What are the worst tech purchases you or your family have ever made?
I watched a video recently and wanted to know what other have bought over the years.
What are the worst tech purchases you or your family have ever made?
I watched a video recently and wanted to know what other have bought over the years.
iPads. The first one was a hand-me-down only a few years old, but no longer getting iOS updates, so no apps would run anymore. Safari would crash on most web sites. Gmail worked, but holy hell was the keyboard beyond terrible. I used it to read textbooks in PDF. Couldn’t revive it with an alternate OS. The next one was a gift; I thought I’d use it for NOAA navigation charts on my boat. Nope, the PDF reader crashed out on ~1MB files. (I had to use my budget Android phone instead.) Now it’s no longer supported, and not even useful as a Home Assistant dashboard, because of the old OS. It’s a (fully-functional) piece of e-waste now.
Locked hardware? Just say no!
I bought my first iPad back in 2011, and, being a Mac and iPhone user at the time, it was great. I’ve had a few over the years, and always considered them indispensible.
Then I got a 6th gen mini. I didn’t actually buy it, it was a gift from my dad who has a tendency to buy Apple stuff tax free when he’s on holiday on New Hampshire. My one was £600 at the time. For its utility it’s worth maybe half of that.
The first thing that pissed me off was that Apple decided that it wasn’t worthy of Stage Manager. I understand not wanting it to be able to run a multiple app desktop on such a relatively small screen, but you can’t even hook it up to an external display. Or, you can, but it doesn’t scale. It’s just a bigger version of what’s on the iPad’s screen. The mini is a PERFECT candidate for Stage Manager. Small, portable, easy to carry about. But no, because Apple.
Then iOS 26 came along, and suddenly every iPad was getting Stage Manager. Finally, I can use my little iPad to its fullest potential.
No.
My one still doesn’t support scaling. So I can have multiple apps, but just bigger.
Then I replaced my iPhone with a Pixel running Graphene, and started using Linux a lot more, and suddenly, out of the Apple ecosystem, my little iPad made even less sense. It can technically run SyncThing, but it’s so restricted as to be functionally useless. So 95% of its use now is as a MIDI controller for Mixxx on my Mac when I’m doing my radio show.
£600 for a half-baked MIDI controller is pretty fucking steep.
Dell Android Tablet. This was brand new with the purchase of a Dell laptop but no longer getting anndroid updates, so no apps would run anymore. Chrome would crash on most web sites. Gmail worked, but holy hell was the keyboard beyond terrible. I used it to read textbooks in PDF. Couldn’t revive it with an alternate OS.
There wasn’t a next crappy Android tablet.