Sorry if this is a dumb question, but does anyone else feel like technology - specifically consumer tech - kinda peaked over a decade ago? I’m 37, and I remember being awed between like 2011 and 2014 with phones, voice assistants, smart home devices, and what websites were capable of. Now it seems like much of this stuff either hasn’t improved all that much, or is straight up worse than it used to be. Am I crazy? Have I just been out of the market for this stuff for too long?
Technology? No.
Consumer Electronics? Yes. Or at least there’s a debatable transition and cutoff point.
I’m roughly the same age as you and I feel the same. In my adolescence and 20s it felt like some new, life-changing gadget was coming out almost every year. Now I feel like there’s been incremental changes at best.
I mean I kept the same gaming PC for a decade before building another. The new one runs the exact same games; the only difference is that I can run them at 4K ultra now instead of 1080p medium. Games look better but it’s a subtle improvement at best. Not the major leaps in graphical performance I was seeing every 5 years back in the 90s.
Same goes for phones. 10 years ago they were black slabs running Android or iOS, and today they are the same. Very consistent, unlike the constantly evolving and various designs of the 90s and 2000s.
Other than going electric, cars haven’t changed much, either. 20-year-old cars that were well-maintained still look new to me, and can be easily modernized with things like aftermarket parking sensors and stereos with Android Auto.
Feature per dollar possibly yes. Technology itself not necessarily.
The issue is the market was much more competitive 10+ years ago which led to rapid innovation and the need for rivals to keep up.
Today that no longer exists in so many areas so a lot of existing tech has stagnated heavily.
For example, Google Maps was a very solid platform in 2014 bringing in a ton of new navigation features and map generation tech.
Today, the most solid consumer map nav is probably Tesla’s map which utilizes Valhalla, a very powerful open source routing engine, that’s also used on openstreetmap and OSMAnd.
This is a very huge improvement from 2014 Google Maps.
Except the most used map app is still essentially 2014 Google Maps because Google cornered the market so they no longer have any need to innovate or keep up. In fact it’s actually worse since they keep removing or breaking features every update in an attempt to lower their cloud running costs.
You can apply this to a lot of tech markets. Android is so heavily owned by Google, no one can make a true competitor OS. Nintendo no longer needs to add big handheld features because the PSP no longer exists. Smart home devices run like total junk because everyone just plugs it into the same cloud backend to sell hardware. The de facto way to order things online is Amazon. Amazon is capable of shipping within a week, but chooses not to for free shipping to entice you into buying prime, and because they don’t have a significant competitor. Every PC sold is still spyware windows because every OEM gets deals with Microsoft to sell their OS package.
Even though the hardware always improves, the final OEM can screw it all up by simply delivering an underwhelming product in a market they basically own, and people will buy because there is no other choice or competition to compare to.
deleted by creator
I somewhat agree: tech peaked just when it was high end and absolutely not relying on manufacturer’s cloud / subscription / customer portal enrollment … 😓
Tech is better, but content is worse. I have a smart TV from 2014 that I’m gonna use until it’s dead. When a new technology comes out, it’s all about gaining market trust, so the product is built to last and has cool features (generally) without the ads and data theft. My TV doesn’t play ads, but still has all the tech I need. Anything it can’t do, my PS4 can.
Content?
In my opinion, technology keeps improving, however that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s getting better. I think innovation in technology peaked from the 2000s to the early 2010s, after this period however, it has continually become more and more “enshitified,” meaning that features no one wanted suddenly being added. For example, “ai coffee maker” (this is real), like who asked for this? Not to mention, not only is everything more bloated, but levels of privacy have decreased significantly; every aspect of your digital life is capitalized on for advertising. The early 2010s were simpler times.
no
It really depends. Google as in the search engine is getting worse every year. Websites went from being fun and exciting to just a vehicle to show ads.
true the internet as a tool has declined in usefulness
Absolutely no. 2014 can eat my multiple TBs of SSDs’ asses.
In my opinion as an engineer, methods like the VDI2206, VDI2221 or ISO9000 have done irreparable damage to human creativity. Yes, those methods work to generate profitable products, but by methodizing the creative process you have essentially created an echo chamber of ideas. Even if creativity is strongly encouraged by those methods in the early stages of development, the reality often looks different. A new idea brings new risks, a proven idea often brings calculable profits.
In addition to that, thanks to the chinese, product life cycles have gotten incredibly short, meaning, that to generate a constant revenue stream, a new product must have finished development while the previous one hasn’t even reached it’s peak potential. As a consequence, new products have only marginal improvements because there is no time for R&D to discover bigger progressive technologies between generations. Furthermore the the previous generation is usually sold along side the next one, therefore a new product can not be so advanced as to make the previous one completely obsolete.If you really want to see this with your own eyes, get a bunch of old cassette players from the 90s from different manufacturers. If you take them apart you can easily see how different the approaches where to solve similar problems back in the day.
What? No. lol. Tech is still improving. You’re just thinking of the bad new stuff and good old stuff. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Phone’s batteries and resolutions are much better than they were in 2014. Voice assistants never really took off. Smart home stuff is maaaaybe a little better now but there are also a shit ton more brands now and most are crap. But that also means cheaper and more widespread.
Phone screen pixel density actually went down in the last 10 years due to bigger screens.
I feel like smartphones + internet peaked about 10 years ago and has now steadily become enshittified. I have never used “google assistant” because it takes less time to just type something in to my phone or tap the setup for my alarm.
So yes, definitely feel that way. Consumer tech had less bullshit masking as improvements ten years ago.
Yes. Name one useful product Google has released in 15 years.
I can think of one (assistant/gemini) but it actually gets worse every minute so it supports the main idea that shits lame for a while now.
I haven’t adopted a Google technology since 2010 when I got my first Android phone. They haven’t made anything that lasted since; basically everything they introduce is going to be abandoned and shut down in ~3 years because they haven’t changed away from their “move fast and break things” era. “Google Wank is now Android Jerk. No Wait, Android Jerk is being sunset in favor of Play Withyourself. Wait no, users are being migrated over to Youtube Crotch.” Fuck it I’ll use my hand.
I dunno, I just upgraded my six year old phone to the latest model and it’s pretty fuckin dope. I don’t use anything Google, though, so I can’t comment on their assistant.
You’re not crazy. I feel that even when the tech is slightly better the trade offs make the overall deal worse.
More RAM but its soldered in on laptops. More storage on phones but no micro sd slot. No headphone jacks, the overall obsession with inferior wireless audio. Streaming services suck for anything that is not a live event and I think eventually more people will realize that. Especially as they keep hiking prices. Clearnet internet has been destroyed. The gaming industry is a joke nowadays. Charging full price to play betas.
What’s wrong with wireless audio? I’ve often had the problem that my audio jack was full of dirt so the jackplug couldn’t properly connect anymore. I don’t have that problem with wireless. Worst problem is that the connection sometimes stutters when I’m walking through the train station during rush hour
Depending on the surroundings you might have a spotty connection if using Bluetooth to stream your audio from let’s say your phone to a plugged in wireless speaker. I’ve personally had to pair and unpair failed connections and replace several wireless headphones because their batteries don’t last longer than 4 or 5 months from unboxing. I’d much rather rely on a high quality pair of headphones that don’t need charging and last me years at a time with no issue so long as I keep the headphone jack clear of debris.
I have never had that issue with a jackplug. Stuttering connection and one more thing with batteries that you need to manage. Also, most of the wireless headphones that I’ve tried have much smaller cups than the wired variety. I haven’t found a pair of wireless in-ears that are as comfortable as my preferred IEMs. In general, they might be okay for movies but not for music with an overemphasis on bass that I hate. The few options that don’t sound bad are wildly overpriced.
I imagine wireless headphones are more expensive by definition. So cheap wireless headphones (say 10€) are by definition worse that cheap wired headphones of the same price. I’m willing to pay 50 to 80€ for decent quality, I’m sure that’s not the most expensive, but it might be too expensive for some. I’ve had philips in ear headphones that were just a perfect fit. I sadly lost them recently and now have cheap ones that suck. I’m not much of a sound snob, but these cheap ones have bad sound quality and don’t cancel out any outside noise.
I haven’t purchased any cheap wireless headphones, certainly not that cheap but the wireless headphones that cost $300 sound significantly worse than a pair of wired headphones that cost half that much, sometimes even less. Same for the earbuds that sound bad and aren’t as comfortable.
Design wise, absolutely peaked in the 90s/2000s. Now everything looks like a copy of each other with uninspired designs across the board.
In terms of what it has to offer, I personally don’t think so. Couldn’t imagine going back 10-20 years ago and not having a device like my Steam Deck that can play computer games on the go (laptop not included since when are you realistically pulling out a laptop on a drive when heading out for errands?) or having a laptop not as thin as my current laptop or even just the touchscreen feature. I also couldn’t imagine going back 20 years ago and not having a 1 or 2 TB portable external hard drive (or if they were out, being a lot more expensive than now).
The PSP is 20 years old now. Absolutely massive game library, and definitely on par with the console and PC games at the time.
The game library is well worth revisiting on something like a retroid pocked with upscaling.
oh, you seem like you know a thing or two. I want to get into the PSP library but kind of missed everything about everything about it. Got any favorites to recommend?
As someone who didn’t have a PSP back then or even now, I’ll take your word on it.
- Bang. We needed to stop right effing there!
Tech has definitely become worse since megacorps killed the little guys & sucked the fun out of everything. Open source & self hosting is becoming/has become the only way. So glad I taught myself how to do it
