unimpressed that it thinks she is sufficiently like her Dad that it will unlock for her.

DH bought scales that measure your body fat & other bells & whistles.
It doesn't display the weight when you stand on it. oh No. That would be too useful.
It sends all the body measurement info to DH's phone. So then he tells you what you weigh. And his phone knows forever.

Can't see a problem with that model, can you? (facepalm)

Tried to but a train ticket over the phone about 10 years ago. It was all voice recognition stuff. I wanted to go to Plymouth. The software would only pick up “Penrith”.

I'm frequently befuddled by my wifi washing machine. As PP have asked, why on earth does a washing machine need to be on the Wi-Fi?! I have used a grand total of two of the programs on it and that is all I am likely to ever need to use. I do not need a machine with 15+ programs!
Also, new cars with a button to press that ever so slowly slides the front seat forwards, enabling me to stand in the rain holding a toddler for 20 seconds when I could have just flipped it forwards with a little lever in a second!
Adding technology is not always progress!

"I do not need a machine with 15+ programs!" Omg yes!

I'm about to sound VERY old

When my parents got their "new" VCR which had "videoplus+" I well remember my dad rolling his eyes while trying to programme the damn thing.

"I just want to record the rugby! I swear the more a machine can do all that means is the more there is can potentially go wrong!"

We only use 4 programmes on our washer- 40°c, 60°c, handwash and shoe cycle (and that's only dd occasionally - how it differs from other cycles I'm not sure)

A million fucking apps.
The problem of all the apps reminds me of this: do you remember in the mid 90s, when CD-ROMs were the shiny new toy? Whenever you bought one, they still had to "install" several megabytes of hard disk space (when megabytes were still significant), so they took up valuable space. And you still had to put the CD in as well to run the program. I remember seeing a printout of File Manager in a PC magazine, captioned "here is my sorry-looking hard drive".

Those fucking "cookies warnings" on websites, and the way they now take up the whole screen.

And the way you're expected to review everything, and fill in customer satisfaction surveys. It means that online shopping is even more stressful than it needs to be.

The way that music and videos are no longer yours to keep. The powers that be don't want you to buy the discs any more, they want central storage, so that they can confiscate your access to them. I just can't get used to this idea; I don't even buy music any more, and even though Spotify or Netflix seem to be the future, I have not succumbed to these so far.

Ah OP, my gym has a fingerprint entry thing. Last year I cut my finger quite badly so wore a plaster on my index finger, could not get into the gym for love nor money. Removed plaster and tried again but my fingerprint had kind of shrivelled Cue the manager being called and a whole palaver