So often, the words of Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park ring true, where engineers and product managers are too preoccupied “with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.”
Someone asked “What was the biggest downgrade in recent memory that was pitched like it was an upgrade?” and people shared the worst examples. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorites, and share your thoughts in the comments. If you want to see more terrible changes and updates, check out our article on bad redesigns.
Image credits: Popular-Recover8880
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Getting rid of headphone jacks on phones. Getting rid of external SD cards on phones. Getting rid of replaceable batteries on phones. Smartphones used to be a lot better in so many ways.
I only buy phones with headphone jacks. They exist. You don't have to buy an iPhone. If I travel a long time sitting, with cable you are on the better side.
Same with expandable memory. My daughter's iPhone keeps getting full, essentially making all that amazing functionality useless, and it's a huge PITA for her to free up space; I just slot a new memory card into my cheap POS Android.
Load More Replies...You can avoid literally every single of these things if you don't buy from the biggest brands. Regarding the battery especially, the European Union wants to make it mandatory that all batteries should be replaceable on phones, so I guess the Americans should profit as much from that as we do.
I have all this on my phone. Yes, I can not replace my battery on my own,. but the case can be opened and parts replaced. And It has been let fallen at least twice, everything was okay. It is good not having a bitten apple on the back of it ;)
I watched a rant online from someone saying that if it hasn't got an FM radio they could stream the service. The person who was saying that they wanted the the FM radio because they worked 'in the field' and was often without mobile service tried to explain but the person saying they could 'stream' the music just kept ranting on about streaming
Load More Replies...I wish they kept the SD cards. My old phones are still in solid near mint shape. In fact, the oldest phone is the perfect size for my little hands. The huge, near-tablet sized phones now actually hurt my hands if I have to hold onto them for any length of time. So I would love to have been able to keep the perfect sized phone and just periodically upgrade the SD card, instead of having to buy a whole series of new phones that progressively got too big to hold.
They got rid of these things so they could sell you other things. No headphone jack? Try our bluetooth headphones. No SD card to increase memory? Buy our new phone with increased storage. Battery going bad? Going to need a new phone.
That'd almost make sense if the memory wasn't what you can get with a $30 micro SD card anyway. If the phones with no expandable memory had a couple of terabytes or so on board, I'd understand...
Load More Replies...Don't buy an Iphone. Most android phones come with all of that stuff and they don't send out phone wrecking updates right before the new version comes out.
It's all about getting you to buy a new phone. Laptops are the same way, every manufacturer got rid of user replaceable batteries
I miss having the expanded memory slot, I would keep a copy of my contact list so if I ever has to change phones I could. And the removable battery was amazing if my phone froze.
Headphone jack removal had two purposes: a:) to make you buy wireless headphones for twice the price and b:) to kill FM radio so people will switch to subscription services, or iTunes, which have a higher profit margin. Steve Jobs bragged about the plan to kill FM many times. Tim Cook's been quieter about it.
This is why I buy Android phones. I have a headphone jack, my phone charges using normal chargers that are made to charge basically everything (except Apple products) so I have a desk fan at work and I can use that charger for my phone. And I also have a micro SD card to expand my storage. Oh, and my screen doesn't tend to break if I set my phone down too hard...
I have a moto g14. It has all these features you just listed. it is also a third of the price of an iphone.
I'd advise readers to look into the fair phone, which restores all/most of those. I'd highly recommend, especially as a more sustainable option.
The entire reason I went from iPhone to android way back was removable battery and memory card. Now cannot get either
“Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time,”
F**K YOU AMAZON.
I think with streaming services doing this and raising their prices, the old fashioned ways of streaming will increase again ;)
The change of some products, especially software, from a "you buy it, you own it" to subscription based models, where you lose access once the subscription ends.
While many of the ideas here were at least pitched as “improvements” it doesn’t take an expert to see just how many problems might arise. Indeed, the classic example of a subscription-based model over just owning the item was almost immediately bemoaned in its time. Now, for better or worse, it’s the norm.
The truth is, when it comes to making money, companies can be pretty unscrupulous about worsening the products we have grown to love. In the past, they may have attempted to swing it using marketing and pitching it like a new feature. Now, some companies will instead hide the corners they have cut. This is most visible through what some economists call “shrinkflation".
All these smart appliances. I don’t see the use in these washers and refrigerators with touch screens and internet connectivity. They have so many points of failure. Just give me a bare bones fridge that will last longer than me.
Touch buttons replacing physical buttons. Especially in cars.
All the complaints about the dangers of distracted driving, and the manufacturers decide to put in a system that is inefficient and distracting. Touch screens and I do NOT get along.
Tipping culture in US post-COVID. I can't even buy a coffee without being requested to tip. F**k off.
While it might sound paradoxical, after all, to inflate literally means to expand, shrinkflation covers how inflation has caused many companies, primarily GMCG providers, to “shrink” their offerings. The real issue isn’t your money no longer going as far, that is a sad, yet “normal” part of inflation. Instead, unlike the supposed “upgrades” here, which at least had some marketing behind them, shrinkflation tends to be done in secret.
The use of QR codes at some restaurants instead of a physical menu.
Customer service and communication with companies and general. Everything is now an app, a faq or a robot. I've seen commercials presenting this as a good thing claiming it's so easy to get an answer to your questions where in reality if you don't have a standard question you're screwed as no one any longer lists their phone number. Most large companies are impossible to contact.
This. So much. I tried to contact a courier once, because my package wasn't delivered. Rang the phone number, got an automated message that told me to go to the website and fill in a form. I do that, and I get an email telling me to click a link and use the chat bot. Clicked the link which just too me back to the website but with a chat bot now active, then broke my brain trying to talk to it. I must have confused it because it ended in the bot telling me I had to ring the phone number to speak someone about my issue. It was the same number I rang to begin with.
The removal of disc drives in laptops. Sure, the laptop is thinner and lighter now, but I can't use any of my CDs or DVDs anymore.
For better or worse, companies might have made the correct strategic choice. With higher production costs, they could either charge more or shrink the actual item. People tend to not like paying more for the same thing, so they will happily stop buying it. Unfortunately, this does mean that more often than not, the infuriating “half-empty chip bag” issue now applies to everything from chocolate to pasta.
Streaming.
You buy a movie. Bu you don't own it. They can take it away from you at any time, but they charge you the same. Total rip off and should be illegal.
My pay rise that is well below inflation.
Windows... F*****g... 11. It's not an upgrade, it's a side grade at best.
The worst part about this is that an unwary consumer might end up spending money and getting a lot less than they bargained for. Your daily trip to the grocery store is probably where this is most apparent, but it can happen when renovating a home or just signing up for some software. The only solution, as hard as it can be to accept, is to vote with one’s wallet.
Hewlett Packard added "anti-hacking safety features" to all their ink cartridges, to guard against the risk of people having their computers hacked by counterfeit ink cartridges (WTF?).
Of course, an unfortunate side effect of that new safety measure is that you can't use any ink cartridge from any supplier other than HP in your printer. But that's a sacrifice they had to make in the name of cyber security.
Like, seriously, I was getting YouTube ads for months in which HP were trying to sell this "feature" as a positive. I don't know how people can sleep at night selling such an outright and obvious lie.
The privatization of public infrastructure in most countries.
Which is almost always pitched as "You will get a better service, and we will get more funding for schools and so on".
What actully happens? Some business owner takes over and runs the service into the ground, only to get bailed out by the government.
Food delivery. Pre pandemic (and pre Just Eat/Uber Eats) restaurants and takeaways would routinely offer totally free delivery over a certain amount, unless you were a fair distance away, and major pizza chains especially never charged for delivery if you were in their catchment areas. Now you need to pay increasingly large delivery fees no matter the distance. My local Pizza Hut started charging £3 - £4 for delivery, stating on their website; "in order to enhance your experience, we are excited to announce deliveries will now cost blah blah blah" or some such marketing bollocks. In addition the roads and pavements are now plagued by s******l bike coureers who have no idea how roads work.
I find this one a bit odd. At least where I'm from delivery was never free and always measured by how far the delivery driver that brought my food had to drive. Plus, bicycles make less CO2 than cars (if any at all) so it's good for the environment.
Streaming platforms going subscription + ads, lets just combine the old with the new model and do em both worse! hooray
Electric cars. They’re being marketed as a solution to the issue we face with fuel and they really aren’t. They simply open up a whole new bag of problems.
Electric cars are not the problem. Batteries are. Hydrogen fuel cells are the solution.
Netflix ditching the star rating for a simple thumb up thumb down system. I stumbled across so many awesome things to watch purely because user rating was so high
I really don't understand why this feature got removed. Wouldn't it tell Netflix too what shows would be most profitable to continue with another season? ... Or were they seriously so super butthurt that some things were bad and got downvoted that they removed the whole thing?
Has anyone mentioned wireless headphones yet? Bring back the plug-in ones, no batteries, and saved your phone when you dropped it.
Yep, I don't use a wireless mouse, keyboard or headphones because I don't want to worry about battery life.
I was promoted to a higher management position that happened to be in the night shift.
They DECREASED my salary, because the night bonus "would compensate the difference"...
Open office plans.
I hate the "open" office. At my last job, I was in a cubicle farm trying to do programming, which involves paying attention. Meanwhile, my co-workers are yukking it up, hollering about football or whatever. Very unpleasant and counterproductive.
People remember the headphone jack removal, but I'm also pissed about laptop manufacturers removing so many ports and telling us to use port hubs. I'd rather carry a laptop that's thicker than carry a separate hub just to connect a mouse and a pendrive.
Also pissed off at how anti-repair laptops have become. The keyboards these days have to be repaired by opening up the whole a*s mobo. Before you could pop it out and swap.
I just started a new job and had to buy an external USB port because my laptop only came with ONE! So I can plug in my mouse, but absolutely nothing else. :( My last work laptop weighed a ton but at least had enough ports. And a CD/DVD player too.
Getting notifications about suggested content. Facebook likes to send me notifications now like "Hey that guy who you had one class with in high school and never spoke to just posted something!" Reddit likes to notify me when there's posts on subreddits I don't follow. I wish notifications were just for things I actually give a s**t about like someone messaging me or replying to a comment I made.
If it's an app, the notifications can be changed in the settings menu of the app (usually not within the app tho). I find the email ones far more annoying. Occasionally Quora sends me random emails and I don't even know why I seem to have an account there, and no matter how many times I disable mails, they always come back
iphones getting rid of touch ID. It's faster than face id, it's easier to wave a stolen phone/police-snatched phone at your face than it is to drag your hand into position and other brands have shown there was no practical need for it.
I'm not a fan either because FaceID doesn't recognise me lying down in bed with no makeup, no glasses and a double chin, lol.
Pretty much every sale these days. They jack the prices up and then discount to the same price they were before. It's pretty common here in Australia.
Google 5 years ago vs now.
Seems like its getting worse every day.
I remember when google first arrived on the scene, and their selling point was "no ads"
Definitely streaming services. We were all fooled by Netflix's initial success. It had nearly everything at a low price and was super convenient, so convenient in fact that rental shops pretty much went out of business in a few years. But aside from those few years it has ultimately become a huge L for consumers. Other companies wised up, everyone and their mother were starting a streaming service, tons of movies stopped being available and to have decent availability you have to spend 50 bucks per month on streaming alone, packages became more expensive overall, tons of properties just fell in a dead zone where they're not available anywhere through legitimate means, ads started appearing in paid plans, and now it's pretty much just cable TV again.
In retrospect rental stores were not that inconvenient. They were everywhere and they had almost anything. They rarely didn't have a title at all, and at least for me the cost is more or less the same across the long term. Yeah if you were watching stuff constantly through rentals it would be more expensive, but it's been years since Netflix had more than one thing per month I bother watching.
And content getting worse is also a problem. I wished they had more of those good classics.
Dish detergent/washing up liquid. For the past few years, I was sure all the "New and Improved' and "Now with x More" was false. Newer detergent doesn't seem to go half as far, or cut through grease as well. I used to buy a bottle maybe once every 5-6 months; now, I'm buying a bottle every 2-3 months -- and I'm doing the same amount of washing up. Fast forward to two weeks ago when I found a bottle of Tesco generic washing up liquid in an under stair cupboard from 7-8 years ago, unopened and still perfectly usable. I popped that boy open and did a 1-to-1 comparison with the same liquid I bought last week. I could immediately see a difference. The liquid in the old version was thicker, and obviously much more concentrated. The old stuff took a single pass to clean greasy pans. The same pans took at least three passes with the new stuff, and still didn't come away with that squeaky clean feel. Insult to injury, the new bottle had 60ml less, and I'm going to guess it cost more. Tdrl: Newer dish detergent is junk, and I have the old stuff to prove it.
In the European Union, chemical things sometimes become less effective due to law changes that reduce how much a chemical can be concentrated or what chemicals can be sold in the first place. For example, to avoid poisoning the fish or making the water supplies unclean. However, that every once in a while ends in a bit of a nonsensical situation. For example, they outlawed a weed killer because it is toxic to nature - which is kind of the point of a week killer.
Working and finding work with a college degree.
Those younger Panda's that may be reading this...trades (in the US anyway) will PAY for your training, for the most part, and start you at 45k/yr. No debt.
I work for 7-11. We used to sell burritos at 2 for 2.30. One day we had a "sale" at 2 for $3! When that sale ended the burritos were now 2 for 3.40. They raised the price twice but treated one like a sale.
Lots of places employ this tactic to increase prices. They have a faux sale and when the sale ends, viola, new higher price. Walmart will do a 'roll-back' for a few weeks, then new higher price.
Adverts on Amazon Prime. I’m sure they are trying to make them so annoying that you pay extra to go ad free…
If you download the movie, and turn off your wifi, would it be ad free? I haven't tried it yet. I've just been shutting down the show and restarting (at the same point) to avoid the ads. I plan on getting rid of prime once I'm done watching a particular series if the ads are still there.
I hate that all 3 major consoles now require you to pay for a subscription to play online
Literally all the other features of ps+ are good enough for people to buy it why would you force people to buy it for online that used to be free
For me, it's the whole thing where you buy the game, but can't just pop in the disc and play. You have to f*****g download it onto the system first. Why?
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I'd say the loss of physical media is another pretty bad thing starting from the same trends. A problem by subscription models, and absolutely devastating for preserving anything, because so many things, series, movies and videogames, just vanish and become lost media you can hardly access anymore (without resorting to piracy). Plus, it can be taken away from you at any time, even though you paid for it and own it, so to say. I've recently started buying DVDs, Blu Rays and console games on disks again because of that, and bought a good Blu Ray Player. These disks are an advantage in anything, they belong to me, I can use them no matter where I go and whether I have internet access, I can buy them cheaper as secondhand and I don't have to pay for them every month again and again.
I never got rid of all my old DVDs, I have tons of them. Which is great but they do take up a lot of space. Sometimes I consider donating them but then I worry that I'll have to buy them again at some point.
Load More Replies...Every "secret service" protecting the president has been one downgrade after another. Its purpose now is to ensure that no true facts ever get to the president's ear.
Load More Replies...Oooh I have one - Quickbooks revamped their customer service to provide highly skilled tech support to the customer faster and more efficiently! (They closed all their phone lines, fired all the US workers, outsourced the jobs to Cebu, failed to provide training for the call center workers, and made it impossible to contact them if your program isn't working.) They're about to shut down their desktop model and force everyone to use their buggy, awful online version that costs 4X what the desktop version does (which itself has gone up 400% over the last 3 years.) I used to think no company could hate their customers has much as Delta, but Quickbooks/Intuit has made a strong case.
As a CPA....don't EVEN get me started on this topic! It's the absolute worst! QBO has a few neat features, but it's getting more expensive and it's absolutely NOT necessary for a relatively simple business. Plus, Intuit tried to market it as "do-it-yourself"--to people with little or no idea what they were doing, leading to expensive headaches for business owners! My personal soapbox is the duplication/triplication/etc of income where they download stuff from the bank feeds AND enter the deposits by hand (and don't match them) and then wonder why QBO says they have half a million ineir account while the bank says they're overdrawn!!! BTW-there is no accounting program more secure than the (pre 2021) Desktop version installed on a computer that isn't connected to the Internet. I actually use an older version of Desktop and a non-subscription model of Excel for a lot of my work. There's absolutely NO need for that overpriced subscription mess in most cases.
Load More Replies...I'm going to say updates for devices that you have owned for more than 6 months. It works well or I wouldn't own it. Don't try to make it better. It usually only makes it worse. The last big iPhone update caused me to receive all my old text messages from the year 2021 to current, made my control center go away, and made most 'buttons' impossible to push. I have stabbed "done" on my phone enough times to kill a person before getting success.
I'd say the loss of physical media is another pretty bad thing starting from the same trends. A problem by subscription models, and absolutely devastating for preserving anything, because so many things, series, movies and videogames, just vanish and become lost media you can hardly access anymore (without resorting to piracy). Plus, it can be taken away from you at any time, even though you paid for it and own it, so to say. I've recently started buying DVDs, Blu Rays and console games on disks again because of that, and bought a good Blu Ray Player. These disks are an advantage in anything, they belong to me, I can use them no matter where I go and whether I have internet access, I can buy them cheaper as secondhand and I don't have to pay for them every month again and again.
I never got rid of all my old DVDs, I have tons of them. Which is great but they do take up a lot of space. Sometimes I consider donating them but then I worry that I'll have to buy them again at some point.
Load More Replies...Every "secret service" protecting the president has been one downgrade after another. Its purpose now is to ensure that no true facts ever get to the president's ear.
Load More Replies...Oooh I have one - Quickbooks revamped their customer service to provide highly skilled tech support to the customer faster and more efficiently! (They closed all their phone lines, fired all the US workers, outsourced the jobs to Cebu, failed to provide training for the call center workers, and made it impossible to contact them if your program isn't working.) They're about to shut down their desktop model and force everyone to use their buggy, awful online version that costs 4X what the desktop version does (which itself has gone up 400% over the last 3 years.) I used to think no company could hate their customers has much as Delta, but Quickbooks/Intuit has made a strong case.
As a CPA....don't EVEN get me started on this topic! It's the absolute worst! QBO has a few neat features, but it's getting more expensive and it's absolutely NOT necessary for a relatively simple business. Plus, Intuit tried to market it as "do-it-yourself"--to people with little or no idea what they were doing, leading to expensive headaches for business owners! My personal soapbox is the duplication/triplication/etc of income where they download stuff from the bank feeds AND enter the deposits by hand (and don't match them) and then wonder why QBO says they have half a million ineir account while the bank says they're overdrawn!!! BTW-there is no accounting program more secure than the (pre 2021) Desktop version installed on a computer that isn't connected to the Internet. I actually use an older version of Desktop and a non-subscription model of Excel for a lot of my work. There's absolutely NO need for that overpriced subscription mess in most cases.
Load More Replies...I'm going to say updates for devices that you have owned for more than 6 months. It works well or I wouldn't own it. Don't try to make it better. It usually only makes it worse. The last big iPhone update caused me to receive all my old text messages from the year 2021 to current, made my control center go away, and made most 'buttons' impossible to push. I have stabbed "done" on my phone enough times to kill a person before getting success.