The appliance that elicits anger and frustrated at it’s mere sight. The treacherous device that never worked right.
Printer
Only 2D since bambulab came
Smart phones, then closed driver GPUs and compute units, then probably printers.
My apartment gym has a Nordictrack treadmill that I hate nearly every aspect of. First of all, it requires you login to use any of the programs, which doesn’t really work with 200 potential users. It has lost internet every single time I’ve used it and needs a restart, even though I use manual mode, the UI buttons are tiny and impossible to read while you’re running, and don’t respond correctly, and worst of all, there’s no goddamn place to put your phone so you can watch Netflix.
and worst of all, there’s no goddamn place to put your phone so you can watch Netflix.
kagis
Hmm.
Yeah, I was thinking that it’d have some kind of bike-style handlebars or something, but nothing quite like that.
thinks
So, there are these…I don’t know what they’re called. “Gooseneck leg camera tripods”? They’re intended to let you mount a camera anywhere, but if you feel strongly enough about this, I’m sure that one can get one of those and I’m sure that someone makes a quarter-inch-bolt — which camera tripods use — adapter to a smartphone holder. Can probably stuff a phone on pretty much anything with that.
goes looking
Okay, I don’t know if anyone else makes this. I thought it was a whole class of devices, but maybe it’s just one manufacturer. Basically, three gooseneck legs with grippy things down them, “Joby Gorillapods”. Just wrap the gooseneck legs around whatever you want to mount the thing to.
https://www.amazon.com/gorillapod-original-tripod-point-cameras/dp/b0087fftt2
And once you have your quarter-inch tripod mount from that, there are a ton of different products that will let you mount a phone on a tripod bolt.
https://www.amazon.com/phone-tripod-mount/s?k=phone+tripod+mount
Can probably even get some sort of telescoping counterweighted-arm thing that’d let you jam it right in front of your eyeballs — I have a mic boom like that on a tripod — though I dunno if you want to deal with lugging something like that into a gym. And if the treadmill is vibrating at all, an arm would amplify the vibrations.
Holy crap, you put a lot of thought into my issue, lol thank you.
That’s not quite what we have though, the display is like a modern tablet, and if, and only if you login can you watch the Pelaton-style videos, which are your only options for workout programs.
Printers. There is no excuse for (consumer) printers to be as shitty as they are.
There are reasons, but none of them are excuses: If patent hell wasn’t a main obstacle put in place by the large printer manufacturers, I am sure open source hardware alternative would’ve forced industry improvements ages ago.
US patents only last for 20 years. Technically, nothing is stopping you from making a part-for-part copy of a good laser printer from 2005 and selling it the same way some companies do replacement toner.
It’s just that making a cheap and reliable appliance is HARD if there are dozens of distinct parts that all have to move together. Heck, id expect a near-clone of a Cuisinart stand mixer before I’d expect a printer.
(And, even then, i doubt it’d be much cheaper than just buying one used.)
Edit: patents, not parents.
US parents only last for 20 years.
Jeez, I’m way past my warranty. Almost at 27 years.
Don’t worry, commercial printers are equally bad but in a different way.
Every vendor feels the need to inject their own special secret sauce into the drivers instead of making a tool that Just Works.
Yeah, there is no true rage like trying to get a Xante to work properly. “YOU HAD NO PROBLEMS 2 HOURS AGO WHEN I FED YOU 2,000 #10 ENVELOPES! WHY WON’T YOU PRINT THIS LETTERHEAD!”
Or my Canon 8000 that has decided it doesn’t want to print double sided on satin paper anymore. Or that is will staple a booklet, but only if i have the paper size down as 12x9 portrait instead of 9x12 landscape.
Our gas stove. Unreliable AF, and has a tendency to cook unevenly. The oven also fucking sucks. Multi-thousand dollar premium PoS. I miss my resistive electric stoves.
On the other hand, the air fryer never burns things and almost never has issues.
Dehumidifiers are so mysterious and needy.
“Smart” TVs.
I just want my TV to show pretty pictures with sound thrown at it by the digital receiver. If I want, I can attach a computer for streaming. How is that such a big ask?!
TV’s are actually cheaper not because the tech necessarily being more available (even though it should) but instead it’s because companies are harvesting your data on smart tv’s and selling it making more profit than they would make with just selling you a TV. On a separate but somewhat related note, has anyone else noticed smart phones becoming more expensive as they become more protective of the users privacy?
I couldn’t find a dumb TV, so I got a smart one didn’t give it wifi access. Every time I turn it on, it shows me a clock that’s wrong and I think “Not so smart now, are you?”. It’s a perfectly functional dumb TV.
The dumb ones are typically “display” monitors, like what fast-food restaurants use for their menus. Likely more expensive, but built better too
Not built better, just under-driven on brightness so they can run 16-24 hours a day. Contrast suffers, frame rates are limited, you’re paying for support you will never use, and enterprise software features you will also never use.
The cost of a TV is subsidized by advertisements and deals with different apps for prominent placement.
I mean, yeah. Somehow I’m aware of that. But also, we haven’t bought a TV for almost a decade now, and my biggest mistake is letting it update to the latest version. If there’s something these adverts have done is drive me into consuming even less than ever before. I actively don’t buy stuff now.
Disconnect it from the network and factory reset it.
That stopped mine showing me adverts. Won’t stand adverts from a device I’ve paid to bring into my home.
Only had to do that because I checked to see if the “download subtitles” feature would actually work.
Spoiler
It didn’t.
I’m so happy my old 1080p dumb TV is still chugging along. Acts as a third screen to my computer, has a minor spot with pressure damage making the colors darker there. Ultimately still far superior to all the smart junk and cost me only 270€ when it was new in 2014
My crappy electric Philips toothbrush from the internet of shit era. If you press the single button it has slightly wrong it goes into some Bluetooth pairing mode or whatever that you can’t take it out of until it gives up 2 minutes later.
Do printers count? I fucking HATE printers.
I got a Brother printer. I hate it less than my HP and Cannon ones I used to use but it’s still a printer. A sin which cannot be redeemed
After some half a century of existing they are somehow still annoying to use.
Printers are a given, I figure.
I have a black and white samsung printer that is like a decade old with the only maintenance being adding the powdered ink and replacing the roller thingy a couple of times. Always works, never had an issue, printed thousands of pages over time in spurts of hundreds at a time and even not printing for like two years.
On the opposite end inkjet printers are the fucking worst computer accessory I’ve ever dealt with. They have always been a shitshow even before they started the ink pricing shenanigans because they are finicky and unreliable to start with.
mine has said that all the ink is critically low and I’ve just ignored it for the past few months and it just keeps going.
Nearly same here, but mine is from 2010 and all I’ve ever done is replace the original starter cartridge of toner with a generic one once, and that was 12ish years ago and 2 cross-country moves. I’ve maybe printed a thousand pages ever.
Came here to say this. F all printers ever made.
Inkjet printers clogging and requiring ink refills aside, I don’t think I’ve ever been unhappy with (2D) printers. I’ve used…continuous-feed dot-matrix printers, a thermal wax printer, laser printers, a text-only line printer, and a continuous-feed plotter. They all worked pretty well.
And honestly, I’m still kind of impressed at what inkjet printers can turn out on photo paper, even if I wouldn’t buy one for my own uses.
I had one very elderly Apple laser printer that I picked up once that someone was throwing out. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, laser printers were wonder printers that business users might have, but few home users mostly didn’t have in their price range — fast output, sharp text, but expensive; always wanted one, but I wasn’t going to buy one. It didn’t have much memory, so there were some limitations on the complexity of what it could print. I rigged up the
lpdon my computer to do all the rendering of vector Postscript images and convert it into a fax-compressed raster image and hand it off to the printer, so aside from taking a while to transfer the resulting image to the printer, it could pretty much handle anything. It served for something like ten years, with the remainder of the original toner cartridge lasting something like five of that, and I only tossed it because I wanted a higher-resolution printer, not because it had any problems functioning. I could probably still be using that thing. Kinda have some warm fuzzies remembering that ancient thing still soldiering on.Stop buying shitty ink jet printers and get a laser printer. Pretty sure the Brother MFC my dad purchased a decade ago will outlive him.
I do think that most people would be happier with lasers, especially on the “clogged nozzle and requires regular use” front (though now there are also lasers that also do the “razor and blades” sales model, with a cheap printer and more-expensive toner).
However, there are legitimately some people who do need inkjets for one reason or another.
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Lasers, and especially inexpensive lasers where the manufacturer wants to shave down power supply costs, have a brief period of very high electrical draw when they are powered on. This is why you’ll typically see UPSes with warnings saying “don’t plug laser printers into this device”. This probably isn’t more than a minor irritation for most people, but I bet that it can overwhelm small inverters; there are probably people living full-time in RVs or something for whom this a problem.
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Even relatively-inexpensive inkjet printers today can produce what I’d call pretty impressive photograph prints if paired with fancy photo paper. Color lasers — and I’ve never bothered to even get a color laser — do not print photos that look remotely as nice as inkjets do. I don’t print photos — I have screens that can display photos perfectly well — and if I really wanted to do so, I’d go to one of the many stores around that do have the ability to do really fancy photo prints. But if someone were into that, they can’t really substitute a laser printer or most other types of printers for that. Maybe dye-sublimation printers, if those are still a thing. kagis Appears so.
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I bought a cheap espresso maker off Amazon. It’s so cheap that nothing can be adjusted, not the pressure, the drip, the heat, nothing. Every single shot I pull from that thing tastes like burnt ass. I even invested in some nice expensive espresso beans, and no luck. The cheap machine is in fact a piece of crap. I should have known better.
I encountered a gas stove that wouldn’t work during a power outage. It had a valve that shut off the gas if electricity wasn’t present. Way to intentionally sabotage one of your biggest advantages.
haha… yeah. We have a tankless gas water heater that requires an electrical connection. We live in hurricane country so going without power for days/weeks at a time is something we’ve lived through on several occasions. Having a hot shower during those times is the one thing my wife really appreciates. Fortunately, it’s just a 110 connection and we can plug it into a generator or battery back up…
I’m guessing a tankless water heater involves some electronic controls. It probably could be designed to use low-voltage DC with a battery backup, but that would be fancy.
A gas stove should never need electricity for a burner to work if the user supplies another source of ignition like a match. This is surely a “safety feature” to prevent people from leaving the gas on when the electronic ignition is unavailable, but nobody with half a brain and a sense of smell would do that.
Coffee dispenser at work. It acts up like it’s a printer. Replace left cartridge. Replace right cartridge. Cleaning required. Thorough cleaning required. Unknown leak. Heating water please wait. Unknown error. Fuck that, I’ll piss in a cup myself if I don’t get my coffee now.
Then there’s also the towel roll thing in the toilets. I swear it’s stuck for longer time than it’s functioning. It’d be a full time job keeping that rolling throughout the day
Ugh. If you have even a little space on your desk you could get a “5-cup” (that’s about 2 mugs) drip coffee machine and some unbleached paper filters for about $25. You could still make that refreshing stroll in the direction of the big machine, but with your fresh hot mugful already in your hand.
If it needs an app or internet connectivity - it can go fuck itself.
We’ve gone nearly a century of appliances that didn’t need this shit. Apps or the Internet itself will not and never will, make things easier to do tasks than they already were easier to do before.
Aside from security and privacy issues, and the issue of dependence on cloud services, a lot of those go obsolete. Like, a fridge from 1950 is still gonna work pretty well today. Networking has changed a lot more quickly, and I suspect will continue to change quickly.
I’d be okay if they want to have some kind of simple, industry-standard interface that lets me expose it to a computer’s control. Like, furnaces have that standard four-wire interface, and then you can just replace an (inexpensive) thermostat with a newer one as technology marches on, leave the furnace in place. But I don’t want a lot of short-lived technology being baked into longer-lived appliances.
Microwaves are allowed one proud “ding” or three “beep” before they are on my hate-list.
My microwave thinks it’s a regular oven and keeps beeping if you don’t open the door. It doesn’t seem to understand it has stopped on its own and can shut the fuck up now.
My microwave has an un-interuptable 6 shrill beeps, that then repeat if the door is not opened in 10 seconds. There is no mute option, and it can be heard everywhere in the house. I have seriously considered just ripping the speaker out of it. It is, without a doubt, the appliance I hate most in my house.
I moved from the US to Europe and I keep joking that the largest QoL upgrade has been my unbelievably dumb microwave. It has a power knob, a timer knob that is spring wound, and when it hits 0 it physically hits a bell like an older toaster.
I fucking love it. It was like 20€
Wait what do US microwaves do? Play the national anthem?
Newer ones have way too many digital buttons and a loud repeating beep when finished. Even newer ones, probably Bluetooth or something
Perfect this is the type answer I was looking for!
Open the door to your microwave and see if it has instructions for written on its body. Mine has a secondary menu where you can turn it off.
Checked there and searched online for any demo modes/ testing codes that would allow me to mute it. Evidently, a lot of folks online absolutely hate my microwave as well, because no one can mute it. That said, the community of microwave haters has provided me with instructions to rip out the speaker if I choose to silence the wailing banshee for good.
Mine is not nearly as bad as yours, but it is loud and doesn’t stop beeping when you open the door, just continues until its preprogrammed three loud beeps are over. I muted it when my kids were babies and have never looked back. I think a lot of people worry about muting their microwave because they think they won’t hear when it’s done or something. I’m here to tell you that you won’t miss it. Go forth and rip that speaker out with no regrets.
What microwave and model is it?
Frigidaire FFMV164LSA MFG in 2012
Microwaves are the penultimate Norman Object (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things). They could have a standardized UI (cue up obligatory XKCD “Standards”). Instead, every manufacturer does it differently and usually in obscure, unintuitive fashion, often differently from the same manufacturer. Do you enter the time or power setting first? Oh wait, pressing a number launches it straight into running. That part that looks like a door handle is not how one actually opens the door; press the door button first. So. Much. Hate.
You know, the worst part is, they intentionally make the interface shittier on the cheap ones. I’m very convinced of this.
Yeah, I can see what you mean. Generally, they’re similar-enough, at least in basic functionality, that I don’t have an issue using someone else’s microwave though. The advanced functionality can vary a lot.
What does kind of annoy me is that they’re basically the one device — VCRs used to be the stereotypical holders of this position — that has a clock, but also is a device price-sensitive enough to both:
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Lack an internal battery to keep the clock powered when power is lost.
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Not have a network link, cell link — not that I really want those — or radio time signal receiver to automatically set the clock.
The result is that every microwave I see seems to wind up showing an unset clock.
Didn’t they somehow send time info down the power line in some places? Or maybe I’m just misremembering this?
I can’t think of anything that quite fits that off-the-cuff, at least not in the US. A quick search doesn’t turn anything up. I can think of some related things:
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The AC signal is used as a clock in a number of devices. This isn’t a “clock” in the common-language sense of the word, but in the electrical engineering sense – it provides a reliable frequency over the long run. Some (common-language) clocks and timers have used this to keep them running at a steady pace, but it’s not really a time signal, wouldn’t help restore an on-device clock setting after power loss.
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X10 is a low-speed networking protocol that runs over local power circuits for home automation. I’m sure that at some point, someone has made some product that permits setting a clock with it. The limitation is that your signal doesn’t span across household circuits, which I suspect one would want for a “whole house time signal”.
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There have been powerline-based ISPs, where the power company shovels data over the line using high-frequency data. In theory, you could use one of various Internet time protocols over that. I think that that was kind of a dead end, technology-wise — there’s just not that much data that you can push over an unshielded, non-twisted-pair, metal power line.
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I would not be surprised if there’s some data protocol that power companies use to talk to smart meters that includes pushing a time signal out specifically for them – they do push and pull data over that – though I don’t think that that’s accessible to other devices.
That being said, could be some company out there that did that locally. Not technically impossible.
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I get irrationally upset over microwaves that don’t let you use the timer and cook functions simultaneously
looks puzzled
Hmm. What are you doing with that? Like, you want to be cooking for a certain amount of time, then after the cooking completes, have a timer trigger to start a second cooking period?
More like, I need to heat this frozen thing for 4 minutes. Also while that’s going on, I want to set a timer for my pasta which is cooking on the stove for 6 minutes to remind me to check it.
Oh, so this is like, a timer for an alarm rather than to control the microwave’s operation. Gotcha.
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My microwave’s beeper only work in 10s increments. Meaning if I enter a cook time of 91 seconds, I get 91s at high power, 9s at low power, and a beep. If I listen for the power change, I have a 9 second window to open the door. It’s perfect; no annoying beeping, and the timer reads 0:00 so it doesn’t need to be cleared before reuse.
I want to open up my microwave and rip out whatever device makes the beep. Who has ever forgotten they have food in the microwave? I was hungry 3 minutes ago, I haven’t forgotten, and it’s not going to burn.
My parents used to have an old Amana Radarange. Built like a tank, wood paneling and chrome, warm incandescent lighting…I miss it. It didn’t have a beep or a bell or anything. Once it was done it would just…turn off.
My fridge’s ice machine has never worked and instead just made my fridge piss itself on multiple occasions.
I’ve wrestled with mine a time or two. Tons of troubleshooting tips online for that exact issue, shouldn’t be too hard to figure.
