The 10 Worst Consumer Tech Trends

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PC World Canada have compiled a list of the 10 Worst Consumer Tech Trends. The list, while technically accurate and mildly entertaining, basically states the obvious and won’t come as a surprise to any of you. Maybe “Top ten lists” will make the list next year. :D

It's frustrating that so many recent trends in consumer technology seem to not have the consumer's best interests at heart. Thankfully, though, some of the trends mentioned here are starting to fall by the wayside as corporations bow to consumer pressure. Here's a look at ten of the most annoying trends that take the "consumer" out of consumer technology.
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honestly i don't see why closed source software is on there as a consumer "problem"...99% of consumers aren't going to know how to edit source code anyway, and many times any difference in quality is a personal opinion toss at best. they go on to talk against fanboys when they quite seem like fanboys themselves

i mean, they make some good points against DRM and such, but complaining about things like licensing fees? i'm all for cheaper stuff, but do they really expect people to give away their stuff for free? even as a consumer they can't expect that much....
 
This list fails because it does not mention companies putting "burn your retinas out" bright LEDs in their products and not providing a way to turn down their intensitiy. That is much more annoying than closed source software or fees.
 
The whole article basically underminds itself. It reads like a libertechian wishlist.:eek:
 
They failed to mention any product that starts with a lower case "i" followed by a capital letter and series of consonants and vowels forming a product name.

What I also find funny is the format war included in there, but look at some of their other top ten categories. DRM, region encoding, and licensing fees. We all know what format they are pushing for. :p
 
10. Closed source technology
"Open source" means that the software code used to create the product is made available for computer-savvy individuals to tinker with, modify and improve to their heart's content, while closed source software, on the other hand, comes with restrictions on copying and modifying. The open source philosophy has resulted in the creation of some ingenious modifications that have only served to strengthen the overall product, with two shining examples being the Firefox web browser and Linux operating system, while their closed source counterparts, Internet Explorer and Windows, have been criticized for seeming stagnant and slower to address issues.
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yeah, this isnt biased. the author needs to look up some definitions. open source software can still have licensing restrictions, it just means the source code is available.
 
Yeah, that "Closed source" bit was pretty lame.

I completely agree with his comment about ads though. They're getting pretty damn out of hand :mad:
 
They left out the Megapixel War. I DESPIIIISE what it has done to point&shoot cameras.
 
To me a lot of the article seemed biasis against microsoft. Lets see what we have learned from this article. Only Microsoft takes forever to patch their software such as windows and IE, linux and firefox on the other hand are fully patched with no known bugs and are done so in hours or at worst a day or two of a bug being published. They would never leave bugs unpatched like microsoft. That list of 700 bugs in which only a small handful are going to be fixed that was published for firefox was a lie, they wouldn't do that, now microsoft though.....

Zune is the only media player with DRM, apple would never put DRM in their player. All those people that lost their songs due to a glitch in their software that corrupted their licenses where actually zune owners pretending to be ipod owners.

On top of that Microsoft won't let apple play wma and wmv files on the ipod, and after apple went through the trouble of letting them play their files on the zune.

Reading through it I just couldn't help but see all the antimicrosoft stuff in it.

I'd have to say its 33% ok, 66% bullshit.
 
Exavior said:
To me a lot of the article seemed biasis against microsoft. Lets see what we have learned from this article. Only Microsoft takes forever to patch their software such as windows and IE, linux and firefox on the other hand are fully patched with no known bugs and are done so in hours or at worst a day or two of a bug being published. They would never leave bugs unpatched like microsoft. That list of 700 bugs in which only a small handful are going to be fixed that was published for firefox was a lie, they wouldn't do that, now microsoft though.....
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um no
 
They left out the trend of consumer LCDs getting crappier and crappier, should've made top 3....Having to resort to a lottery to get the panel you want, inverse ghosting, weird artifacts, inputs not working properly, backlight bleed, numerous QC issues, etc. There's already 2347827 threads about any monitor doing one thing okay, but not another thing. Can't we get an "ultimate" LCD worth paying money for already instead of what few higher-end panels we have being replaced by whatever's easier or cheaper? Sad if that's what people really want and don't care about how their screen looks.
 
The section on "Fanboys" needs to be tattooed on too many people's foreheads in a reverse image so they can read it when they look in the mirror.
 
The article is a complete failure in my mind. Not one of those things is bad in itself. However, it can become bad if used in the wrong way.
 
I have to agree with putting DRM at the top of the list.

As a consumer it's a huge annoyance. DRM means I can only buy some ebooks but not others because if restrictions regarding what device I can read it on.

As has been said before, DRM does sustain piracy, especially in conjunction with subscription schemes. The problem isn't that you can't compete with free, but that you can't compete with what someone wants by offering what they don't want and using DRM to prevent them from using it the way they want. The best you can hope for in cases like that is that people won't buy what you're selling because it doesn't meet their needs.

That's not a very good "best."
 
Since when have Fanboys, Format Wars, Region Encoding, and Over Promising suddenly became recent trends?

That article is so bad it doesn't even deserve the legitimacy it gained by being linked to.
 
Azhar said:
um no
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I was not saying that was true, I was adding a little more to what that article stated to show how biasis the author was being. The author mentioned how much open source has allowed linux and firefox to be modified by people and turned into great products while windows and IE being closed source and only be able to be modified by a few have been stagnant and slower to address issues. Rewording that some and making it a little more antimicrosoft and pro opensource results in what I posted, the same as the rest of my post there.



shyboi said:
Um...yes and here is the link to support it:
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I think Azhar was only refering to the part that was underlined in that quote. I'm guessing my mocking of the article was taken as what I believe as being true and not as a joke made in regards to the content of the article.
 
Then of course there's Microsoft's Zune audio player. Touted as an iPod-killer, the Zune did nothing of the sort. Instead, was criticized for its crippled video playback and a song-sharing feature that was heavily restricted by DRM.
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I think the only person deluded enough to make the claim that the gen 1 Zune was going to be an iPod killer was Balmer. Last I checked no one really listens to the words that come out of his mouth.

Oh yeah, didn't they just tweak the crippled sharing feature? Good thing MS reads PC World.Ca, or they'd never get things right :p
 
This reads more like the author just wanted to rant about the establishment and microsoft more than anything else.
 
shyboi said:
Um...yes and here is the link to support it:
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Um... no, check out Iceweasle, debians mirror of FF and it is patched within min of a vuln being found.

there were of 11,000 bugs when ff hit alpha, the fact they got it downto 800 is a credit to them, how many open bugs are there in Win-2000,Win-XP,Win-Vista?

Fact is Opensource has the potential to be patched VERY quicly
 
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