I literally remember this. I was living in the US in circa 2000. I remember standing outside my apartment with a mobile phone, a GPS system, an iPod, and a digital camera, and thinking ‘these should all be one thing’!
And here we are, 26 years later, and all of these things are deeply infected with unnecessary LLM bullshit. Progress!
That’s me, today. Different brands and models, but pretty much the same items. If I have the space (inner coat pockets, for example), I also add a small notepad and pencil, and a calculator. I ain’t gonna pay for a HP-12C calculator app, when I have the fully functional hardware.
And it was beautiful
It was better and the price of the slight convenience now is that the next generation, and your aunt and uncle, are openly cheering on nazis and pedophiles with no idea what’s actually happening in the world.
Shut up and carry the cassette tape thin digital camera already.
I don’t remember having to deal with USB-C earbuds before the iPhone.
That’s today if you’re looking for quality for any of them.
And some of us are returning to this simplicity and privacy
Serious question: What do you do about maps/navigation? I travel a bit and that’s the one thing I can’t find out of the big tech ecosystem.
You can buy a small gps (bunch on amazon) to stick to your windshield or dash. Its what i had before android, and they still apply.
We used to have bits of paper with lines representing geography
There’s still standalone GPS units.
Mapquest was how we used to do it. Essentially, you would have a list of directions. If you get lost, you go backwards a bit and then… ask someone where to go lol. You can even like, read a map and decide the directions yourself, I know this sounds crazy.
Paper maps and map books still exist, and they’re pretty useful for navigation. If you stay at hotels, they usually give you some simple maps of the area with the most important features highlighted.
If you still want to use online maps, OSM (Open Street Maps) is a great project that doesn’t depend on any big tech maps. It also works completely offline if your frontend allows downloading maps. CoMaps is a good client for phones. You can contribute to OSM yourself if you miss anything.
I second comaps. Sucks for public transport tbh but works great for walking/cycling/cars. For public transport I use Offi Directions, but it mostly just supports the APIs of German and Austrian public transport companies
Well, the headphones are still a separate thing. They are even more separate now, than they ever were (each one earphone is separate now)
I bet there are people drooling at the idea of making those headphones part of people’s heads
No if you just play music on your phone speaker loudly.
There’s our perp, boys! Move! Move!
I’m sure everyone enjoys a little bit of music in public places. And I’m sure everyone likes the type of music I’m listening to. Wat’s the problem?
Yes, your honor. This comment right here is why we’re seeking a conviction.
(I was kidding BTW)
I feel like this is a shitpost because they’re all weird or anachronistic in some way
And a time where 3rd party companies had no access to any of them
us and our 735 partners care about your privacy
Only 735?
Well each of them and their 735 parters, so… 540,255 partners at most. 😀
I’m always surprised I these conversations that almost no one mentions always having a useful, generally charged, decent close range flashlight.
I’m old enough to ha e experienced that having a zippo was the most reliable way to see close range stuff. Flashlights were basically dead battery containers.
I carry with me a small rechargeable flashlight everywhere and use it almost every day. I do not think I could have spent that money better.
It has a low light mode so I can see at night in the bedroom without waking up my partner and it’s really powerful at the same time. It even has a magnet and baseball cap clip so the hands can be free to do other stuff.
Having a flashlight in the phone is really nice, but I don’t think I will use it again.
How do you clip a flashlight to your baseball cap? It must not dangle at all?
And it was awesome.
Yes, please bring it back.
And that’s was a good thing too.
We didn’t carry cameras around all the time.
