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

Many xps removing the headphone jack was a shitty move but I’ve got to say, having been forced to go wireless I wouldn’t want to go back, as someone who was constantly catching the wire on something while doing whatever activity. I don’t use true wireless as they would inevitably end up with the many broken buds I see on the ground everywhere, but Bluetooth ones with a short wire that hangs around my neck are pretty much perfect EXCEPT for the mf pointless low battery alert thing

I did a search to see if there was a brand that didn’t do this & found this from the 1st world problems subreddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/firstworldproblems/comments/ae6sdu/bluetooth_earbuds_chanting_low_battery_please/

Really seems like every affordable brand (& some expensive ones) have this issue & everyone hates it

the armband phone holder has been perfected afaict. i just wrap the extra length of cord around the holder, no muss no fuss. i look like a fitness mom ca 2005 but it's reliable, it just works all the time, no need to remember 3 additional things in advance to enjoy music whenever i want to move around, and on the plus side it keeps my phone put away so i'm not tempted to look at it.

Beeping preferable to the voice version, at least.

i look like a fitness mom ca 2005

in a few years, this will be the hot look that young people will pay to have

The only problem I've had with true wireless Bluetooth buds is that someone nearly opened their car door on me and I was so shocked one of the buds fell out, then the driver reversed over it

wrt buds with a wire between.. you can get any 2-pin or MMCX set of IEMs or buds and a corresponding bluetooth adapter to go between. I'm using a TRN BT3 in the gym. Few years old.

well that’s that cleared up then

https://www.headphonesty.com/2022/04/review-trn-bt30/

they've just separated the bluetooth from the actual earpiece part (iem - in ear monitor) so you can use your existing ear pieces with that (as long as your ear pieces have the right connections, either 2-pin or the mmcx coax-like connectors in the to photo there, which are the two competing standards)

and this looks like what was mentioned above - an adapter to plug your wired earphones into so you can use them with a bluetooth phone (although where do you put that receiver? you now got two unconnected things to carry, which seems a bit odd)

https://www.onbuy.com/gb/bluetooth-50-universal-headset-wireless-adapter~c16193~p29442989/?

my issue isn't with the headphone cord at all, it's with the iphone: the headphone jack won't stay in the phone if you so much as sneeze at it. this was never a problem with my ipod, but my ipod can't stream things so

well that’s that cleared up then

Anytime.

I thought the tethered buds were a thing of the past too.. but seems Sony is still making some. Like the WIC200.

xxp Well it looks like the back is a big clip. It's another way to go. But yeah still charging two batteries.

as someone who will absolutely lose one of their wireless earbuds within a day, I feel the progress towards their universal adoption as a gathering storm directed personally at me

and this looks like what was mentioned above - an adapter to plug your wired earphones into so you can use them with a bluetooth phone (although where do you put that receiver? you now got two unconnected things to carry, which seems a bit odd)

That's what I do

In the early 1990s I used to install TV/media displays at big tech conventions like Comdex and Digital World and the turn this thread has taken has given me bad PTSD flashbacks of working with video distribution amplifiers.

comdex!!! i remember loading equipment trucks for comdex lol

can't login to / register with hmrc without a passport, and renewing mine would be £80 or so and two weeks, easily. other possible forms of id are driving licence. i don't have one of those either but it might be cheaper and easier... only applying for a driving licence requires a passport...

(it might be different if i do it in person)

(also, why is firefox highlighting licence as a spelling error when it's set to GB english)

apps for parking

omfg yes

I mean paying for parking in the UK is a fucking disgrace full stop, but I'm kind of stuffed without the apps. I just never have cash.

some people don't have smartphones (e.g. my parents), what are they meant to do? pretty sure they'd be baffled by the automated telephone payments line too. keep cash payments for people who don't want to or can't pay otherwise, have a contactless thingummy for everyone else. fuck an app (or phone payments).

Oh God parking apps are the WORST

The ones near us replaced actual machines that took cash and card, and one of them near my friends cat cafe requires you to create a whole fucking account before you can even see how much it is to park. After doing all that one night it boasted that it was $15 to park and I peaced

Also having to enter your space number and license plate number and lord help you if you miskey either and get a ticket anyway

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the literal worst feeling in the world is arriving on time to a destination where you have previously downloaded the parking app and set up an account, only to discover that the old parking app has been acquired by a different parking app company so you're right back to square zero.

why are we not tagging these qr codes? maybe just even fill in a couple of the white squares.

The justpark phone number will no longer accept my bank card because a payment once failed to go through, and no idea how to fix it, I will not download their app, guess I just can't park.

I totally take the point about it being worse for people without phones, but when I'm faced with an old style pay and display car park now I tear my hair out ("What, I now have to trek back to the car, open it up and put this on the dashboard? I'm in a HURRY"). That's if I can figure out the UI of the machine in the first place.

Round our way they've covered all the on-street parking machines with black plastic, which is an eyesore.

There's a multistorey car park I use in Leamington Spa which used to have an automatic reg recognition system, pay on exit, etc. then last year they ripped it all out and replaced with pay-and-display paper ticket machines on every floor. how's that for a backwards step? though I don't actually mind the machines (which accept contactless) I don't like having to leave the kids in the car while I walk there and back, because they will fight, get out of the car, etc.

If there’s no cash option, it’s discriminatory and fuck it; but also, if there’s no non-cash option, it’s discriminatory and fuck it. Here in Philly, it is perhaps one of the only official systems that works— there are zones and kiosks at every zone that either take card or cash, or you can use the app and pay that way. Shouldn’t be a hard problem to solve.

Now don’t get me started on SEPTA, our public transit system. At least they’re beginning a phone-based payment system finally, after years of using a system of RFID chip cards that…get this… expired. Like, I had to buy a new card and load it with funds even tho my old one had funds on it. Just to ride the subway for a few miles. Insanity.

On the subject of reg recognition: having to go into a shop and wait in a queue to pay for petrol while my car sits blocking the pump seems mad to me when the forecourt has plenty of cameras.

I now have THREE separate parking apps, and they're always required in places with no signal/wifi. Fuck them to hell. Usually no card reader either.

Quite honestly it drives me nuts how the default assumption is "everyone has a smartphone" in so much of society, which tabes otm, is discriminatory.

My company once changed the system for calling out unplanned from calling a voicemail and leaving the details to an Android/iOS cell phone app. Sure enough, one or two training classes later, two employees said they didn't have smart phones, what do they do, and leadership was flummoxed like they literally hadn't expected.

But back to parking - not ALL parking apps are clumsy, but so many of them make you do a lot of work. What I also hate is that these apps SHOULD provide you with added convenience - i.e., you paid through 10 pm but you got held up. Cool, I'll just relog into the app and add some additional time!

Except all of them I've used, even though you set up an account, it knows your license plate and (if applicable) your space number, you go to add more time, but it doesn't allow you to. It counts the time you are purchasing from time of purchase and doesn't incorporate the time you already paid for. So you have to wait for it to expire first

I don't like having to leave the kids in the car while I walk there and back, because they will fight, get out of the car, etc.

This is on u for raising feral crime kids imo

One time I left my kid unattended when getting gas and these 2 bikers started harassing them and he threw a boomerang and killed one of them

Quite honestly it drives me nuts how the default assumption is "everyone has a smartphone" in so much of society, which tabes otm, is discriminatory.

Round here you can pay by text message as well, so a dumb phone will do. Not that everyone has one of those either.

Once got talking to an elderly lady at an airport who asked me "why is everyone always on their PHONES". Thought she wanted to do the usual boomer rant about this but turned out, no, she genuinely did not know what the functionalities of a smartphone were.

it is indeed my fate to walk the earth as the shamed father of two feral crime kids, at least until one of them goes off to uni I suppose

I remember my nan tutting at everyone wearing headphones at a local historic attraction. They were listening to the audio guide!

Theres new underground carparks near me that are cashless in a good way - it reads yr licence plate, so if youre there less than the 1 or 2 hours it allows, all is well and it lets you out. They should just do that for onstreet parking - read the plate, charge nothing if it less than X window of time, if over X, send a bill/charge to CC. No cash for inspectors to have to collect, no need for apps, no fucking around looking for which machine to pay at.

All that said I've NFI how they'd put a camera in to record a paralell-parked car on the road.

. . . i don't even own a car

https://media.tenor.com/FFnlR-x5mTEAAAAC/nathan-fillion-but.gif

tbf i was totally put off cars by hook turns

the car has to enter the spot at some point right

why are we not tagging these qr codes? maybe just even fill in a couple of the white squares.

― pplains, Monday, July 3, 2023 10:13 PM (yesterday)

this is a beautiful idea

apps are good

Leave room for the entree