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What is a piece of technology that a friend hyped up but ended up failing?

Mahnmut

Member
Ah I remember this one. I have to check but I think some units were released to the public for a very short time.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
I don't have a friend, but I did know a person who assumed that this device was the revolution in mobiles.

1366_2000.jpeg

now you're sidetalkin'!

talkin-20.jpg
 
Remember dedicated Aegia PhysX cards?

I remember arguing with someone at work who thought this was the big next thing and soon it will be standard on all PCs.

I correctly predicted that dedicated physics accel cards would not take off. And that as GPU became more general purpose these kinds of tasks would just move there. Or just move back to CPU as they became more and more parelel.

This was back in 2024/2025
 
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Remember dedicated Aegia PhysX cards?

I remember arguing with someone at work who thought this was the big next thing and soon it will be standard on all PCs.

I correctly predicted that as GPU became more general purpose these kinds of tasks would just move there. Or just move back to CPU as they became more and more parelel.

This was back in 2024/2025

Are you from the future?
 

kurisu_1974

is on perm warning for being a low level troll
I have a buddy that likes overpriced Teenage Engineering stuff and considers getting that Rabbit device.
 
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joedan

Member
Had a friend who thought Google Plus social media platform was the next big thing. Convinced me to join. He was the only one of my friends ever on there. lol.


Kinda different, and not quite a friend, but I know a guy who didn’t want to give up on BlackBerry phones. He was an evangelist until the end…then he went quiet.
 

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
When talking about failed technology I think motion controls in gaming, the Wii was a very smart move and Sony countered it with the ps move but the fact is motion controls are not relevant today.
 

killatopak

Member
While I don’t think it failed since it still has a collector’s niche even today but I had high hopes for Blackberry phones.
 
I had a cinemafile friend that wouldn't shut up about how Laserdiscs were better in every way than DVDs.


I loved Windows Phone OS, but yea, the app support was a death knell for the platform. They were working on that compatibility layer that would allow Android apps to run natively on Windows Phone OS, but they never released it. Probably had lots of security issues and problems that they didn't want to spend money on by that point.
Laserdisc did have uncompressed audio and sounded far better than dvd. The picture was also almost as good as dvd on good prints too.
 

AREYOUOKAY?

Member
I dunno if he was hyping it but when a friend was talking about the Atari Jaguar and its 64-bits I was curious of what it was like compared to the Nintendo 64.

Then I saw screenshots of its games a couple of years later and well yeah.
 
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Pejo

Member
Laserdisc did have uncompressed audio and sounded far better than dvd. The picture was also almost as good as dvd on good prints too.
Sure, I guess in a few specific metrics you could argue that it was better, but the discs were huge and impractical to collect/store, and very fragile. It was just never gonna be a technology that caught on with the mass market. And I don't think it could have lived long enough to become a hot retro item like vinyl records, either.
 
Vinyl
Sure, I guess in a few specific metrics you could argue that it was better, but the discs were huge and impractical to collect/store, and very fragile. It was just never gonna be a technology that caught on with the mass market. And I don't think it could have lived long enough to become a hot retro item like vinyl records, either.
Vinyl isn't a format that lasts long either. Both vinyl and laserdiscs are analog technologies.
 
Yeah, even something as simple as the stock messaging app was significantly better than the competition at the time.

The lack of third party apps though was infuriating. In retrospect Microsoft should have straight up paid to start porting popular apps because if they did they might still be a competitor.
They actually DID pay for ports of apps. The problem with this strategy is how do you pay all 400,000 small devs on the App Store and Google Play? And for the big guys like Facebook, do you have to keep paying them forever to do more than just release the app once and then abandon it? Turns out, that's exactly what happened, and MS refused to keep paying. So the Facebook app never got updated and eventually stopped working entirely.

They have the same problem with Xbox, and it was so intractable that eventually they had no choice but to just acquire entire studios because that was literally the only way they could force them to keep developing Xbox games. And obviously MS wasn't going to try and acquire the entire company Facebook just to force them to develop for Windows Phone.
 
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Trunx81

Member
MiniDisc WAS amazing and I was the friend convincing other people to buy it. When they saw the convenience, they even did. My Ex even had a MiniDisc radio in her car installed. Those little fuckers where durable as hell, my old MD from Sony was still working when I cleaned the house out in 2022. Before MP3, there surely wasn´t anything better on the market. At least for taping your songs from the radio or TV (my dad used to grab a whole night of MTV on VHS, we went through it the next morning and copied the songs on MD).
 
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