c/bad-tech-predictions

My cousin in 2011 swore tablets would kill desktops, so I built my PC anyway

Back in 2011 my cousin told me to skip building a desktop because iPads were going to replace everything. I spent $900 on parts anyway for gaming and video editing. That tower still runs fine today with a new SSD, while he's on his third tablet because they keep slowing down. Anyone else get bad advice from relatives about hardware that ended up being totally backwards?

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garcia.charles•2d ago

That 2006 "iPhone will flop" forum thread I kept open for years

Some guy named TechTitan99 wrote a whole 3 page rant about how nobody would want a phone without a physical keyboard, I still think about that when I swipe to text. Anyone else ever screenshot a bad take and hang onto it forever?

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noah_palmer42•2d ago

Picked the $150 e-reader over the $600 tablet in 2019, still using it daily

I was in Best Buy before the lockdown and had to choose between a Kindle Oasis and an iPad for reading articles and PDFs. The tablet was shiny but I mostly wanted something for bedtime reading and the guy next to me said the e-ink screen was easier on eyes. I went with the cheaper option and honestly it's held up through 5 years of drops and dog training. The tablet would have been dead by now anyway. Anyone else make the low end choice and somehow dodge buyer's remorse for this long?

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the_jade•2d ago

That 2009 article claiming DVDs would outlast streaming still haunts me

I was in a Cleveland library last week reading a tech magazine from 2009 that swore physical media would dominate because internet speeds couldn't handle HD. Then my nephew asked what a DVD was and I realized that prediction aged like milk, so what other 'sure things' from that era are we still laughing about?

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skyler_craig•4d ago

Found a 1999 article saying the internet would kill TV by 2002. TV is still here and thriving.

I was digging through old tech magazines at a thrift store in Austin last weekend and found a piece predicting broadcast TV would be dead within three years of Y2K. The author was so sure streaming and dial-up forums would replace everything, but here we are 25 years later and my parents still watch cable every night. What really got me was how they missed that people want shared experiences, not just convenience. Any other predictions from that era that aged this poorly?

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emma684•6d ago

That 1999 article claiming we'd all have robot butlers by 2025

Found a scanned copy of a tech magazine from 1999 in my dad's garage last week. The writer swore we'd all have robot butlers doing our dishes and laundry by now. Meanwhile I'm still arguing with my smart speaker about the weather. The funny part is they got the small stuff right, like video calls, but missed the huge stuff like phones being our whole lives. I keep wondering what 2025 predictions we're making now that will look just as dumb in 25 years. Anyone else got a favorite old prediction that aged like milk?

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cameron770•8d ago

That 1995 AT&T video predicted we'd all be doing video calls by 2010, but not like this

Found a VHS rip of an AT&T promo from 95 on archive.org last night. They showed people using wall mounted screens to video chat and share files, pretty close actually. But they also had a clip of someone 'printing' a newspaper from a fax machine at breakfast and a robot serving coffee. My phone does the video calls, but I still burn my toast every Tuesday morning because my smart speaker cant sync with my toaster. Did anyone else grow up on those 90s future tech videos that got the big stuff right but the daily stuff hilariously wrong?

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taylor.betty•8d ago

That "10 minute" printer IP fix took me 3 days in Austin

The old article said changing a static IP on a networked printer is a quick settings tweak. I spent 72 hours across 4 different tech support chats because the driver kept grabbing the old address from a cached profile in Windows. You need to flush DNS, reset the printer's network card, and reboot the router, which nobody mentions. Has anyone else had a simple fix balloon into a weekend project?

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faith_schmidt•11d ago

The "Future of Email" article said we'd all be done by 2015, my inbox disagrees

I found a 1998 magazine piece predicting email would be completely dead by 2015, replaced by something called "holographic messaging," and I laughed so hard I spilled coffee. Then I spent last Tuesday clearing 12 years of old tenant correspondence from my property management inbox, which took 6 hours and three ctrl+F sessions just to find one lease addendum from 2017. Has anyone else dug up a hilariously wrong tech prophecy while doing something totally mundane like archiving files, or is it just my luck that the worst predictions always surface when I already have a headache?

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olivia_lewis9•13d ago

A stranger at the library changed my mind about VR headsets failing

I used to laugh at those old 1990s VR predictions, you know, the ones saying we'd all be living in virtual worlds by 2000. Last Tuesday I was killing time at the library downtown and this older guy, maybe 70, was reading a worn-out tech magazine from 1994. He pointed at an article about how VR would replace classrooms and said he'd seen that same promise come and go three times now. Then he said something like, 'The tech was never the problem, the hype always outruns the wiring.' It hit me different because he wasn't mocking it, he was kind of sad about it. Now I actually search for those old predictions to see which ones were just a few years too early, not totally wrong. Anyone else ever rethink a bad tech take after talking to someone who lived through multiple hype cycles?

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jake_kelly24•18d ago

That 2004 article predicting flying cars by 2020 still makes me laugh

I was cleaning out my dad's garage last month and found a stack of old tech magazines, one had a piece claiming we'd all be commuting in personal aircraft within 16 years. The funny part is, we can barely keep our drones from hitting trees, let alone trust 50,000 amateur pilots in the sky. Has anyone else dug up a hilariously wrong prediction from the early 2000s that aged like milk?

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eva_lewis•20d ago

That 1999 article about smart fridges said they'd order our groceries, mine just beeps at me

Found a copy of Popular Mechanics from 1999 at a yard sale in Tucson and it predicted my fridge would auto-order milk by now, but mine can't even dispense ice without a 20 second delay. Has anyone else kept one of these old mags and compared their actual kitchen tech to what they promised?

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carter.julia•21d ago

Hot off the press: a 1994 magazine that said we'd all have jetpacks by now

I was cleaning out my dad's garage last month and dug up a 1994 Popular Mechanics issue that predicted personal jetpacks for daily commutes by 2020. The article even had a diagram of a guy strapping one on outside his office like it was a briefcase. Meanwhile I can barely get my smart speaker to play the right playlist, let alone fly to work. Anyone else got a stash of old predictions that aged like milk, and what's the funniest one in there?

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leor37•23d ago

That old 1999 'DVDs will flop' article got me thinking

I used to laugh at the guy who wrote that DVD would never catch on because VHS rentals were too convenient, but then I found my own stack of Blu-rays I haven't touched in 6 years while everything I watch is streaming. It hit me that every tech prediction is just someone guessing from their current habits, not the future. Anyone else keep an old prediction they were dead wrong about, or am I the only one who still has a physical media shelf collecting dust?

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emma684•24d ago

The 2015 article that said smartwatches would replace phones by now

Found a 2015 piece from a tech blog claiming by 2025 nobody would carry a phone, just a watch with a tiny screen. I spent 4 hours last night trying to get my watch to show a bus ticket QR code in Chicago and it kept failing. Anyone else still lugging a phone around while their watch just tracks steps?

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scott.grace•26d ago

That 1999 piece on smart fridges said we'd have meal planning robots by 2005

I was digging through some old tech magazines my dad kept in the garage, from like 1999 and 2000. There was this big feature about the smart kitchen, and it went hard on how fridges would scan your groceries, suggest recipes, and basically run your whole meal prep. It said by 2005 we'd all have these. Here we are in 2025 and my fridge just makes ice and hums at me. My phone can do the grocery list thing, and I still plan dinners on a paper note stuck to the door. What actually happened is the internet and Amazon got big, not the fridge becoming a computer. I get that the tech was too clunky and expensive back then, but nobody talks about how the whole idea just got absorbed into other devices. Anybody else find old kitchen tech predictions that just fizzled out for a different reason than people say?

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the_amy•26d ago

That 2003 article about flying cars had me convinced we'd have them by now

I was sorting through old tech magazines last month and found a piece from 2003 predicting flying cars by 2025. We're past that now and I still sit in traffic for 45 minutes just to cross from Arlington to DC. The article even had mockups of these sleek personal aircraft, but my commute is just a bus and a metro. Has anyone else dug up a wild old prediction that totally missed the mark on something you actually deal with daily?

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pat719•28d ago

Rant: 2007 article said we'd all have jetpacks by 2015, my commute says otherwise

I was digging through an old Wired issue from 2007 and found a piece predicting flying cars for everyone by 2015. Fast forward to today, I spent 2 hours stuck on I-405 near Bellevue last Tuesday because some Tesla ran out of battery in the carpool lane. The wildest tech miss was an 1984 Popular Mechanics that swore we'd have robotic butlers doing our laundry by 2000. Still hand-folding my socks, so how are we this bad at guessing what actually takes off?

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xena_williams•29d ago

The 2004 article that said we'd all have flying cars by now, but my cheap printer died instead

Found an old tech magazine in my dad's garage from 2004. It had this whole section on how by 2024 we'd be commuting in flying cars and robots would cook dinner. Meanwhile I just spent 40 minutes fighting with my $80 printer that still won't connect to wifi. The predictions were so confident about the flashy stuff, but nobody predicted that the boring tech like printers would still be a mess. Has anyone else noticed how the 'future they promised' skipped the stuff that actually annoys us daily?

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barnes.morgan•29d ago

The 2009 article predicting we'd all be using robot butlers missed the real point

I was talking with my uncle last week, he's 68 and retired from a machine shop on 4th Street. He pulled out a 2009 tech magazine that said by 2025 every home would have a robot doing chores. Instead we got smart speakers that argue with us and a fridge that yells about the door being open. We laughed, but then he said the real miss wasn't the hardware, it was that they thought we'd want less control. That hit me because the same article got everything else wrong too, no one predicted we'd be fighting over update schedules and privacy walls. Has anyone else read an old prediction that was wrong in a way that taught you more about people than the tech itself?

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xena_williams•1mo ago

That 2008 article about the iPhone killing physical keyboards still bugs me

I dug up an old tech blog from 2008 that swore physical keyboards would beat touchscreens because people need to feel the keys. Meanwhile my phone's swipe typing just corrected three typos before I even hit send, and my last two laptops had zero keyboard travel. How do we still trust these hot takes when the people writing them never even used the tech they're trashing?

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bencampbell•1mo ago

That 1996 VHS repair video told me to rewind tapes with a pencil, ruined my player after 2 months

Found an old tape repair guide from my uncle's basement in Akron that swore manual pencil rewinding was safer than the deck, then the ribbon snapped inside my VCR and I had to spend $80 fixing it, anyone else trust retro advice from 90s instructional tapes and get burned?

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eva_lewis•1mo ago

Rant: that 1998 article about CDs killing vinyl aged like milk at my record shop

I work at a used record store in Austin and we literally sell 8 times more vinyl than CDs now. Back in 1998 some tech rag said digital discs would make records obsolete within 5 years. I still have the magazine clipping pinned behind the register as a joke. Last week a 19 year old came in asking if we had any original pressings of Dark Side of the Moon, not a CD, not a download. Anyone else's local shop seeing this same flip in the last couple years?

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maxhart•1mo ago

The 2006 article saying phones would kill cameras aged poorly when I went to Yosemite

I keep a stack of old tech mags in my garage for laughs. Last week I found a 2006 piece claiming by 2015 nobody would carry a separate camera. Then I remembered my trip to Yosemite in 2015. I brought my Canon T3i AND my flip phone for calls. Everyone in my group did the same. The article said phone cameras would get 'good enough'. Well, good enough for what, texting a blurry elk? My 34 shots from that trip still hang in my office. My phone pics from the same trip look like wet paper. So who was right? The article or the people who brought both anyway? Anyone else keep gear an old article said was doomed?

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nora_wells58•1mo ago

That 1994 BusinessWeek cover about the 'death of the internet' still cracks me up

Was cleaning out my dad's garage in Toledo last month and found the actual magazine. The cover showed a guy smashing a computer with a hammer, predicting the internet would collapse under its own hype by 2000. I laughed so hard I had to sit down. We were chatting online about it in 1997 with 56k modems, but somehow it was supposed to die. Anyone else have a stack of old tech doom predictions hiding somewhere?

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