Stupid things manufacturers did pre-2010

[Helpful Tech Witch]

TBH, probably the f*cking memory stick duo

[Mr.Meerkat]

14 minutes ago, Commodus said:

It feels like Apple's proprietary connector is at least tolerable as it's guaranteed to be ubiquitous. Ask a friend if they have a Lightning cable and there's a real chance they'll say yes. It's a much harder sell for other platforms as few of them have enough clout to guarantee wide availability (or the technical know-how to have an advantage over plain USB).

As a university student, my experience funnily enough is that most people have lightning and micro but not type-C. With close to a 50/50 split for IOS vs non-IOS market share in the UK and the student population leaning quite heavily towards IOS, it probably comes to no surprise that lightning is more plentiful when compared to type-C as you also have to remember that the non-IOS section also includes devices without type-C. 

[sub68]

Just now, HelpfulTechWizard said:

TBH, probably the f*cking memory stick duo

I know a camera that has a PCMCIA slot

it came with a memory stick card but you could adapt it to sd

what it came with

just a adapter I had

I don't think this is dumb you can adapt this camera to any media type and I like how the camera takes sony npf batters

[Commodus]

43 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

I was thinking of all the proprietary phone charging cables before smartphones were popular.

And I guess a proprietary connector is tolerable enough as long as you have the cable and device, although after Apple ditched their 30 pin connector that left behind a lot of docks and accessories made to use the connector, even car radio units that had the Apple connector in the glove box.

Yeah, those were particularly painful. And I'm definitely familiar with what happened when the 30-pin connector faded away... my alarm clock became much less useful!

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

These stupid HP Media Drives that HP stuck bays for at the front of their Pavilion Media Center systems.

 

It made working on these systems a pain with how far in the bay intruded inside of the case. 

[kaiju_wars]

5 hours ago, fpo said:

I’m not buying AirPods. Too proprietary. 

How?

It's just bluetooth.  AirPods can be used on other devices, yes, even Android.  There's a little button on the case to connect it to any other device like any other bluetooth accessory.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, kaiju_wars said:

How?

It's just bluetooth.  AirPods can be used on other devices, yes, even Android.  There's a little button on the case to connect it to any other device like any other bluetooth accessory.

Charger, charger connector. 

 

I didn’t know they were Bluetooth. I thought they were only working with iPhones. 

[kaiju_wars]

5 minutes ago, fpo said:

Charger, charger connector. 

 

I didn’t know they were Bluetooth. I thought they were only working with iPhones. 

Literally just lightning connector, lmao.  Who doesn't have one of those.  I could understand if it was another made up connector for it, but for something as ubiquitous as lightning?  Plus it comes with a lightning cable in the box.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, kaiju_wars said:

Literally just lightning connector, lmao.  Who doesn't have one of those.  I could understand if it was another made up connector for it, but for something as ubiquitous as lightning?  Plus it comes with a lightning cable in the box.

Yeah but I don’t want adapters sticking out of things and a different cable for every device. Just 1 cable for everything. Like the EU is requiring by law. 

[Commodus]

21 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Zune.

I had one.

It was "ok" when thinking purely about a portable music player, but Microsoft's pooped the bed with it as far as integration and software, goes.

The Zune line definitely had its bright spots, but it felt like the first sign of a key way the Ballmer-era Microsoft would miss the boat: it was chasing after Apple without really trying to take the lead or understand why Apple was successful. The lack of truly tight integration was a problem, like you said, but Microsoft was also perpetually behind in key areas (flash-based players, touchscreens, and the like) and clearly hoping that "more indie than thou" marketing would make up for things.

 

Apple succeeded with the iPod not just because it made digital music easy to use, but because it was willing to take some aggressive steps to corner the market. Hell, I still remember the audacity of Apple replacing the iPod mini with the nano even though it was a step back in capacity. The company had a vision where Microsoft was reactionary and thinking purely in business terms.

[Radium_Angel]

On 10/11/2020 at 4:49 PM, GhostRoadieBL said:

Superleggera

Which is funny if you think about, as that means "SuperLightweight" in Italian...

[Sarra]

Microsoft Zune.

 

But, to be honest, I loved Mini Disk. I had a really nice Mini Disk player, and I literally used it until it wore out. I had 9 disks for it, and... I think someone actually stole it, but I can't remember exactly what happened to it. I do know I don't have it anymore.

[Orange1]

Coming out with RGB