Back to digital: Shoddy Goods 111
0In some ways it’s amazing how the phone can do everything that took a dozen different devices before. I’d hate to have to carry around a GPS device and a music player and a texting device in my pocket. But on the other hand…it might be nice to just have a dedicated alarm clock on my bedside table instead of making sure I set my phone up to serve yet another purpose. What things do you have or want that could technically be done by your phone but just might be a little better on their own?
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Surprised you didn’t get one of the brown Zunes from Woot.
https://www.woot.com/offers/microsoft-zune-30gb-digital-media-player-brown
For years, we had a Bose Soundtouch box in the kitchen. It has six buttons that can be programmed for radios stations, Spotify playlists or anything via WIFI. However, being able to start music while cooking with the press of ONE physical button was just great. Bose however discontinued the service and now the speaker is only a bluetooth box anymore… I did not find a replacement yet; might need to look into internet radios!
Proud owner of a Brown Zune and a red Rio Forge MP3 player. I’m afraid the Zune reached the end of the road about a decade ago, but I’m pretty sure the Rio player is still functional. Now I’m curious. I will have to try and find it.
first let me say the important thing first:
I don’t have a cellphone/smartphone.
I have never had a cellphone/smartphone.
I do not plan on ever owning a cellphone/smartphone.
My main music consumption at home is through my (old) Logitech “Boom” and Logitech “Radio” that I use to play the 1,700 CDs that I have ripped to my (ancient) PC.
My main music consumption in the car is a Kenwood headunit that I despise that I use to play . … music that was ripped from my 1,700 CDs and converted to MP3 and put on two thumbdrives.
I despise the Kenwood because, like all modern HUs, everything is Apple this & Android that and it sucks so badly at navigating folders that I usually just let it play one CD after another w/o trying to select anything.
My old Alpine had a much better interface and was probably circa 2008 or 2012.
back before everything was phone driven and companies wanted to make something good for thumbdrive users.
For me, a cool modern/retro device would be some kind of Raspberry Pi based thing that played music from thumbdrives and could handle stuff that was in a decent (not compressed to shit) format.
AND had a good search/menu system for finding stuff.
I dread the day my Boom & Radio crap out and I have to figure out how to play my PC based music.
Three words: retro game emulator.
Sure, my phone has games. But having a thing that looks a bit like a Gameboy with every game I could want on it (up to parts of the PS2 era) is a much better experience. Play the games, put it down.
I have not thought of this through Jason’s window of the phone being the same place you pay the bills and punch the clock and get surveilled. It makes a lot of sense.
@djslack my bf bought one that has a 1000 games on it that looks like the original PSP. He loves that thing
I like some separate devices. I own 2 old click wheel iPods and I’m super salty I can’t connect it to my truck with the cable. I use one in the house on a sound dock. One of my friends made fun of my GPS, but that’s because they haven’t spent enough time in places where a dedicated gps works and a phone doesn’t.
I still use my Palm Pilot as an alarm clock. It isn’t jarring when it wakes me up. I also have a Radio Shack clock/radio I bought at the Radio Shack that was in my town. Brings in NHPR radio just fine, especially on Sunday mornings for Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.
My 160GB iPod Classic is sitting in a drawer loaded with music, ready and waiting. I’ve instructed my wife that if I end up in dementia, to hook it up and put it on album shuffle.
I have an iHome alarm clock/speaker that my iPod sits in the dock and I put it across the room to make me get out of bed to shut it off. And a Panasonic knock off of the Bose radio that i can put that same iPod in the dock and play whatever music I have downloaded
I still have a couple of Sansa players around
I keep an analog clock on the wall of the pool house so you can see it from the pool.
I keep dedicated flashlights scattered about (because the phone’s sucks)
I use a Canon (40x glass ultra-telephoto) point and shoot as my primary camera when I’m traveling.
I finally gave up my Ooma within the last year.
I generally print boarding passes at the airport.
I use print out/hard copies of travel documents (hotel reservations, rental car reservations, cruise tickets, excursion receipts, etc) in a manilla folder when we travel.
So, yeah… I hear you.
(Since I’m basically retired I very rarely need to get up at any set time so don’t keep a dedicated alarm clock. Don’t really care what time it is that I actually roll out of bed. Plus my wife is one of those people that loves to be in absolute darkness when she sleeps so the light from the alarm clock used to annoy the s*** out of her.)
@chienfou Still using my Obihai for “landline” phone. I suppose that (since they are no longer updating it) it might stop working at some point, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes. So far, so good.
I bought a digital alarm clock with a large display that you can read from across the room. But my wife says the light disturbs her sleep, so she puts something in front of the display to block it at night. Whaddaya gonna do…?
@macromeh
Her needs outweigh your wishes… Wise man!