Inferior technologies that just work better than the new stuff

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I prefer digital music to analogue. I won't dispute the lossy compression or the quality and sound of vinyl or CD, but the trade off between quality and convenience is too great. It's why Napster was so huge, iTunes is so successful and they changed the music charts to include digital sales, not to mention the rise of subscription streaming services.

For photography, I did love film very much. All of my photographs used to be developed and they're still nice to flick through from time to time (though mostly because they pre-date the digital revolution so are from the past). One of my favourite things would be to spend about £10-15 for a roll of Ilford B&W film which included processing and printing by post.

I would buy it, and make a point of going somewhere special and taking great shots over the course of a morning and afternoon. Then you send it off prepaid and get your prints back, occasionally with stickers to advise on framing, exposure, shake, etc (I *obviously* didn't have that issue!). They were beautiful pictures that digital can't reproduce.

But digital has so many benefits it's no wonder Kodak lost so much money and so many people embraced it (even for the first few years when the image quality was unarguably significantly lower). No more costs or waiting for processing and printing. You could delete bad pictures and pick and choose which ones to print. You wouldn't lose them if the film was accidentally exposed and didn't have to use up the whole roll of film before processing it. The memory card is a one off cost, not an ongoing one. In the digital age, a digital photo can be Emailed, edited and uploaded instantly. And after we passed the 4-6 Megapixel mark, it couldn't be argued that the quality wasn't there since it was (at least for small prints).

It also killed Polaroid as the camera of choice for those photos you might otherwise prefer not to take to get developed

 

[Benpasko]

My old computer was freakin magic. It only had a 1.7ghz processor, and integrated 128 mb graphics card, with a gig (later 2) of ram. I clocked hundreds of hours of WoW, Borderlands (!), League of Legends, and a million other things it had no business getting a stable 30fps on. My new rig has 8 cores and more than ten times as much gpu power, but now it always feels like my rig is under-performing rather than over.

So I guess my pick goes to Windows XP sp3

 

[Poetic Nova]

Anything with touchscreen is automatically inferior to me. They don't work at all and I rather stick to be able to use a keyboard.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

As for video games, we've had the discussion many times on this site. I personally do kinda miss the boxes and the having the physical media on a shelf. But at the same time, Steam and digital delivery offers a great level of convenience. It's also the reason why Steam/GoG/Digital Delivery is even better than piracy.

One can go to the site at any time of day or night and buy a game. One can do so from their home computer without having to travel to a physical store. A game can be installed with about 4-5 mouse clicks and with a decent Internet connection is ready to go often in the time it takes me personally to make a coffee or finish a forum post.

For films/TV, I think digital again has too many advantages. My tens, if not hundreds of DVDs take up space and require the physical searching for, fishing out and loading up of each film, along with sitting through the crap at the start. A digital file, streamed or downloaded, you just navigate with the remote and hit play. The quality is lower, but if it's high enough (720p? 480p?) I probably won't notice or care.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Anything with touchscreen is automatically inferior to me. They don't work at all and I rather stick to be able to use a keyboard.

You're talking perhaps specifically about a desktop/laptop computer which has a keyboard available, but keyboards aren't always available on smaller or portable devices.

Touchscreens are a fantastic interface. There's no guesswork or thought involved for the user; one sees the option they want, touch it and good things happen (oooh err). It's utterly intuitive. With physical buttons, dials, knobs and switches, one has to translate the desired output into their required input first. That might not necessarily be difficult (if a manufacturer is worth their salt, it shouldn't be) but it's hard to think of anything more intuitive or easy to use than a (good) touch interface.

If your issue is with something like Windows 8 on a computer in particular, then I will agree with you but not because the touch interface is bad (it isn't), but because it's inappropriate. The overwhelming majority of desktop and laptop PCs do not have touchscreens, their users are used to using KB/Mouse/Touchpad and software is designed with that interface in mind. Microsoft forcing Metro on Windows 8 PC users was sheer stupidity, not a fault of the touch interface itself (which on tablets/smartphones is perfectly fine. Not just fine, better suited).

 

[duwenbasden]

Command line interfaces. Because some things are more efficient than clicking with the mouse and waiting for the UI to work.

Paper books. After staring at the monitor for work, I don't want to stare at my GNote's screen for leisure.

 

[Sprinal]

Steam valve Amplifiers
Analogue effects pedals
Analogue music gear in general really

Still with Computer gear I usually prefer higher tech stuff.

With the exception of my Nintendo 64 and DS. They still run fine and have no problems.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Anything with touchscreen is automatically inferior to me. They don't work at all and I rather stick to be able to use a keyboard.

You're talking perhaps specifically about a desktop/laptop computer which has a keyboard available, but keyboards aren't always available on smaller or portable devices.

Touchscreens are a fantastic interface. There's no guesswork or thought involved for the user; one sees the option they want, touch it and good things happen (oooh err). It's utterly intuitive. With physical buttons, dials, knobs and switches, one has to translate the desired output into their required input first. That might not necessarily be difficult (if a manufacturer is worth their salt, it shouldn't be) but it's hard to think of anything more intuitive or easy to use than a (good) touch interface.

Used to have a few mobile phones that were touchscreen only, for some reason they never felt as easy to use as having a keyboard (Doesn't nescecarely have to be a full blown keyboard, those what older cell phones had work fine for me). Responce time felt off, let alone the touchscreen not always properly functioning. To be fair, the latter might be a factory defect (or whatever it's called).

If your issue is with something like Windows 8 on a computer in particular, then I will agree with you but not because the touch interface is bad (it isn't), but because it's inappropriate. The overwhelming majority of desktop and laptop PCs do not have touchscreens, their users are used to using KB/Mouse/Touchpad and software is designed with that interface in mind. Microsoft forcing Metro on Windows 8 PC users was sheer stupidity, not a fault of the touch interface itself (which on tablets/smartphones is perfectly fine. Not just fine, better suited).

I quiet like Windows 8, not so much for the new start menu (it burns my eyes out somewhat and it's stupidly clunky). My now year old laptop runs on 8, it boots up fast (still not really used to it), it runs classic games better than W7 (again, to be fair, your mileage may vary) and I personally don't miss the start menu at all, although it's something I needed to gett used to at first.

I agree though, forcing the Metro interface is sheer stupidity but easily avoided if you mainly use the desktop portion of W8. I can't comment on how W8 handles touchscreens.

 

[Feraswondervahnn]

Phones because of the standard battery life nowadays. I tend to spend a lot of time up at a friend's place with a fair few people. They all own smartphones, and all have to bring their charger with them, and charge them at least once per night. I own an old Sony Ericsson, the battery lasts at least a week. The friend who owns the place owns an old Sony Ericsson as well, also barely has to charge it, and ends up spending more on electric charging these guys phones than he can afford. These people then bring their chargers anyway and plug them in in other rooms of the house so he doesn't notice straight away.

 

[ZeroAxis]

For HDTVs, I liked DLP rear projection better than current LCD/LED/OLED whatevers. The light was softer like a movie theater screen, the picture was 85%-90% as good as current HDTVs which is good enough, and if it goes out you usually just order a new bulb and install it. I was an order picker at Amazon last winter and people still order bulbs for DLP.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Used to have a few mobile phones that were touchscreen only, for some reason they never felt as easy to use as having a keyboard (Doesn't nescecarely have to be a full blown keyboard, those what older cell phones had work fine for me). Responce time felt off, let alone the touchscreen not always properly functioning. To be fair, the latter might be a factory defect (or whatever it's called).

It could've been an older handset perhaps with a worse OS. Maybe it was resistive rather than a capacitive screen, the thing iPhone did first and one of the reasons for it's success. Capacitive screens are much more responsive and accurate (at the expense of being able to use anything with which to press it). An off response time is bound to put you off it, I empathise since I've owned those too.

I can also agree on what I think your point is. I used to own the Nokia 7110 [http://www.edwardlamb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/dsc_41611.jpg], to this day one of the best handsets I've ever owned. With the wheel and buttons it was very intuitive to use. I could in fact use one hand, behind my back to start, write and send a text message without a single spelling error to the exact person in my contact list. I can't do that on my smartphone.

I quiet like Windows 8, not so much for the new start menu (it burns my eyes out somewhat and it's stupidly clunky). My now year old laptop runs on 8, it boots up fast (still not really used to it), it runs classic games better than W7 (again, to be fair, your mileage may vary) and I personally don't miss the start menu at all, although it's something I needed to gett used to at first.

I agree though, forcing the Metro interface is sheer stupidity but easily avoided if you mainly use the desktop portion of W8. I can't comment on how W8 handles touchscreens.

Windows 8 is a very good OS and performs significantly better than Windows 7 for one main reason. They got rid of Aero which, while very pretty (I *loved* the transparency effects and still miss them. They looked so much better than the flat colours of W8), used 10-15% of system resources. It was actually the reason Vista was so hated...out of the box, on *precisely* the same PC hardware, it performed 10-15% slower than XP did. Upgrading to Vista from XP guaranteed a performance loss on the same hardware.

There's nothing wrong with the Metro interface, which is the ecosystem for all the touch-friendly apps. On a tablet or touchscreen, Metro is fine. It looks good, works well, is intuitive and functional. The problem was cramming it into the desktop OS and forcing KB/Mouse users without touchscreens to use it.

I got it around it from Day 1 thanks to Start8 from Stardock. I have a fully functional Windows 7 style start menu, I boot straight to desktop (Windows 8.1 now has this option officially), disabled all the hot-corner/gesture bollocks and never have to see the Metro interface unless I wish to. I've never had issues with any game I've tried.

 

[Roggen Bread]

Mechanical triggers and so one in cars. Electrics stop working.

"Next gen" microwaves. My new microwave has a build in grill-function, tons of fancy programs and it went "beeeep" everytime I touched a button (particularly annoying when you want to microwave something for 5 minutes and every 10 second step you set gives you a beep). Went? Because I took the cover off and ripped the fucking speaker out.

The electricity of the damn thing is starting to give out, like when you turn the rotary switch for another 10 seconds it sometimes subtracts 20.

All I want is a nice old school microwave. 2 mechanical rotary switches. One where you set the time (you know, like with an egg timer) , one for energy. Food microwaved? A bell going "BING!" does suffice. Thank you.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

Most home appliances.

Seriously. Old school appliances were built to freakin' last. Take care of them, and they'll probably outlast any of us. I have a toaster oven that's going on 35 years old (for reference I'm 26). Damn thing works flawlessly, and cooks very evenly and consistently. Never once had a problem with it.

Meanwhile newer appliances with all of their fancy electronic bullshit tend to have so many bells and whistles that it's just more stuff to break. Buy a new appliance, and you may have to replace it in a couple years. Hell, the companies that manufactured the appliances probably want you to replace them every couple years. Everything seems to have planned obsolescence these days.

I can confirm this. I used to do PAT testing a few years ago. One of my duties was to perform radiation leakage tests of microwaves to ensure they were still safe to use. Older microwaves are seriously built like lead-lined frikkin' bunkers! 99% of the time there is almost no discernable radiation, at least on units over a certain age. On the other hand, I have tested brand new units straight out of the box; intermittent radiation leakage all the way around the seals. Technically some actually fail the safety test for several seconds before the levels randomly drop back to a safe level, but a few seconds later another part of it will flash up instead. The warranty that comes with the new units says they should only last 2 years before being replaced, but I wouldn't trust some of them for 2 minutes.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

As others have mentioned, if it's inferior it means it doesn't function better... therefor making the thing it's being compared to superior.

The only thing that comes to mind right now is the durability and longevity of "smart" phones. While phones on a whole have become closer to computers then the phone you have hanging on your wall or sitting on your desk, I remember having an old chunky nokia mobile (cell phone for ye yanks) and that thing lasted YEARS. Like nearly a decade. In fact, it still works, it's just nobody uses it anymore except for instances where the newer phones break.

Which comes to the main issue. Those fancy slim phones with all their utility and functionality... they break really easy. Not just from falls and water damage (though they are really fragile), but from software related issues. I've had a few phones that broke themselves during a firmware updates. Granted it just required a wipe to sort out and it was just a massive inconvenience, but it's still an inferior quality compared to the older more stable phones.

Obviously this gets better over the years as the tech becomes more refined, but growing pains are still noticeable sometimes.

They don't last as long either. They can (and have done for me) get bricked within 4 years or so, if any of the common phone related incidents doesn't do it in first. Not sure what causes it but I think it's hardware damage resulting from the heat that comes from the battery (they can get surprisingly hot, which is why I don't like to leave it in pockets close to my vitals). It really does feel like a "they don't build it like they used to" scenario. I mean, I'm really careful with my phones and have great respect for the tech (unlike my sister who goes trough phones like toilet paper), but even when I'm really careful they can just up and die on me.

Other then that, I can't imagine living without a smart, touchscreen phone with all the fancy apps in today's world. I like being reminded that our technology is, in some cases, more advanced then the tech in Star Trek.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I still think that resistive touch screens are the only way to go when it comes to portable internet browsing and most other touch screen related things. People complain about the Wii U's screen but I've found it to be infinitely more responsive, precise and reliable than all of my capacative device's screens. Most capacative screens sense a touch when you give it a slight glance, and god forbid you get a slight bit of water on your fingers then touch it because then it's all going to go haywire.

 

[Signa]

I've been favoring my GBA SP over my DS Lite for the last year, so there's that.

 

[vun]

I enjoy using good old fashioned wood pencils. I have several drawing sets (Derwent and the like) but I also have a ton of regular pencils that I love using. One came in handy not that long ago because a remote control died on me. I couldn't find replacements and the universal remotes I have didn't work. So I found a video on YouTube made by this crazy Russian who showed how to fix a remote using nothing but some glue, a knife, and a pencil.

Old school, wins every time.

Reminds me of a story of NASA spending many thousands of dollars on developing a ballpoint pen that could be used in space, while the Russians just used pencils.

Actually not real; pencils would create graphite pieces/dust flying around, potentially getting into places where it shouldn't be. I'd assume a regular ballpoint pen would do the job just fine, but the space pen is the sort of technological thing that might in and of itself not be worth it, but developing it can help move technology forwards. I'm not sure the development of the space pen did all that much, but I still like that it was made just to show that it was possible. And hey, it's a really good pen that's still selling well.
Same thing with the Concorde, Bugatti Veyron etc. If we just stick to what works there wouldn't be any breakthroughs and technology wouldn't move forwards. Sometimes that means spending what seems to be needless amounts of cash on things that might not seem all that useful.

 

[ForumSafari]

Windows 8 and safemode. I cant fucking believe the audacity behind this one. "windows 8, the fastest booting operating system!". So fast booting that hitting control f8 fast enough to enter safe mode before boot is IMPOSSIBLE. THATS NOT A FEATURE. The only way to enter safemode reliably is to boot windows successfully. Ironically you need safe mode exactly when windows DOES NOT BOOT SUCCESSFULLY YOU STUPID FUCKS. They BROKE it and called it a feature?! The fucking balls on these people. It still makes me angry talking to the fucking representative trying to BOAST about the issue i was having "Its so fast sir!", "THAT MEANS NOTHING, It added 1 second of saved time every boot for 4 hours of struggle trying to get safemode to work! ITS NOT A FEATURE!"

My uncle has a Windows 8 laptop and I am his tech support (for my sins)
I lost an entire evening trying to boot the laptop in safe mode once. The decisions behind how that OS runs can only have been the result of several deranged minds and a bath of cocaine.

The Windows 8 boot speed was a sensible design from one viewpoint and simultaneously an eye-bleedingly stupid one from another. The reason for it is that Windows 8 is designed to run on tablets and such, devices where a safe mode isn't often necessary. Therefore removing the wait time shortens the boot chain and makes for a zippier experience.

This is a stupid idea because the two use cases are not close enough to warrant convergence and when you need safe mode you need it. Ubuntu does convergence right, it's fully cross compatible but comes in device tailored images.

Tip: If you want to slow down a win8 computer's boot let it get halfway through booting and power it off, then power it on. When Windows thinks its' hibernation image is possibly broken or the computer is powered off and on it discards the hibernation state and goes for a full cold boot. Incidentally that's why Windows 8 boots so fast; it hibernates by default.

 

[ForumSafari]

Reminds me of a story of NASA spending many thousands of dollars on developing a ballpoint pen that could be used in space, while the Russians just used pencils.

Well that'd explain Mir. Pencil shavings are tipped with graphite; known for being really crumbly and electrically conductive.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Actually not real; pencils would create graphite pieces/dust flying around, potentially getting into places where it shouldn't be. I'd assume a regular ballpoint pen would do the job just fine, but the space pen is the sort of technological thing that might in and of itself not be worth it, but developing it can help move technology forwards. I'm not sure the development of the space pen did all that much, but I still like that it was made just to show that it was possible. And hey, it's a really good pen that's still selling well.
Same thing with the Concorde, Bugatti Veyron etc. If we just stick to what works there wouldn't be any breakthroughs and technology wouldn't move forwards. Sometimes that means spending what seems to be needless amounts of cash on things that might not seem all that useful.

Well that'd explain Mir. Pencil shavings are tipped with graphite; known for being really crumbly and electrically conductive.

As I said, it's just a story. But in fact, both NASA and Russia used pencils in their space craft at first. But after Apollo 1, NASA banned pretty much anything flammable from their space flights, including regular pencils. NASA switched to mechanical pencils (at 128$ a piece), while the Russians switched to wax pencils for some time (which were less accurate and gave a mess of another (admittedly less harmful) kind). In the end, both NASA and Russia switched to space pens, which NASA didn't pay anything for, and wasn't specifically designed to be a space pen in the first place.

And no, a regular ballpoint doesn't actually work in zero gravity. Try using a normal ballpoint upside down for and extended period of time and see what I mean.