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What's the most annoying technologies you have come across, those ideas that sound great but in the end annoy the hell out of everyone amd only leaves you angry and wanting to commit mass murder gleefully on the person who came up woth the idea.
Here are some ideas posted by bloggers on the net
1. iTunes
Iain Thomson: When iTunes first came out I was really impressed. Here was a media player that did a really good job, from the fading in and out of music to an excellent cataloguing system.
But with later versions it all started to go wrong. The software got more and more clunky and intrusive, then you couldn't download it without getting QuickTime as well.
The sharing feature sounds very good, but do you really want your co-workers to know you've got a few folk music CDs burned onto your drive, or a copy of Charlene's I've Never Been to Me that you downloaded to annoy someone with?
2. Mac OS 'classic' error messages
Shaun Nichols: No major software release in the past decade was more sorely needed than Mac OS X. The sleek, ultra-stable Unix-based offspring of Steve Jobs's NeXt project replaced a Macintosh operating system that had become badly antiquated as Apple struggled with its direction in the late 1990s.
While there was no shortage of complaints about Mac OS 8 and 9, most notably poor memory management and the lack of true multi-tasking, the thing that really made you grit your teeth was its handling of errors and crashes.
It's bad enough when your clunky, unstable operating system crashes on you. It's even worse when you can't figure out what the heck is wrong. Rather than simply being told 'the hard drive is full' or 'the application ran out of memory', users were presented with 'error type 34' and 'error type 108' messages.
3. Bluetooth
Iain Thomson: Bluetooth was such a good idea, a great way to get the cables off the desktop and free up the clutter.
But the problem was that it was too good an idea, and every manufacturer wanted to make sure they could sell you their Bluetooth devices rather than leaving it to the free market. So they started putting their own code into the software stack, and before you knew it connecting a Bluetooth device was a gamble.
Then there are the headsets. In days of yore if someone was walking down the street yammering away at themselves you'd put them in a waistcoat with long wrap-around sleeves and house them where they couldn't harm themselves. Now the streets are full of people having animated discussions, and it's difficult to spot the oddballs.
4. Terms & Conditions
Iain Thomson: The devil may have the best tunes, but I'm willing to bet he's got a fairly well stocked legal department as well, turning out endlessly long T&Cs. You've all seen these things: long lists of what you can and cannot do with an application, what the company can do to you in return if you break them and probably a legal indemnity in case you get electrocuted just by pressing the power button. You may have seen them, but have you ever read one?
Basically the T&Cs are there to cover the backside of whoever's selling you the product in question. They are long-winded, frequently incomprehensible and usually a complete waste of time.
A case in point. Bill Gates was giving an address at a US university and, after he had finished, a student brought up a copy of his Windows 95 CD and asked Big Bill to sign it. Gates refused, saying that it was his CD and not the student's, and then recommended that the bewildered fan read the T&Cs that came with it. It turns out he was right: by some convoluted logic the student didn't own the CD, just the software it contained.
5.iPhone spelling correction
Shaun Nichols: I must say that the iPhone is a really, really cool device. Most of the features are completely intuitive, and the rest are learned within a matter of minutes.
There is, however, one feature that at times makes me nostalgic for my old clamshell Motorola. The iPhone's auto-correct feature is terrible. I know it's well intentioned, and with any messaging system, particularly one that uses a touch-screen keyboard, spelling correction is essential. The problem is that the iPhone uses the space bar to accept it. In other words, what you type gets auto-corrected when you move on to the next word, whether you wanted to change it or not.
6. Windows Vista
Iain Thomson: Vista is annoying for a number of reasons. Firstly it got my goat because it took so long. Bill Gates was originally talking about it coming out in 2004 but the deadline kept retreating faster than the Elephant Man's blind date.
Then there was the software itself. At first Vista was billed as a ground up rewrite of Windows with security built in from scratch. As the deadlines whistled past, more and more was cut out of the operating system until we were left with a tinkered version of XP with a flashy, and resource-hungry, user interface.
As the deadline for launch was finally set for January 2007, hardware manufacturers kicked up a stink, pointing out that this would leave them with stock on the shelves as no-one would buy during the important Christmas season.
So Microsoft came up with the Vista Capable sticker for hardware that could apparently run the new operating system. In fact, some machines barely could and Microsoft is now in the courts trying to sort that little mess out.
When it finally did come out, and in spite of the long delays, device drivers weren't ready. So you had a spiffy new operating system that refused to recognise your add-ons. It also had the annoying habit of producing more pop-up windows saying 'Are you sure?' than any previous operating system. So, all-in-all, quite annoying.
7. Microsoft Office Assistant
Shaun Nichols: Many people don't like someone looking over their shoulder while they work, while others get irritated when backseat drivers tell them what to do. The Office Assistant combined both irritating traits with a dose of annoying cartoon characters thrown in.
Just the idea of a talking paper clip that watches what you do and tries to correct or reformat your work is more than a bit irritating and even slightly creepy. In practice, it's all those things and more.
'Clippy' has taken his place among the upper-echelons of a very formidable pack of irritating Microsoft products. Thankfully, he was removed from the latest version of Office.
8. Are you sure?
Iain Thomson: In the good old days of DOS computing, when men were men and a command line was the only control you needed, erasing data was simple. You told the computer to erase something and it did so. If you made a mistake you learned the hard way not to do it again.
But all that changed with the introduction of the graphical user interface (GUI). Now, if you try to do almost anything, the computer starts second-guessing you. Are you sure you want to delete that file? Well let's see, I highlighted it and pressed the delete key. That's a pretty clear indication that I wanted the thing off my computer.
9. Voice recognition systems
Shaun Nichols: What starts with 'account' and ends with 'go **** yourself'? That's right, a call to your bank's automated call system. Voice recognition was designed to be a replacement to the old 'press one for ...' system which was highly irritating in its own right.
The problem was that most systems don't really account for things like accents or different pronunciations, meaning that, unless you talk like the guy from movie phone, you're in trouble. If you're calling a system in a foreign country it becomes almost comedic.
10. Pop-up ads
Shaun Nichols: Sometime in the roaring 1990s, an enterprising advertising mind thought it would be a good idea to use pop-up browser windows to display advertisements. I like to think that there is a special spot reserved in Hell for that person, right next to the composer of the Meow Mix jingle and the cast of Friends.
The pop-up add has become perhaps the most annoying single thing on the internet. Even worse, they can actually cause browser crashes and result in identity theft and malware installations.
The business of stopping pop-ups has become quite serious, as pretty much every recent browser release has installed some sort of pop-up blocking feature. That doesn't stop advertisers from continuing to use them, however.
Last edited by Detomah; 10-12-2008 at 22:19..
Reason: fixed a bold bit on number 7 as I kept skipping past it.
It has to be SMS text messaging for me.
Very little could ever be more annoying than talking to someone when they suddenly pick up their bloody mobile and start texting an unknown person about an unknown thing. It's enough to make you paranoid, they could be texting your girlfriend that you just said you would do a murder in order to shag Rachel Stevens. Or texting a mutual friend to inform them you have a bogey hanging out of your nostril.
Or when they receive a text and read it and laugh, but don't tell you what was so fucking funny.
It's almost enough to make you want to punch a perfectly innocent (but incredibly rude) person in the throat.
It has to be SMS text messaging for me.
Very little could ever be more annoying than talking to someone when they suddenly pick up their bloody mobile and start texting an unknown person about an unknown thing. It's enough to make you paranoid, they could be texting your girlfriend that you just said you would do a murder in order to shag Rachel Stevens. Or texting a mutual friend to inform them you have a bogey hanging out of your nostril.
Or when they receive a text and read it and laugh, but don't tell you what was so fucking funny.
It's almost enough to make you want to punch a perfectly innocent (but incredibly rude) person in the throat.
That gets to me as well. What annoys me in particular is the wimpy "yeah" and "sure" noises that come out of them while they pretend they're listening to you. A bit like when you're playing a game and someone starts talking to you, but at least you didn't start playing mid conversation.
Yeah text messages is a good one. Also pretty much anything to do with mobile phones in general.
Shitty cameras and video recorders on phones are the worst. People seem to love showing me their crappy pics and videos that are absolutely impossible to make out, with this horrible tinny rattling sound.
Also stand-by functions on PC's and electronics in general annoy me. Completely pointless, and I always end up hitting the button by accident. I always pry it off of new keyboards but can't do that with the laptop
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