The Year's Dumbest Moments in Tech

harrymcc writes "Over at TIME.com, I rounded up the year's dumbest moments in technology. Yes, the launch of Healthcare.gov is included, as are Edward Snowden's revelations. But so are a bunch of people embarrassing themselves on Twitter, both BlackBerry and Lenovo hiring celebrities to (supposedly) design products, the release of glitchy products ranging from OS X 10.9 Mavericks to the new Yahoo Mail, and much more." I can't think of anything dumber than the NSA's claims that metadata isn't data.

Comments

Mavericks was glitchy?

[mveloso]

Seems fine to me. You must have mistaken it for iOS 7.

Re:Mavericks was glitchy?

[redmid17]

Came here to say this. Haven't had a peep of any issues, and it's made my laptops perform better (battery, wifi) in a few ways. Definitely nothing negative about it from my POV.

Re:Mavericks was glitchy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mavericks is glitchy.

It broke a lot of things in the Adobe suites that still haven't been fixed (yeah, I know this is partly Adobe's fault- but the backwards compatibility with Mavericks kinda stinks, especially for a closed platform). It introduced a lot of bugs relating to App Nap and the new memory compression, both of which are unfortunately opt-out rather then opt-in (as they should have been). There's still issues with ColorSync (going back to 10.7), which they kinda improved but also messed up with the way ICNS (icon) files are rendered (which now appear over saturated and darker then they should). Likewise, file labelling was replaced with that abomination called "Tags", which is such a horrible hap-hazard hack on top of Spotlight and the Finder that I'm surprised they even released it.

I'm sure a lot of this stuff will be resolved in the next version or two, but the unfortunate issue with Apple these days is that their operating systems are in a perpetual state of "almost working" and "not quite there yet". By the time you get 10.x.4 or 10.x.5, they're already working on the next major version that comes with it's own useless features that nobody wants or needs, and the existing features are basically abandoned and left to stagnate.

IMHO; their yearly release cycle is the worst thing to happen to OS X in a long time, and the effects of that are starting to become apparent in operating systems like Mavericks. It will only get worse until they decide enough is enough, and the next version will come when it's done (remember the days of10.6? We got all the way up to 10.6.8, and it was a damned fine OS as a result).

The hands down winner

[dugancent]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass

Re:The hands down winner

[Taco Cowboy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass

Apparently your hands are not placed down enough.

The REAL hands down winner:

http://beta.slashdot.org/

Windows 8

[SpaceManFlip]

Surely the list must include the "Angry Fruit Salad" operating system that sucks worse than anything previously offered?

Yeah, I bought it cheap and I tried it. $40 and it sits unused currently because even after installing Classic Shell and doing a lot of unpaid work to fix what they broke, I still hate it.

Re:Snowden was a dumb moment in tech?

[SpaceManFlip]

Snowden is the man. He accomplished what many previous whistleblowers attempted who were told "you don't have any proof, shut up." The shills who froth and scream traitor are on the side of evil, or they simply don't see that others had tried and failed and he did what he had to to expose the truth that needed exposing.

Big nerd with big balls, Snowden.

hahahahahal0lz!!!!11!

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSA is spying on us all... and their powerpoint slides are ugly! HAHAAAHAAH!!!1!one!!11

Look - I'm not going to try and make the argument that we should all stop what we're doing and go on humor strikes until they shut down the NSA. But seriously, if you're so desperate for column inches that you feel the need to spin the Snowden affair as "dumb", then you really need to ask yourself whether you're Part of the Problem.

Tip for next time: be funnier.

Re:Snowden was a dumb moment in tech?

[amRadioHed]

Actually quite often sitting around waiting to be arrested is exactly the point of civil disobedience. You can't really show the injustice of a bad law without demonstrating the consequences of the law. However this doesn't apply to Snowden. He wasn't trying to demonstrate that the laws surrounding classified data are wrong, he was trying to show that the activities the data documented were wrong so really there would be no point in letting himself get arrested. It wouldn't have furthered his cause in any way.

Re:Snowden was a dumb moment in tech?

[TrollstonButterbeans]

"What he did was to intentionally NOT face the consequences."

The consequences decided by who? An out-of-control government where the court system has effectively ruled time-again that government has no limits?

Yes, he would be detained without trial and rights --- just like what Manning is enduring. Does Manning have any free speech rights? No.

Okay. Your argument just lost and lost hard.

Don't judge me, I'm just the messenger.