Once-Iconic Tech Products That Are Now a Fading Memory

[Avro Arrow]

You can imagine that C stands for Computer, too, and C also perhaps the most well-known programming language, so C is a good letter for the home drive.

Sure, C is a good letter for the home drive, but it didn't used to be that way. The letter C was adopted simply because it was the third drive. Now, people invent reasons for it.

 

[NumberSix]

Was it "phone-icide", or natural causes?

It was complications from dialabetus due to being completely sedentary.

 

[captaincranky]

It was complications from dialabetus due to being completely sedentary.

Condolences.

 

[ddferrari]

As Barcham pointed out, 8 track tapes belong on this list. I can think of a few other formats that that also come to mind:

Rear projection TVs
Mini-disc players
Digital Audio Tape (DAT)
Reel to Reel
Walkman Headphones

 

[sennarose88]

MP3 players, or Digital Audio Player (DAP) are still highly popular among audiophiles. Sony, Astell & Kern, Fiio and swarms of other audiophile brands are churning out more DAPs than ever.

 

[Borh77]

"Mp3 players" will survive, not because they are cheap, but because audiophiles need them. If you have an expansive HiFi headset, you just can't use it with a phone. You'll want a player with a good dac, and a wired connection to the headset to listen to your HiRes music.

And "Mp3 player", which are actually called music player because they are now used more for HiRes music and not mp3, are not cheap. Products from Sony, Cowon, Fiio, Astell & Kern can cost more than a thousand euros.

It is a niche market, but a niche market that will stay for long.

It's like digital cameras. Phones can now take very nice pictures, but digital cameras have not disappeared, and people buy them not because they are cheap

 

[Older than dirt]

1970’s fax machines required placing a 8.5 x 11 paper on a cylinder which rotated in a cradle for 6 minutes to send or receive. Received pages was special paper which was printed with electric sparks.

Today we talk about bandwidth in mega bits, 1,000,000 baud. In mid 1980s, I purchased a slower 300 baud modem to download software to a computer with “bubble memory” from Phoenix via landlines with static interference.

Telexes were cheaper than international telephone communication. Even then, each character cost. We were the predecessors of texting with, “urs ntd” meaning I understand, “reverting” meaning I will get back with a answer or other response. These messages were transmitted at 75 baud.

Dumb pagers would beep and you would call in and a person would give you a message or phone number. Smarter pagers would display a phone number for you to call. Even smarter pagers would display a sentence or two.

 

[CraigW]

Landline Phones: My older family members have phone numbers they refuse to let go of so they continue to pay the fees to keep their landline phones.

Efficiency dictates that it is cheaper and more practical to simply have one number on your cellular phone so that any and all calls coming in go directly to you whether you answer them or not - let them go to voicemail or not. I don't have a landline number.

We have a landline because we make a lot of calls from the US to Canada. Our landline includes those calls. Our cell service doesn't. Adding international calling to our cell service would cost more than the piddly savings for dropping the landline. Don't assume everyone is in the same situation as yourself.

 

[CraigW]

I prefer physical media over digital.

1. It can never be taken away from me because some licensing agreement expires.
2. I can sell it or trade it in for something else.

 

[Tom Sunday]

Most desktop PCs still come with optical drives (DVD-RW). As for landlines, they are better in an emergency since the responders know your address. I still buy Blu-ray disks for movies I like since I only pay for these one time and don't have to go looking for which streaming is offering a title.

Greetings from the man off the grid! Unfortunately no internet and no cell phone coverage here in Stehekin, WA. But log cabins with 30-50 acres and long drive ways is very typical. Many of us here and my friends around Diablo further up North near the Canadian border still use cassette players in our hobbled together F150’s, then CDROM’s in our desktops and MP3 players when going fishing or hunting. Also most definitely maintaining our landline phones. At the Grange and 'Maggie’s General Store' here we diligently continue in using Fax machines. As TV is only available by satellite (allowing for weather conditions) we also buy a lot of movie DVD’s across the folding tables at the regional computer show. Recent titles with cash only for $1-2 and many pirated formats from the Bangladesh boys! So indeed we are behind the times and practically living in a vacuum, but if you’re not living in the outside world nor with the madding crowd, one simply does not know any different. Life is good!

 

[L9Mb86Cfyu]

Actually the degree to which modern 911 centers can pinpoint your location with cell phones now is scarily good - to within a few meters, and they're pushing that envelope more all the time. It's not foolproof but the days when all they could determine is your general location in relation to a cell tower are long behind us, for good or ill. I also don't think landlines automatically give address info out - dispatchers are trained to collect that information immediately once the call starts, before anything else.

That said landlines are still a very durable, reliable protocol as well that can serve well in a massive emergency, such as a natural disaster or terrorist attack, where a cell tower might get overloaded within minutes.

Cell phone 911 service uses GPS satellite information on a tier that the general public is normally unable to access. The highest tiers of service are reserved for national security (read Military) uses. This info lets ships, aircraft etc know exactly where they are at any time to accurately fire missiles or guided bombs.

 

[DSirius]

Great article, thank you for it. Amazing journey through tech time for some of Techspot readers.

 

[Uncle Al]

Landline Phones: My older family members have phone numbers they refuse to let go of so they continue to pay the fees to keep their landline phones.

Efficiency dictates that it is cheaper and more practical to simply have one number on your cellular phone so that any and all calls coming in go directly to you whether you answer them or not - let them go to voicemail or not. I don't have a landline number.

Let's not forget .... landline phone's don't get hacked ..... crank calls yes, but no hackers ..... of course scammers are another thing altogether ....

 

[VitalyT]

I still believe that 3D TV-s will return. The technology and content just wasn't mature enough for the public to enjoy it. But it will change, the technology is catching up.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I miss floppy disks and analog media in general. Digital downloads just dont feel as good.

I miss the analog age in general. Everything felt so much more genuine back then.

Let's not forget .... landline phone's don't get hacked ..... crank calls yes, but no hackers ..... of course scammers are another thing altogether ....

So did we just forget that phone phreaking is a thing that happened, a LOT?

 

[GreenNova343]

Virtually every medical office in the USA still uses a fax machine to this day

Also, when I worked in on air cable everyone still used digi-Beta even up to a decade ago

A lot of government agencies also still use faxes. And let me tell you...there are still plenty of older business owners (especially among small businesses) that simply don't have the technical expertise to feel comfortable scanning something into a laptop/desktop/smartphone (& I positively *hate* when someone "takes a picture" of some document to send from their phone, half the time the format isn't recognized, the other half the page is so small it's hard to read anything even zoomed in), but can easily fax you something without any hassles.

 

[GreenNova343]

If you think DVD players are dead, they still live-on in this one undefeated format:


https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Portable-DVD-Players/zgbs/electronics/172521

Parents on trips with their kids just want something to distract their kids with that doesn't require an internet connection. There is no Blu-ray, because the benefits on such a small screen are small!

There's also an SDcard slot in many of these., if you want to carry a digital rip.

And let's not forget...until the day comes that an online provider can't delete your legally-purchased "digital download" from their library "because the content owner didn't renew our license to host it" -- or worse, "the content owner has decided to open their own streaming service, & don't want that content available on any other streaming/online provider until long after they can milk it for all the money they can squeeze from it", DVD purchases provides the only guarantee that you retain control of your ability to watch it.

 

[GreenNova343]

I miss floppy disks and analog media in general. Digital downloads just dont feel as good.

I miss the analog age in general. Everything felt so much more genuine back then.

So did we just forget that phone phreaking is a thing that happened, a LOT?

Not sure if the old phreaking techniques will work on the VoIP "landlines" that are the norm nowadays. And even then, weren't most of those techniques tonal-based because of weaknesses in the original AT&T/Bell equipment that was later fixed?

 

[Racklefratz]

I don't remember thinking of any of this stuff as "magic", but when they were all we had at the time, they were what we used. Glad they're gone now.

 

[Underdog]

No they don't, most DON'T come with an optical drive anymore. Your information is as old as the devices in this article!

If that is the case, its one more reason I build my own PCs. I can install the components that serve my needs.

 

[Hysc84]

Used all of them, still having some of them

 

[defaultluser]

And let's not forget...until the day comes that an online provider can't delete your legally-purchased "digital download" from their library "because the content owner didn't renew our license to host it" -- or worse, "the content owner has decided to open their own streaming service, & don't want that content available on any other streaming/online provider until long after they can milk it for all the money they can squeeze from it", DVD purchases provides the only guarantee that you retain control of your ability to watch it.

but you don't need the portable DVD drive to watch your own rips- this entire design is aimed at folks who find digital rips to be too hard


if you just want to playback digital rips, there's always cheap android tablets/Chromebooks or atom windows boxes

Amazon.com : Best Cheap Android Tablet

Amazon.com : chromebook

 

[ddferrari]

I had some borrowed CDs and recorded them on VHS Hifi. The quality was nearly 90% as good, minus a slight rise in the lower treble range (6-8Hz?). Otherwise, the bass and dynamic range were quite close.

Of course, Mother Nature erased it all after roughly 15 years. Darn magnetism!

 

[mrSister]

As longs as cellphones are big as bricks, their operation is touch screen only, and the battery gets eaten by a lot of apps and services that have nothing to do with listening music, traditional mp3 players will have a place

My Cowon i10 still going strong after so many years (and I hope many more to come)

 

[Tyler Dur Den]

Fax machines are not dead. I work for a large healthcare system and we move about 35 million faxed pages a year through our fax servers, and much of that is going to/from stand-alone fax machines. Faxes persist because they are a common point of interchange of data between different systems. In other words, faxing is a common way to get data out of one app and send it somehwere else where it goes into a different app.