Basic technology options that you can't believe aren't standard

Mariolee · Dec 13, 2020

What are things in tech in your daily life that you are absolutely flabbergasted isn't a readily available standard option. Things that make you say, "Wait, what I can't do that?" I say readily available because oftentimes there are extensions or workarounds but it just seems weird it's such a hassle for such a simple thing. However, maybe there is a simple way to do it and so hopefully by complaining here this thread can also work to elucidate those methods we did not know existed.

For me, it's the fact that iPhones don't seem to have an option to hide names when the new message notification pops up. There are some people that I'd rather my housemates know I'm texting and short of turning off all notifications for messages or changing the names, there doesn't seem to be any option to make a generic "You got a new message".

Also accidentally closing all tabs on Google Chrome. I believe in both Firefox and the old Internet Explorer there was always an extra dialogue box that asked if you actually wanted to close the whole damn window with all the tabs. I have no idea why I would need to download an extra extension for this to happen, it seems so basic.

BlueKaty · Dec 13, 2020

Mariolee said:
Also, closing all tabs on Google Chrome.

You just right click on your current tab, choose "close all other tabs" and then finally click the X on the last remaining tab?

nekkid · Dec 13, 2020

That Era still doesn't have smart thread filtering based on keyword rules.

Mariolee · Dec 13, 2020

BlueKaty said:
You just right click on your current tab, choose "close all other tabs" and then finally click the X on the last remaining tab?

I meant accidentally closing all tabs. There have been countless times I accidentally click on the top right corner for whatever reason and it closes the whole window with like 10 tabs. I've edited my post for clarity.

RastaMentality · Dec 13, 2020

Contactless payments everywhere. Not just in America but Japan too.

Finale Fireworker · Dec 13, 2020

A big one for me is the ability to use your phone's video camera while it is also playing audio. Even if your audio is playing through another device via Bluetooth, the iPhone camera will still mute any audio when you initiate recording.

It must do this under the assumption you do not want music you are playing in the video you are recording, which is basically never true. If I didn't want the audio playing in the video I'm recording, I would mute the audio before recording. But it's crazy that if you have Christmas music playing and you want to record your baby opening a present it would cease the music you are playing. Or in the age of social media, you cannot have music playing in the background of a video you are recording. This is ridiculous.

I had to download some niche app called WhileYouRec that allows you to record video without ending the audio you're playing.

Mandos · Dec 13, 2020

Turbo buttons on controllers. Not all of us are physically cable of button mashing you know

Deleted member 31873 · Dec 13, 2020

Windows 10 still not letting me set the time correctly. I've got my BIOS set to GMT (as it should be), and Windows is set to my timezone, but the time it shows is two hours wrong (the time is correct when booted in Linux on the same PC, so it's definitely a fault in Windows).

SigSig · Dec 13, 2020

text selection where ever text is displayed

Finale Fireworker · Dec 13, 2020

Mandos said:
Turbo buttons on controllers. Not all of us are physically cable of button mashing you know

Any time there is an opportunity to change a "press rapidly" to a "press and hold" I switch it immediately. I hate rapidly pressing anything to do anything. For me it's just a preference but I am sure it is way more important to people with an accessibility concern.

indask8 · Dec 13, 2020

Updates not requiring a reboot... and Delta updates (looking at you Microsoft).

Zombegoast · Dec 13, 2020

NFC in the US

julia crawford · Dec 13, 2020

MartinB105 said:
Windows 10 still not letting me set the time correctly. I've got my BIOS set to GMT (as it should be), and Windows is set to my timezone, but the time it shows is two hours wrong (the time is correct when booted in Linux on the same PC, so it's definitely a fault in Windows).

I once had this bug on windows where it would always have the wrong hour by single hour offsets. If it was an hour ahead, i would take it an hour down to correct it, but on the next boot it would be one hour under, and if i corrected it, it would be one hour ahead on the next boot, etc. etc., it was pretty nutty.

nekkid · Dec 13, 2020

RastaMentality said:
Contactless payments everywhere. Not just in America but Japan too.

Yeah what's that all about? Feels like most of America has only just got used to the idea of chip and pin.

Mariolee · Dec 13, 2020

Finale Fireworker said:
A big one for me is the ability to use your phone's video camera while it is also playing audio. Even if your audio is playing through another device via Bluetooth, the iPhone camera will still mute any audio when you initiate recording.

It must do this under the assumption you do not want music you are playing in the video you are recording, which is basically never true. If I didn't want the audio playing in the video I'm recording, I would mute the audio before recording. But it's crazy that if you have Christmas music playing and you want to record your baby opening a present it would cease the music you are playing. Or in the age of social media, you cannot have music playing in the background of a video you are recording. This is ridiculous.

I had to download some niche app called WhileYouRec that allows you to record video without ending the audio you're playing.

Wow thank you for the app, this has also been an annoying issue for me too.

Deleted member 2809 · Dec 13, 2020

spotify
random song selection

Mandos · Dec 13, 2020

Finale Fireworker said:
Any time there is an opportunity to change a "press rapidly" to a "press and hold" I switch it immediately. I hate rapidly pressing anything to do anything. For me it's just a preference but I am sure it is way more important to people with an accessibility concern.

My thumb locks up in regular combat let alone qtes

Deleted member 86105 · Dec 13, 2020

How Windows 10 doesn't allow you to display seconds on the system taskbar lock by default or change the default size of the clock, and how you need to download a separate third-party program (T-Clock) to enable this basic functionality.

Walter White Walker · Dec 13, 2020

Not being able to turn off confirmations, especially in video games. "Are you sure you want to...?" Yes I'm sure, that's why I fucking clicked it. I intentionally click things far, far more often than I accidentally do so. I'm willing to take my chances, so let me.

The Albatross · Dec 13, 2020

nekkid said:
Yeah what's that all about? Feels like most of America has only just got used to the idea of chip and pin.

Yeah we don't have pin though. Contactless chip is pretty common now around me, although like 95% of the time I use my phone whenever I can. I kinda doubt the pin part of chip and pin will ever be implemented.

Deleted member 5359 · Dec 13, 2020

Animated avatars

Mathieran · Dec 13, 2020

I don't know if I just can't find it, but I'm so tired of apple bothering me about my cloud storage being full and asking me if I want to pay for more. I know why they do it, and it really irritates me that I can't turn those notifications off permanently.

SnakeXs · Dec 13, 2020

Mariolee said:
For me, it's the fact that iPhones don't seem to have an option to hide names when the new message notification pops up. There are some people that I'd rather my housemates know I'm texting and short of turning off all notifications for messages or changing the names, there doesn't seem to be any option to make a generic "You got a new message".

Settings -> Notifications -> Show Previews ->
You can set it to off, or When Unlocked, so if you have a Face ID phone it'll show you details when you pick up your phone but will just say "X new messages" if someone else peeks at your Lock Screen.

RastaMentality · Dec 13, 2020

nekkid said:
Yeah what's that all about? Feels like most of America has only just got used to the idea of chip and pin.

I've actually survived on Apple Wallet for the past two weeks because everywhere I shop has implemented it: Safeway, Trader Joe's, Costco, Target, and ethnic grocery stores (Chinese, Mexican, Arab). Thankfully Walmart and Kroger aren't near here so I don't have to deal with their bs lol.

mnemonicj · Dec 13, 2020

Paddles on all controllers. There still isn't a nice cheap add-on that works, except for that device that Sony put out but had little stock for it.

MrKlaw · Dec 13, 2020

Apple laptops and iPads not being able to set a Wi-Fi connection as metered (like a mobile phone hotspot) and restrict data usage.

Deleted member 29280 · Dec 13, 2020

Broadband internet

dejay · Dec 13, 2020

I use fingerprint on both my android phone and ipad. Both of them require me to enter the password periodically to be able to use the fingerprint scanner.

That's fine, but it should give me a period of a day or two where I can still use fingerprint to open the phone. As of now, it just comes randomly out of nowhere and it's generally in the middle of when I want to open the phone quickly. Super annoying.

Tedmilk · Dec 13, 2020

Quick management of bluetooth connections. I have a bluetooth speaker in my living room and a different one in my kitchen. Why do I have to go into the goddanm settings of my iphone or Windows laptop just to switch between them? Give me a goddamn quick menu of all available devices, allowing me to toggle them on or off.

Tedmilk · Dec 13, 2020

Also, why do you need some 3rd party paid software just to sync your goddamn Outlook profile to whatever device you've added it to? Everything else in Outlook syncs, quick steps etc, but not signatures?

God DAMN.

Coen · Dec 13, 2020

A headset for work-from-home. So many colleagues shouting into their shitty laptop mics, TV noise blaring in the background. It could tolerate it early one, but nine months later I'm done with those people.

UnderNewOwnership · Dec 13, 2020

Tedmilk said:
Quick management of bluetooth connections. I have a bluetooth speaker in my living room and a different one in my kitchen. Why do I have to go into the goddanm settings of my iphone or Windows laptop just to switch between them? Give me a goddamn quick menu of all available devices, allowing me to toggle them on or off.

This. It's annyoing when I want to quickly switch my headset between my tablet, phone and PC. I have to dig around in the settings to tell one device to stop listening to it, or turn off Bluetooth completely.

Neo C. · Dec 13, 2020

The fact that 5 years old ultrabooks often have more port options than the newer one. Yeah, I get that companies and people want even flatter ultrabooks, but to me it seems they often don't even try. Now ironically the mid-level laptops are often better in this regard and the better overall choice if you want a practical laptop.

Like the hat? · Dec 13, 2020

iOS not letting me turn off WiFi from the quick menu anymore. It only temporarily disables it now and then it randomly keeps trying to connect to networks. Now to fully turn WiFi off I need to go into settings.

TarpitCarnivore · Dec 13, 2020

Mariolee said:
I meant accidentally closing all tabs. There have been countless times I accidentally click on the top right corner for whatever reason and it closes the whole window with like 10 tabs. I've edited my post for clarity.

There's an option in settings to warn on closing chrome

Rag · Dec 13, 2020

I'm always annoyed when streaming apps don't have the ability to turn off auto-play. I like falling asleep watching stuff, and don't want my phone playing stuff all night.

Arken · Dec 13, 2020

Unlimited bandwidth.

nekkid · Dec 13, 2020

The Albatross said:
Yeah we don't have pin though. Contactless chip is pretty common now around me, although like 95% of the time I use my phone whenever I can. I kinda doubt the pin part of chip and pin will ever be implemented.

Ive used it, but that was all in CA. I usually make at least one trip a year, and one year I went from always signing on a screen to being able to input my PIN.

turbobrick · Dec 13, 2020

Mariolee said:
I meant accidentally closing all tabs. There have been countless times I accidentally click on the top right corner for whatever reason and it closes the whole window with like 10 tabs. I've edited my post for clarity.

You can set it so it saves your last session. So if you close chrome, then open it again, all the tabs will be saved. That's what I do. So if I want to close tabs I close each one separately.

MartinB105 said:
Windows 10 still not letting me set the time correctly. I've got my BIOS set to GMT (as it should be), and Windows is set to my timezone, but the time it shows is two hours wrong (the time is correct when booted in Linux on the same PC, so it's definitely a fault in Windows).

Can't you just manually set the time? That's what I do, and I don't have to worry about Windows changing it.

Terrell · Dec 13, 2020

Radiant shade control on toasters. I know WHY it happened for a decade or so, but I can't believe it's still just an option.

Darth Karja · Dec 13, 2020

Not being able to use my iPad as a monitor, or hook consoles up to it to play.

Eoin · Dec 13, 2020

Mariolee said:
Also accidentally closing all tabs on Google Chrome. I believe in both Firefox and the old Internet Explorer there was always an extra dialogue box that asked if you actually wanted to close the whole damn window with all the tabs.

If you only use one open window for Chrome, then turn on the "continue where you left off" option on the "On startup" section of the settings menu in Chrome.

If you use multiple windows and you accidentally close one, Ctrl+Shift+T will undo that. It's the default shortcut for undoing a close tab, but it also works for entire closed Chrome windows.

SwampBastard · Dec 13, 2020

Windows 10 not having a tabbed file browser.
macOS not having a 'cut' option for files.

Mariolee · Dec 13, 2020

turbobrick said:
You can set it so it saves your last session. So if you close chrome, then open it again, all the tabs will be saved. That's what I do. So if I want to close tabs I close each one separately.

Eoin said:
If you only use one open window for Chrome, then turn on the "continue where you left off" option on the "On startup" section of the settings menu in Chrome.

If you use multiple windows and you accidentally close one, Ctrl+Shift+T will undo that. It's the default shortcut for undoing a close tab, but it also works for entire closed Chrome windows.

Yeah I know about these already, I just think it's annoying to have to reopen tabs like that when I didn't mean to close the window when this would all be avoided if they just had a warning box I could toggle on before I close the window on accident. It's ridiculous.

shadow2810 · Dec 13, 2020

macos doesn't have system wide custom UI scaling, pain in the ass whenever I use external monitor.

Mariolee · Dec 13, 2020

TarpitCarnivore said:
There's an option in settings to warn on closing chrome

Wait is there? Where specifically?

TarpitCarnivore · Dec 13, 2020

Mariolee said:
Wait is there? Where specifically?

I know I have it on the Mac OS version but it looks like it might not be on windows.

Palette Swap · Dec 13, 2020

Like the hat? said:
iOS not letting me turn off WiFi from the quick menu anymore. It only temporarily disables it now and then it randomly keeps trying to connect to networks. Now to fully turn WiFi off I need to go into settings.

I haven't had the use for it in ages, but it's staggering that long press now takes you to wifi setting rather than turn it off as it did when they first introduced that temporary thing.

Irrotational · Dec 13, 2020

RFID chips in my fingers.

A watch and notification screen visible in the back of my right hand.

Easily replaceable enhanced limbs.

Downloadable skill packages into my Brian...

The list goes on.

Autumn · Dec 13, 2020

Are backup cameras now standard?

Basic technology options that you can't believe aren't standard

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