Top 5 tech annoyances
Tom Merritt tells us his top five annoyances in tech and why they are frustrating.
Technology is our job, it’s our recreation, I daresay for many of us, it’s our life.
And it can be ANNOYING.
Those annoyances have changed over the years. In 1996, I know some had to do with Trumpet Winsock. What are they these days?
I did an informal poll of my friends in tech to find out what they find most annoying about tech these days.
SEE: The CIO’s guide to quantum computing (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
Compare these to your own. These are my top 5 annoyances in tech.
- Battery life. I’ll be honest, batteries have gotten a lot better but they’re still not something you can forget about outside of a reader or a watch. In fact, I find that with processors and storage at adequate levels, the battery is often the thing that drives me to replace a device. Especially as often it’s a lot of trouble to replace the battery.
- Software updates. Everything about them. The fact that they interrupt what you’re doing. The fact that they bug you with that little badge on the app icon. The fact that many updates cause things to get worse not better. And yet, you should always do them, especially for security reasons. Software updates: Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.
- Autocorrect. I am a bad typer, especially on mobile. And yet, autocorrect seems to introduce errors more often than it catches my mistakes. At best, it’s a wash. I’ve tried turning autocorrect off, though, and I see just how bad my typing really is. But at least I see it! Autocorrect often sneaks in and changes words when you’re not looking! But I still say autocorrect is more auto than correct.
- Passwords. I have hope for this one. The FIDO alliance and all the major tech companies are moving toward a passwordless future, and we can’t get there fast enough. Password managers and their integration into mobile have helped. But passwords can’t be gone too soon.
- The Internet. Granted it makes all this tech compelling and useful. But it still does unfathomable things, like not let you download that thing you must. Like work fine on your videoconference until the meeting actually starts then grind to a crawl. I know. It’s really unfathomable that the internet works at all. But because it’s so good, it makes it so much more annoying when it goes bad.
Those are my annoyances. What are yours? Let us know.
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