Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

Not really a fan of digital program notes at concerts/theater.

I went to an art museum last weekend and they were pushing web-based tours to do on your phone.

Which is fine, I guess. But I wonder if there will be a wave of nostalgia for those rentable tape player thingies

The sound is so much WARMER, y'know?

I'm not saying technology ruins absolutely everything, but the Lego Mario sets don't have paper instructions and instead require you to download a fucking *1.5GB* app instead that contains them. fantastic.

— Dan Hett (@danhett) July 27, 2021

ugh that's terrible.
I just spent a happy two days building a set with my kid that had an instruction booklet almost the size of an Argos catalogue

they are usually downloadable from the website. quality varies with the old sets though because the scans are so bad the black just becomes one big blob and you can't make out the bricks.

yeah, this gives you two choices, one at 153MB and a pdf at 5...

this = https://www.lego.com/en-gb/service/buildinginstructions/71363

How many times – especially on third-party software we license – that I've clicked a link to a tutorial and it's taken me to a 6:58 instructional video.

Should I take notes? Should I bounce back and forth between my project and your constantly paused video? Or how about a set of step-by-step directions that I can just read.

(Youtube handymen excluded from this objection. Not like I pay them anyway.)

I’ve noticed this with computer games—now that everything is on Steam etc., it seems as though instruction manuals have been abolished. Sure, there’s a tutorial level or popups when starting a game that give basic controls, but anything more than that I have to look for some GameFAQ guide or reddit post. Which sucks because I’ve had plot points spoiled while searching for that stuff. I had to turn off auto-complete in my browser after doing a search for "how to find [NPC companion name]’s…" and it filled in “grave”, spoiling a big twist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/26/technology/qr-codes-tracking.html

How many times – especially on third-party software we license – that I've clicked a link to a tutorial and it's taken me to a 6:58 instructional video.

seriously ... this is me and the gmail mail merge software I use once a year, that I forget how exactly to do the thing, and so I go to the site, and there's the instructional video. Like, look, I just want to know how to format the date for scheduled sending. I don't want to watch your whole video!

Fucking municipal parking apps!!! There are like four different ones that the towns around here use, you need to set up an "account" just to fucking park for ten minutes to pick up your bagels, the apps themselves are all terrible, clunky to use, often don't work, take way more time than just inserting coins or a credit card, and I'd be surprised if my credit card info is actually secure.

^oh fuck yes, infuriating. And I don't even live in a metro area.

yeah our one here is an object lesson in UI failure for the most part. Hilariously, if you want to interact directly with the meter it uses a mono LCD screen at waist height, in which either the polarisation or the voltage is fucked up to the extent that it gives navy pixels on a khaki background of almost exactly the same brightness. You also have to press some bizarre right arrow button to even enter the number of the parking space. I used to hate it but now I've kind of transcended to an existential amusement at how bad it is.

oh and it also never tells you how many minutes you've paid for. It gives you the expiration time, and doesn't show the current time, so you have to either keep it in mind if you remembered to note it first (there's no way back if you didn't), or cross check with your phone / watch and calculate the difference mentally.

The app I’m NYC works fine, but it sends you like ten emails every time you park.

I’ve used two different ones. One makes you “end parking,” which means you don’t overpay, but if you forget that step, you end up making the max payment. The other one makes you pay up-front, which means you usually overpay, but the next person doesn’t get the benefit of the overpayment.

I signed up for one (Parkmobile) when visiting Monterey in a rental car. I didn't end up needing it but then I found there was no way to remove the car or payment method from my account as you always needed to have at least one of each attached to your account, so I vaguely worry I'm going to be charged for someone else parking the car at some point.

OK, this thread has prompted me to do something about this by raising a support ticket to cancel my Parkmobile account completely as that seems to be the only way to detach myself from this rental car.

Some of our internal doors had been controlled by security keypads. The whole company used one code, usually the CEO's birthyear, to open the doors.

For obvious reasons, this became a problem and the keypads are gone. Now we have fob sensors, just like we do on the external doors, that can also be triggered with an app.

I don't walk around the place with my keys in my pocket. In the summer, they pull on my pants pocket and in the winter, they stay inside my coat pocket. So I don't always have my fob when I go to use the restroom.

What I do usually have, ahem, is my phone. Now when I'm coming back from the public portion of the building, I have to (1.) pull out my phone, (2.) open the app, (3.) scroll to my desired door, (4.) tap on my door's name, and then (5.) wait about five seconds for the fob sensor to switch from a blue light to a green light. All of that instead of just going doot-doot-doot-doot-doot-I'm-in.

Again, having the whole damn company (and eventually the building) share the same code was ridiculous. And with the fobs and apps, a log of entries can be maintained. But I do gotta say that a large part of this new process is a step backward.

(1.) pull out my phone, (2.) open the app, (3.) scroll to my desired door, (4.) tap on my door's name,

I feel like this is the kind of bullshit that, if app developers aren't going to address it, the Shortcuts feature on iPhones ought to be able to provide a workaround for, but it doesn't really, for whatever technical reasons I don't understand.

Their suggestion was to use the roving feature, in which the app stays on in the background all the time and closely monitors my location. Apparently, steps 1-4 would be eliminated, but I would still have to stand there in front of the door for a few seconds, wondering if the app was working or not.

Take those four seconds as a meditation slot

Any company that expects you to download an app for a simple service that could be implemented in a web page must be destroyed.

you say that but, for instance, our basement at work doesn't have reception...

and the amazon locker is in there, so you have to remember to open the email with the security code in it before you go down to pick things up.

and then there's a security door to get into the basement and another to get back into the main building.

Depending on apps to trigger real-world actions is going to be the end of civilization as we know it. I mean...have these people used apps? I can't really think of an app on my phone that hasn't at some point (or even often) glitched or crashed or frozen.

Along these lines, we now have to use the Microsoft Authenticator app before we clock in and out at work. I would have to count to be sure but I think the whole process involves clicking a minimum of eight different things and entering passwords three different times. So it takes me somewhere between 1.5 and 2 minutes to clock in or out now. Very, very efficient.

Not 100% in the vein of this thread since it has some benefits, but I recently bought two Feit "smart bulbs" for my patio lights - I wanted something I could dim down to really low wattage and control the color temperature, and I also thought it would be fun to occasionally be able to make them colored (e.g. for a party). Well, the bulbs do all those things, but getting them to work on our wifi network took me like two hours, and now they have to be controlled from my phone (I mean the lightswitch still turns them on and off, but any changes are via the app on my phone). And the app is predictably not well designed, although it ultimately works. I do like the fact that I can now sit outside on my patio at night in a very low wattage warm glow that barely disturbs the darkness but prevents me from tripping over shit.

My wife could dominate this thread with all the home automations I’ve implemented and forced upon my family.

But get that stuff voice activated. Pulling out an app to control lights is pretty terrible.

I use voice control quite a lot for music and it's OK but there's still something oddly tiring about barking your instructions to a machine. I think my ideal interface for turning things on and off would just be a remote control with a fuckload of dedicated buttons.

Jeff otm. I was promised a future where I could control things via statements like, "computer, dim the lights". Not a future where I had to pull out my phone, unlock my phone, scramble to remember which app I needed, scroll through the screens full of icons to find it, initially click the wrong app, close it, open the correct app, realize I've been signed out, forget password, click 'reset password', open email, reset password, open app and *PRESTO* light is now dim!

"cool"

I dislike the anti homeless drm pic.twitter.com/pvV1FB85qg

— aerie ka (@AnemoneAndMe) July 29, 2021

i hate voice control. i refuse to live in the future the nerds wanted.

I told Alexa to go play in traffic and then it stopped working

I don't mind voice control, but I'd much prefer it if our options now weren't all to feed our personal data directly to awful tech companies.

can’t bring myself to talk to a machine

The #1 reason I like it is when I run out of stuff when I'm in the middle of cooking, I can just say out loud to add it to a shopping list. It's super handy and less likely for me to forget to write it down when I'm done.

We have Google Homes with voice control all over the house (I live in a shared house, it was like that when I moved in), and every so often you're in the middle of a conversation and Google thinks it hears its name and starts talking to you out of nowhere. A creepy reminder that you're always being eavesdropped on.

I've had similar experiences with Amazon Echo, it's a pain in the ass. I don't think I could ever have a connected home like that. I don't want things like lights and HVAC being dependent on an internet connection. Plus, at least here, the electric company can override your HVAC in emergency situations, like when ERCOT wasn't generating enough electricity a few weeks back. Thanks, but no thanks.

yeah for me all the smart home stuff feels like the house from Mon Oncle at best, and super sinister and gross at worst. just not for me and my lifestyle at all.

Yeah it creeps me out in a big way and I would never have gotten a device of that kind on my own. I like everything else about this house so I just had to deal with it.

I don't mind voice control, but I'd much prefer it if our options now weren't all to feed our personal data directly to awful tech companies.

How many of the options are to feed your personal data directly to awful tech companies?

LINK IN BIO

the app door key thing is so stupid, had that at one contract gig. most of these are a total solution-in-search-of-a-problem. key card on a lanyard is incredibly simple and easy.

why can't Instagram make comments/posts with URLs in them into clickable links? (genuine question)

they don't want to you take your attention elsewhere?

yes and as a new insta user i hate it so much.

Lack of physical buttons on modern TVs.

Guess who mislaid the remote.

mine has touch buttons on the front. seeing them and working out what the icons mean is another matter.

Check under the frame on the bottom of the TV. Took me a few months to realize we had those down there.