Things I can't stand....oh boy, rant alert......I'll probably look like a major "luddite" after this.....
- SAAS (Software as a Service) - I'll include productivity software. I don't like that a company makes you pay "rent" on a stupid program that they can strong-arm you into upgrading from if they make a particularly good version. It's even worse if it's something like Microsoft and their stupid "new style UI" portal. Even more worse is when suddenly NVIDIA think's it's a GREAT idea to make enterprise class video drivers that NEED this - what company in their right mind is NOT Going to block the Microsoft Store? Who wants "Candy Crush Saga" on their brand new corporate images!?!?
- Cloud Based/Connected Software - I like having my technology capable of being productive even if the entire internet went down worldwide and had to be reconstructed over the course of 3 decades. I also hate that Cloud companies love to pull bait-n-switch. Hell, I worked at one, they gave us 15GB free storage when they opened their services (they are very well known for shennanigans in the industry so I'm not telling), then suddenly one day they decide to cut ALL of us back to 5GB.....so I had to shuffle my s*@! elsewhere - to a 1TB External hard drive like I would have done normally.
- Paywalls and constant encouragement to DLC - This particularly applies to phone apps, but I get it sometimes elsewhere. It would not be so bad if I did not have to see a pop-up every 5 minutes or every round that say "Buy more blah blah blah for $1.99". One game that comes to mind in this crud would be "Tiny STar Wars" - it was like a pixel art "Sim Tower" clone - and once you got to a certain point, the game was just no longer any fun, because the amount of time required to earn the in-game points needed to continue to build was so high up there I'd rather be forced to play Rhone in Dragon Warrior II for eternity - actually Rhone in Dragon Warrior II takes less grinding than the game does....but "You can buy this now for $199" - forget that! I don't have some bearded elf in Dragon Quest II on my NES pestering me to pay Enix $1.99 so I can forego 3 hours of hitting Silver Baboons with a blackrock sword - so I don't want that in my tower game either....that's one reaosn I uninstalled it. Monster Truck Destruction is another one......I have it on Steam, and on the Phone - Steam, it's awesome, no ads, no B.S., on the phone though "pay 0.99 to disable adds - buy Bigfoot #1 for $1.99" instead of just unlocking things. There's a reason I did not reinstall it on my new phone.
- I too am another one annoyed by the increasing size of cell phones. And what's worse is that it never improves my ability to text without constantly fat-fingering words because not just does the darned thing lack tactile feedback.......but it also has buttons that are just too bloody tiny for my giant pointers to isolate. So I either have to hunt and peck with some kind of stylus which takes longer, or I have to continually backspace and retype crap or double tap to get the spelling corrected - not because I can't spell - but because I have fingers like Keith Richards and I'm trying to type on a "plastic bar of soap".
- I wish that keyboards on phones would come back. I LOVED my Droid Global 2 I had back in 2011. I could scream through text messages on that thing like I'm on a clicky keyboard on one of my vintage PC's.
- USB-C Docking STations - as an I.T. Guy.....bloody hell do I hate these things. The users always break/damage the connectors on the laptops and the docking stations leading to us begging the OEM to replace either the motherboard, dock, or both. When you can barely get these people to reboot for a Windows update, how likely do you think they will heed the words "be careful" when they encounter a plastic stick with a USB-C port on the end to connect their laptop to the 101 USB devices they have at their desk. It's just not right to attach a 5LB laptop to a port designed to handle a <1LB Cell phone.
- The Ultraslim Craze. No, I'm not saying let's blow laptops up to the thickness of an NEC Versa P/75 or a Twinhead Slim Note 486, but when you can't put a proper docking port on the device because the case is too thin (leading to above), and the user needs to carry a few dongles around they eventually lose, it's' terrible. Enterprise class devices should be designed to be like Duplo lego blocks - big, simple, basic, and fast.
- The Aluminum Case Craze - Great, let's build a frequently dropped/hit device out of a lightweight and easily bendable metal, and let's put a borderless screen on it while you're at it. You know why there are Compaq's, Toshibas, NEC's, and IBM's running around with perfectly good 25+ year old screens? Because they were made of fairly-impact resistant PLASTIC and had a BEZEL. Sure it LOOKS cool, but if I had a nickel for every ASUS Zenbook or Dell Precision, XPS, or Macbook Air I've seen or worked on that would have probably survived a fall without a major screen or other hardware replacement, I'd be able to buy out Microsoft. Also, never before have I been cut by metal so much in my life - and this is for an OUTSIDE cover of a case - god, why don't we just bring back the Tawianese ATX desktop cases with poorly stamped razorblade edges inside while were at it.
- Speaking of the screens, how about that aforementioned Bezel-less craze? GREAT. Let's reduce the amount of material between the glass and the side of the case so that the computer in question is totally prone to having it's screen replaced at cost multiple times. IT provides no benefit whatsoever.
- Curved Screens on Cell Phones.....another engineering mistake where function follows form. I'd rather have a cell phone that lasts five years than impresses for five minutes.
- No Trackballs on Laptops! Honestly, my favorite pointing device as of right now, is the VErsa Track on my all-too-often mentioned NEC Versa 486/Pentium laptops. It's just so much more tactile and comfortable, esp. since I do music and artwork on newer devices. Maybe it's time I take up making MOD files. Trackpads are nice, I enjoy a nice trackpoint once in awhile, but nothing beats the almighty trackball. And now they could make them optical.....so no more cleaning.
- Making pretty cases for cell phones flimsy. It's always the same thing when me and my wife get new phones - I get the rubber, hardcore, heavy duty case, she gets some pretty thing with sparkles and flowers on it and it's pretty obvious off the bat that the case she just got has the protection of a piece of cardboard compared to the mil-spec battering ram I'm using for a phone case. Why can't someone make a phone case aimed at the female market that actually is made to take a beating - esp since my experience is my wife uses her phone a lot more and a lot harder than I do mine. Just because it's pretty or glammy does not mean it has to be made of glass.....
- Oh yeah, GLASS phone cases. What moron at Samsung thought this thing up (Galaxy S8+). So you have this cell phone banging around in your pocket, in it's ruggedized Ocelot case, with your keys, a wallet, badges, hand tools....all this other crapp you carry around, and then the screen is fine...but take off the rear cover and it looks like a windsheild that just hit daddy Deer doing 100mph in a blizzard while shards of glass rain out like sugar. It seems others are doing this as well....who wants to carry around a personal hand-shredder in their pocket?
- The human trend of suggesting a "RetroPie" for every person who retro-games. I've built not one - but TWO RetroPie consoles in my time. ALL of the times I"ve done it it has been a massive hassle. Using NESticle on my 486 laptop is easier. Heck, using Paul Robeson's A26 in DOS on a 486 DX-33 is easier. Sure the basic setup is easy - but good god - the emulators themselves is like tuning your car for a drag race. Install 3 versions of DOSbox, remove the two others that run worse than an IBM XT trying to parse an HTML website. Then install ScummVM, remove the two others that have slowdown issues. Go edit 3-4 text files and rename about six different Mac ROM files to get the Macintosh II emulator working in full color on your 4K TV. Mess with resolutions in NES emulators until latency is gone. Mess with the DSP (or try removing it) from your UHD 4K TV to get rid of latency....then say "fuck it" and plug your old NES from 1985 in and play it on an old CRT TV from 1993.....
- DSP on modern LCD TV's! There's a reason I've learned to fix CRTs in the past few years, and own 4 (2 monitors, 2 TVs). We have 2 4K UHD TVs in our house, and both of them are "Smart" - yet apparently not "Smart" enough to know that...uh....maybe you should not process a real-time composite signal from a NES or Atari 2600 VCS....heck, even an old DOS computer or a modern Rasberry Pi to the point that I can hit left and see the character move 2 seconds after. And the worst offender? An $800 Samsung gifted to us from her parents......ugh! I swear, even Wii on that thing is a trying experience at times.
- Smart TV Software in general - My 286 looks like it has better benchmarks than my Samsung 50" UHD TV! I have to wait 5 minutes before it finishes connecting to network. Newest firmware, latest updates, all cache's cleared. Thankfully the cheaper Sharp seems to be "metally" more sharp. You know something is wrong when your Tandy 1000A can boot up Windows 3.0 faster than your Smart TV can connect to the internet over a wired connection.
- This new stupid craze of making the keyboard on everything like the iMac/Macbook Pro keyboard. It's just not comfortable. You know what is - the old ThinkPad Keyboards. I'm gripping onto my T61 for dear life!
- Something that needs to die is the un-re-pariable wireless dongle for wireless keyboards and mice. Logitech has the right idea. Wouldn't it be nice to just buy a new little piece, then re-establish the connection to it, and move on with life. Not toss out perfectly good peripherals because you can't get new transceivers for them! Also nice.....being able to pair multiple devices with said transceiver.