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

I'm shopping for a phone now and who decided that all phones need to have huge screens? This is ridiculous, a phone should fit comfortably in your pants front pocket

I want a keyboard on a phone, I have fat clumsy arthritic fingers and autocorrect hates me.

xp Right?? I've had the same phone for 4 years & even that one is too big. I'm not sure there are any iPhones available now that are smaller than the 6s.

https://www.palm.com

damn that actually looks pretty sick

tell me about palm tombot

I just heard some nerds talking about it. I avoid Android phones

ugh. i am chained to ios

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Logging into an account and getting asked how many traffic lights/buses/cars etc I can see.

why have these people bought the Palm name and then got completely different branding and no reference to the old Palm anywhere

why not just... have a new name, for your new company with new tech and new branding and entirely new staff

I guess it gets old British nerds like me to click on it

(seriously I get mad daily at my 2017 phone not fitting in my jeans pocket like the 2012 one did so I should be target market anyway, except the "crew" pics are full of hiply bearish dudes whose leather jacket pockets are surely bigger than any ladies' clothing pockets, so maybe I am not target market after all)

mah big phone

my phoon is too big

The palm thing is daft, it’s not meant to be a ‘main’ phone it’s meant to be a companion phone for you main phone for those times when your main phone is too big, or you don’t want to loose or drop a $1500 phone.

I'd take it as my main phone tbh, it's weird they advertise it as a "companion piece".

I believe this review, which says it's terrible.

Almost no apps, which they pitch as a feature, but would be tough to lose coming from a full-featured phone.

"What if instead of a watch..."

"Yes?"

"We made it into a phone that you could put inside your pocket?"

Is there a case for buying a cheap, small phone for phone stuff and a tablet for tablet stuff? Where's the dividing line, I wonder? Or is having two devices the problem that they are trying to solve with bigger phones?

As for the main question, cloud computing in general, specifically the new reliance on a decent network connection in order to do things.

Also, the rise of Netflix and Spotify rule out most of my easy gift ideas - can't buy the kids the new Pixar movie for Christmas because it's only a click away now. (Luckily the kids still enjoy books)

Or is having two devices the problem that they are trying to solve with bigger phones?

right you are. putting all the connectivity and computing into one rather awkwardly sized device seems to solve more problems than it causes, at least for most people. Not me, but most people.

But the tablet would be dumb and use the WiFi hotspot from the phone so wouldn't need connectivity itself, and the phone could have less computing power, and not cost 1000 pounds, if that makes a difference.

Oddly when they've gone with paired devices like this they've gone the other way - big, connected phone, tiny, unconnected watch.

As a journalist I've always used a call recording app to record phone interviews. I recently got myself a new Android phone and found none of the call recording apps work anymore. Even if you put the call on loudspeaker. Apparently Google has blocked them all for legal reasons, as in some states it's illegal to record calls without the other person's permission. Something I've never done - I always asked people if they mind me recording for note-taking purposes. It's damned annoying and I haven't worked out a solution yet, other than to continue using my old phone which has no storage left. Journalists who record phone interviews: don't buy any phone that runs the latest Android operating system!

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― YouGov to see it (wins)

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xp - i thought android phones came with some basic audio recording app? (i switched to iphone about 1 1/2 yrs ago) I know I had one on my android phone somehow -- maybe look for a music app designed for recording?

I think this is specifically about recording phone calls. I'm sure there are plenty of audio recording apps.

you can use an audio recording app to record a phone call

Apple’s been doing this for years. If the mic is on for a phone call, you can’t use it for anything else.

The workaround is to get a service where you conference in a second number that records the call, I believe.

(or have another device for recording, like back in the day)

tv commercials being about fifty-thousand times louder than the actual show

this is a longstanding complaint.

it has gotten gradually worse though

I remember reading it’s not really louder (due to regulations, at least in france) but more compressed. Another example of how evil compression is !

There's nothing evil about compression, only its misapplication.

I was joking (re: the classic thread on that matter)

definitely more compression (from what I remember), but the commercials are pre-made and then edited into the programs -- at least they used to be -- my stupid theory about the current increase in this disparity is that this is the result of reduced quality control akin to publications getting rid of copy editors ...

Meh, good riddance. It wasn't like those cops needed to be yedited.

https://en.akinator.mobi/game

Longstanding ILXors will perhaps remember Akinator, the uncanny 20 questions Internet robot who wowed you by guessing what person you were thinking of

He is a dumbass who only knows about vloggers now

And he has a GDPR prompt

You're thinking about an Italian legal professional who was murdered in the 20th century? Logan Paul, baby!

I saw a blurb somewhere about how to forestall the inevitable death of one's EarPods and realized that wireless headphones absolutely do have a limited lifespan.

so do wired headphones?
no one has made everlasting ear speakers yet

I have those Bose over the ear ones and even they apparently have very hard-to-replace batteries, which seems completely unnecessary.

As long as the speakers don't blow, it's relatively easy to repair wired headphones. Whether it's actually worth one's while to do so is a different question, of course.

Increasingly feeling this way about certain kinds of online shopping -- clothing especially. Order something, get it in two days, it doesn't fit right, take it to the post office to return, wait another few days for a different size. It's a lot more work than just going to a store and trying stuff on until you find what you like, only problem being that it's increasingly hard to find good clothing stores with adequate stock now that retail is killing them.

Online bookshopping will also never be as enjoyable as going to a bookstore.

Agreed re clothes shopping, it's a massive headache. Sometimes I'll look online ahead of going to the shop, make a mental note of what I want to look at, and 9 times out of 10 it's not in the shop. So then I've both gone to the shop AND had to order and send it back. This is why all my clothes are old.

i loathe online apparel shopping but i have gotten better at it with time. (i also just generally loathe the act of apparel shopping)

main beef is related to vocabulary. you have to know what the items are called to look for the items you want -- how do you search for the type of thing you want if you don't know what the retailers are calling it? you don't! at least when shopping irl you see something, you like it, you never need to know what it's called by the vendor, you just buy it and wear it.

scrolling page after page after page of H&M's website looking for vocabulary is not my idea of a good time

the alternative is to stay up to date on fashion terms via fashion publications, which i have strenuously avoided for decades

Search for "puffy Seinfeld shirt" yielded 10 results

were any of them what you were looking for?

my most recent online shopping adventure involved finding a brand of shoe i liked. looking at retail prices and offerings, then going to ebay and searching for my size (which i had to search more to find out) to see what pops up. i bought some new (and another pair of near-new) on ebay for a fraction of the retail price and they are great. this took a significant amount of time and effort and know-how. i don't see how this is better than going to the shoe outlet and just hoping to find something acceptable aside from the fact that i hate shopping and walking into a store is some kind of insurance that i will walk out emptyhanded. at least i got my two pairs of shoes and paid like 1/4 of what i would have if i had bought them from zappos.

this is where lumpen masculinity finally comes out on top, we don't do any of that, we just go to target and eyeball the sizes to figure out how many Xes of L to get in one of the four colors they have

ah yes, I still have no idea what a "slubby tee" is