What is piece of tech that, when it first came out, you thought sucked, but when you used it, became essential?

[Dundee]

AirPods for me

[WhitetailAni]

For Linus, it was hyperthreading.

For me, a mouse.

[manikyath]

touchscreens on laptops.

 

when i saw it for the first time i thought it was silly.. but then it ended up being one of the primary points for me upgrading my laptop.

[Heliian]

My heated steering wheel. 

[AnirbanG007]

Krisp. It's a noise cancelling app, that's basically an alternative to RTX Voice. Thought it would be terrible, but actually saved my ass many times on online conferences and job interviews(online) and even remote-proctored exams. Phew!!  It got an update today, and am super happy with the audio quality and the noise cancelling feature.

[Tamesh16]

29 minutes ago, manikyath said:

touchscreens on laptops.

 

when i saw it for the first time i thought it was silly.. but then it ended up being one of the primary points for me upgrading my laptop.

I still feel like its silly, but I know if I ever use one, I might like it, None of my laptops so far have had touch screens

[NineEyeRon]

iPhone touch screen that didn't need a stylus...

[LogicalDrm]

Touchscreens overall. And I would still prefer T9 keyboard layout.

[LloydLynx]

Trackpoints. At first I thought they were stupid and too difficult, but now I can't comfortably use a laptop without one. If I'm getting a new laptop, a trackpoint is a requirement.

[Spindel]

1 minute ago, LloydLynx said:

Trackpoints. At first I thought they were stupid and too difficult, but now I can't comfortably use a laptop without one. If I'm getting a new laptop, a trackpoint is a requirement.

Before multi-touch track pads where a thing I would agree with you. Now I can't because good trackpads and OSes with good gesture support is unbeatable, except for one thing: track points are still better at moving the mouse cursor.

 

On topic:

For me it actually was smart phones. I had fidgeted around with PDAs, I had those awful Windows Mobile phones  as a work phone in the mid 00s. When the iPohone initially came I got it because it was an iPod and an phone, and just intended to use it as an iPod phone (I've always had an personal phone parallel to my work phone), well I guess Apple actually did smart phones right, I still use iPod functionality a lot on my iPhone and I use it as a PDA, but the thing I probably do the least on it is use it as a phone to make calls. 

[Letgomyleghoe]

My iphone, I fucking hate android OS, never realized how bad it was until I switched to iphone. Having a guaranteed few years of software support is also nice, don't have to worry about my phone loosing software support in a couple months to a year. I know that some phones get android support for a long time, but it's unpredictable, and shouldn't be an issue in the first place.  

[LloydLynx]

7 minutes ago, Spindel said:

Before multi-touch track pads where a thing I would agree with you. Now I can't because good trackpads and OSes with good gesture support is unbeatable, except for one thing: track points are still better at moving the mouse cursor.

 

On topic:

For me it actually was smart phones. I had fidgeted around with PDAs, I had those awful Windows Mobile phones  as a work phone in the mid 00s. When the iPohone initially came I got it because it was an iPod and an phone, and just intended to use it as an iPod phone (I've always had an personal phone parallel to my work phone), well I guess Apple actually did smart phones right, I still use iPod functionality a lot on my iPhone and I use it as a PDA, but the thing I probably do the least on it is use it as a phone to make calls. 

Have you ever used hot corners? You flick the cursor into a corner of the screen to perform a function. It's the partial answer to touchpad gestures, but idk if Windows does it.

[Spindel]

7 minutes ago, LloydLynx said:

Have you ever used hot corners? You flick the cursor into a corner of the screen to perform a function. It's the partial answer to touchpad gestures, but idk if Windows does it.

at least on MacOS it's not the same thing, also requires a lot of mouse movement that is cumbersome when not using a real mouse (in example a trackpoint or touchpad) and not to convinient scroll or zoom. 

[Stahlmann]

ACC (Automatic cruise control). For someone like me who drives 70+km each day for work it's one of the best things any of my cars ever brought to the table. I've never looked out for it when buying a new car and i was just lucky my current car has it, but i definetly will look out for it in my future cars.

[Prodigy_Smit]

Two things:

Keyboard shortcuts: I discovered them when I was in grade 3 and thought why would anyone ever use this instead of a mouse and I spent the whole of the next computer class learning them and I cannot live without them now also man it was so cool to flex on the other kids by using alt+tab.

GPS: My dad hated the idea of having a GPS inbuilt into his car until my mom and I bought him one for his birthday, he has since never used google maps for driving.

[Murasaki]

On 3/6/2021 at 6:48 PM, LogicalDrm said:

Touchscreens overall. And I would still prefer T9 keyboard layout.

Oh my god I miss T9. Might be nostalgia but there's also the fact I suck at touchscreen typing.. 

[seon123]

I think fast charging. Heats up the phone more, and it's not great for the battery.

 

Fast forward, and now it was one of the reasons for me choosing the Oneplus 8T, despite its shortcomings

[The_russian]

Wireless charging and to a lesser extent Bluetooth earphones. Before I started using wireless chargers it seemed like they fixed (using that term loosely) such an insignificant problem that it wasn’t worth it, I mean how hard is it to plug in a cable? Now that I’ve been using them though I don’t see my self going back to charging with a cable unless it’s needed in some situation. I know they aren’t as efficient or as fast, but I’d rather use a bit more power to have the convenience of just plopping the phone down on a pad at the end of the day.

[IkeaGnome]

DVDs. Who remembers seeing the players in stores for $1k+?

[Tan3l6]

Well the first color LCD's came out very long time ago, but the  wide spread started in 2000s. Most of them sucked.

Now I'm using a 280Hz  IPS and though some aspects were better on CRT, I still love it.

 

Also smartphones. Used 3 years one now. It's pretty cool.

[FRD]

1. Force feedback on steering wheels, after using a even more expensive one before for a long without force feedback built in.

2. The invention of tabs in a browser, back then we always had to use a single window for each site (I recall around Pentium 4 era).

3. The time IE finally become obsolete.

4. Any HD TV that came out after the invention of ugly, grainy and power-sucking plasma HD Ready TVs.

5. Phone touchscreens that became actually sensitive after those touchscreens where you had to really push or use your nail to get it to work.

[antiflash]

Kinect

[lerodemmy]

PS5 DualSense Charging Station

[Dundee]

Oh yeah, I think musescore, and other sheet music writing programs also were a bit of a surprise of how good they were. 

[Name62]

27 minutes ago, FRD said:

1. Force feedback on steering wheels, after using a even more expensive one before for a long without force feedback built in.

2. The invention of tabs in a browser, back then we always had to use a single window for each site (I recall around Pentium 4 era).

3. The time IE finally become obsolete.

4. Any HD TV that came out after the invention of ugly, grainy and power-sucking plasma HD Ready TVs.

5. Phone touchscreens that became actually sensitive after those touchscreens where you had to really push or use your nail to get it to work.

 Id have to say the upgrade from tube box TV's to hd flat screen was one of my biggest jumps to hdmi everything was my biggest cant live without it tech next to touch screen on mobile devices