The Cuecat: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat
Came at a time when there weren't barcodes everywhere and QR codes didn't exist yet. Companies had to publish Cuecat specific barcodes, it was much easier to just type in the URL by the time you figured out you could use it at all.
HTC Droid Incredible.
It kept telling me its storage was full when it was nowhere close, and then because it only allowed over the air factory resets, it couldn't even erase and reformat itself. It was the top rated Android phone at the time and it's why I've never gone back.
A Surface RT ... Slow, barely any software support. Totally lost whatever trust I had for Microsoft.
Any device produced by the Transsion company, a company which exists only to scam ppl out of their hard earned money and create e-waste. They're the owners of the Infinix, Tecno and Itel mobile lineups
if you want a 2gb ram device produced this year that can get so hot and burn the flesh off your palm, get one of these devices, they're so prevalent in Africa, India and other developing countries
the marketing budget for each lineup outweighs the RnD budget for the three collectively
Amazon kindle. It didnt let me plug it into my computer and upload books to use it without internet access. Everything needed sending through amazon. I should have expected this but it was so locked down and filled with ads to the point it was unusable. I attempted to jailbreak it and it bricked so i threw it away and went back to using calibre on my computer. I would really like an offline open source ebook reader.
Any Bluetooth headsets on Windows 11. On Windows there are two modes for Bluetooth headsets: One with high quality audio and no microphone, one with lower quality and mic support. On Windows 10 was able to change the mode, but on Windows 11 you can't actively change it anymore, because "the software decides" this mode. So ever few weeks my headset switch to the output only mode, get stuck, and I cannot make a call with my team mates. The workaround is time consuming and frustating.
Too bad I have to use Windows for work. Most companies do not have Linux option, even for devs.
You can still switch, if I'm thinking of what you are, in the legacy "sounds" menu. Just turn off all their universal app shit and 11 is ok :)
When I was a child in the 90s I somehow scored a voice role in a hotdog commercial for the radio. I was paid a king's ransom for this, half of which my parents made me put in savings (wise), and half of which I spent on a brand new Sega CD (not wise).
The magic of postage stamp-sized full motion video took about three days to wear off, at which point all that was left was basically pure shit. They jacked me. At least I learned that lesson early.
smart doorbell that takes 25+ seconds to fire up a video feed, and errors out most of the time. (Original Ring doorbell, received when they bought out my kickstarter Doorbot and bricked it)
or the Lockitron smart door lock from Kickstarter which took like 6 AA batteries and couldn't muster the strength to unlock the door more than like 3 times.
but least they worked together in failure.
Fuck the surface pro 3, you'll never get another cent from me Microsoft you fucking cunts! ( Except for halo mcc and infinite BUT NO MORE (unless the next halo is actually good but even the ONLY ON SALE))
Oh man, I loved my Surface Pro 3. I used it as my main device for home and work for years. Not invalidating your experience... I've used devices that others thought were great that I thought were garbage.
OUYA
Every piece of hardware I've used past 2010 or so seems to have just gotten worse and worse, I honestly think I'm cursed.
2013 (? can't quite remember), Sager gaming laptop with sli gpu config, gpus drew too much power for the battery (I believe), leading to black screen and reboot. Company feigned ignorance, ran unrelated tests on RMA, Socially awkward at the time and was scared to ask for a refund. Convinced to this day it was a scam.
2015, desktop computer I built randomly powers off during usage, no errors, not the power supply, unsolved to this day.
2020-2022 5 cheap ebay thinkpads, all with one hardware problem or another. My beloved T60p was the last to go.
2022-present Framework laptop, ports suffer intermitent failure, webcam microphone stopped working. Replaced webcam/microphone, works for a day, breaks again. Unsolved.
2022-preset Steam deck, had to RMA 3 times for various hardware issues, works now, but the right trigger still rubs against something but I can live with it. Spilled coffee on the left trackpad so it's sticky; that's my fault though so I can't blame it on the curse.
Oooh I had an Intel Atom Vaio Netbook as my first ever computer I actually owned, given to me as a gift by parents for school. I asked for a gaming laptop, so I was real bamboozled by it.
Somehow though I managed to grief my friends' Minecraft server with /set 0 and enderdragon spawn spam while talking to them on Skype, but it was painful, opening a web page took literal minutes sometimes and my internet wasn't the fastest back then but it wasn't too bad either like 5-10mbps easily. But it wasn't the worst.
That honor goes to an MSI gaming laptop. It was actually really powerful, quad core, 16GB RAM, 8GB VRAM, MSATA SSD and a 1TB HDD that is still alive and in a JBOD setup with mergerfs in my server today serving me shows to watch thru Jellyfin.
In 2014 it was nothing to scoff at, the 880m ran GTA V on almost the highest settings at 1080p and it had tons of storage.
But as a computer it was just fucking terrible, the screen is the dimmest, most TN LCD blue filter shit you've ever seen, it was all I had so I watched things on it, and it just always made me depressed that I was watching beautiful films and shows and playing games through this awful blue filter that had no warmth, everything looked like some movie dementia flashback.
USB port melted itself and made some random parts of the case have an electric surprise for you sometimes, keys popped off if you breathed on em but not like you would want those keycaps to stay on because they were disgusting, speakers sucked in dust and vibrated it inside, making all audio feel like earrape at any volume, headphones jack flew out, touchpad was off to the side because of the dumbass numpad, ethernet port fried entire cables, DVD drive wouldn't read disks, dumbass UEFI firmware locked down to shit, took forever to disable secureboot and the setting would get lost randomly.
About 3 years later, the AC port fried itself and would work like a pair of dodgy earbuds and I had to sit there rotating it like I was finding a radio signal in class, battery was long gone by then so it would shut off at random, which made android app dev I was doing at the time on it somehow even worse of an experience.
Still have many fond memories of my times with it but man did I not miss it at the time.
I replaced it with a 2010 ThinkPad X201 I got for 50 bucks and loved it, I proudly used and abused it and showed it to everyone like it was my first dress with pockets until I eventually blacked out on xanax and procedurally took the entire thing apart and flashed ??? onto the firmware chip and couldn't put it back together ever again.
and couldn’t put it back together ever again.
I did this to my X201. Somehow i have like 7 screws that I couldn't find where they belonged (even though I tried to document each screw). I also broke part of the bezel. So I did put it back together again, but with poor structural integrity. The thing still works but I do not use it. Sadly that era of laptops just run too warm and the fans are too noisy.
HTC Vive. Not necessarily this specific tech itself, but VR gaming more broadly. My friend and I were ginning ourselves up for years before it came out. I dropped a lot of money on a gaming rig for it. And when I put the googles on... I fucking hated it. I didn't like standing and gaming. I didn't like being so isolated from everyone else in the house. And the games were glorified tech demos slapped together with unity assets. By the time Half Life Alex came out, I had no more fucks to give.
The porn was fun though.
"Sony MDRXB55AP Wired Extra Bass Earbud Headphones/Headset with Mic for Phone Call, Black"
Biggest pieces of shit I have ever disgraced my ears with. I'm not even an audiophile or a gear snob or anything. These were just so ridiculously bad that it was offensive. I've owned earbuds from the dollar store that sounded better than these.
Amazon Fire Tablet 7in. I bought it literally just to read PDFs, and it was so slow that it was basically unusable. I tried switching out the launcher to something more minimal (Niagara launcher I think), and I figured out how to disable the ads that were all over the place. It helped a bit, but not enough to overcome the hardware and Fire OS. (I think I needed ADB for both of those fixes; I had to put in some real work to unfuck that tablet.) Plus the screen was too small for my pathetic human eyeballs.
Was it worth $30? At the time, yeah, because I literally couldn't afford anything else, but I now have an $80 10in generic Android tablet that's wildly faster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat
These things were trash and the concept was even worse.
Fun fact. The guy that made this was the "forensic expert" that claimed he could detect bamboo fibers in ballots in Georgia and Arizona. The GOP tried to put him in charge of their investigation.
I might be exaggerating a but I've never been a real fan of Bluetooth headphones or earphones. Sound quality never matched cabled ones (I also have the popular Sony one) and battery life sucks for the time I want to use it
Power Glove
For society? A smartphone
Nintendo Wii: as a loyal Nintendo purchaser here from the Game & Watch, to the Super Nintendo, N64 and GameCube, but the Nintendo Wii never let me back up my purchased downloaded games in a way I could transfer to another Wii without online access. I get that that's now standard but it was the first time I was burnt by it.
If you count cars: A Skoda Octavia PHEV.
I love Skoda. I love the Octavia. It was my fourth Octavia and I already ordered two more for my staff. PHEV would have been ideal for our use case.
Well,things didn't go as planned.
The whole car was bugged with software and hardware problems from day one - controll units randomly crapping out, when my dealer wanted to replace them he often had to get 5 units because four would be DOA and the one that worked kicked the bucket before I left his premises. Highlights:
It took 12 months for VW to take that steaming pile back, and only we sued them (Shortly before the hearing).
Second place goes to LG which sold me a OLED TV for 2k that randomly showed faulty pixel lines exactly 3 years and 3 days after I bought it (so it's out of the extended warranty programs as well). And when asked for a quote for the repair they had the audacity to ask for almost the new price for the TV back then, aka 150% of the current market value - without even looking at it first. Good way to make sure that I never buy LG anymore.
The main display that shows your speed,etc. randomly shutting down
I know two people who had this exact issue with their new-gen Golf. First cause was the French language would crash the whole dash if you cycled the dashboard views (to my knowledge they never fixed the issue and the workaround is to set the car to English). Second cause was a malformed JPEG from a radio station would cause the dash to bootloop until you drove far enough from said radio station, which would allow the car to work long enough to disable that feature (IIRC).
So yeah, QA is down the fucking drain with VW on their latest gen. They had a new CEO, and now a new one again I think? But the reputational damage has been done. Too bad, I really liked my '18 Polo.
The joycons that came with the Nintendo Switch, both failed within 3 months of owning it, and might as well include the entire console cause all the cheap plastic bits are falling apart.
I’d replace it with a Steam Deck, but the Switch’s biggest strength is being such a piece of junk I wouldn’t care if it gets stolen or destroyed
I've had my joycons for 5 years and they still work fine. Tbh I mostly use it as a handheld and probably only play about 100 hours per year, but I think the switch is pretty neat
An early Samsung phone my spouse bullied me into taking over from him. I don't know how anyone likes those. I went to Google phones and they're the only good thing about Google.
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