The Death Of Industrial Design And The Era Of Dull Electronics
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Samsung Gleam. That was peak cellphone.
team moto razr here!
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Flagship stuff is just optimized.
You probally wouldn’t be surprised to find out a bunch of interesting designs of the past had durability and longevity issues.
Yeah people often mention the funny phone designs from the 2000's but they also praise the Nokia 3310 for its reliability.
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OK. Suppose so.
I've just been reminded that in the wonderful 70s people felt a bit similarly suppressed and the future dim as compared to 60s as we do now as compared to 00s.
Nothing is new.
What is important, though, is that nothing existing has been given to us be benevolent or harsh, kind or cruel gods. It has all been built by people just like us.
To dream and to work are the most important parts.
Been reading Vonnegut again and it's astonishing how he's calling out the exact same societal ills we have today. Only thing he missed was global warming and that's because many in the 70s thought we were headed for an ice age.
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Rather Unihertz. They basically have just the unusual phones.
Currently I have Ulefone Armor 24, but I'd want something like Oukitel WP100 Titan. Even larger and crazier.
Look at that 33Ah thing:
Almost brick size now. It's so ridiculous I want it. After all, what I have now isn't far from if, it's just that this is even bigger.
3.6cm (1.4 inch) thick, 877g (1.93lbs) heavy.
But somehow it still can't fit a headphone jack and MicroSD card slot, so that's a no for me.
Lost my Oukitel WP33 Pro.
Really neat phone, weight like a Colt .45, and about as easy to carry.
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Calling the big grey bezels of old TVs stylish is certainly an interesting take.
Yeah, and personally, I don't feel any wish to go back to skeuomorphism. It is funny to look back to and feel some nostalgia, but I think it would look cheap now if they did it like 15 years ago. Maybe iOS' glassy-ui will create some elements that people like about it, but they luckily did not move back to busy ui element backgrounds.
I do partially agree with his buttons and app-points. I dislike how we are forced to download apps for everything, including the questionable tracking software.
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Its good. Just how laptop has been solved so is smartphone right now. I like my tiny black bricks, keep your corporate style to yourself.
Laptop has been solved?, then why are the hinges on most of my laptops garbage that become creaky and eventually break.
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Yeah, and personally, I don't feel any wish to go back to skeuomorphism. It is funny to look back to and feel some nostalgia, but I think it would look cheap now if they did it like 15 years ago. Maybe iOS' glassy-ui will create some elements that people like about it, but they luckily did not move back to busy ui element backgrounds.
I do partially agree with his buttons and app-points. I dislike how we are forced to download apps for everything, including the questionable tracking software.
I do partially agree with his buttons and app-points. I dislike how we are forced to download apps for everything, including the questionable tracking software.
I also agree with this.
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Been reading Vonnegut again and it's astonishing how he's calling out the exact same societal ills we have today. Only thing he missed was global warming and that's because many in the 70s thought we were headed for an ice age.
Disco Elysium is a more recent look.
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Laptop has been solved?, then why are the hinges on most of my laptops garbage that become creaky and eventually break.
I haven’t had a hinge failure on a MacBook for 20 years.
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Picked a great time to follow my dream as an industrial designer, only to graduate during COVID and realize that not a single company actually cares to improve the user experience of their products or systems.
Feels like I got a more exclusive and more expensive art degree.
Go create something, im not sure the market is but I want non dominant designs and less dark patterns.
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Calling the big grey bezels of old TVs stylish is certainly an interesting take.
While your average early/mid 2000's CRT TV is certainly not stylish, I do appreciate the buttons and convenient access to a set of inputs and the headphone jack. Today's TVs are all form over function, which is especially annoying since the form is just a black slab.
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I haven’t had a hinge failure on a MacBook for 20 years.
I have two laptops with broken hinges right now. Metal and other materials help with hinge support. plastic and constant use will break most hinges.
I used to do laptop repair, its a pretty common thing to replace.
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Yeah, and personally, I don't feel any wish to go back to skeuomorphism. It is funny to look back to and feel some nostalgia, but I think it would look cheap now if they did it like 15 years ago. Maybe iOS' glassy-ui will create some elements that people like about it, but they luckily did not move back to busy ui element backgrounds.
I do partially agree with his buttons and app-points. I dislike how we are forced to download apps for everything, including the questionable tracking software.
Look at an old colorful iMac running an early version of Mac OS X. The decisions made in its appearance were unnecessary but pleasant. The aqua interface was functional but pretty. It played with textures in fun ways that weren’t distracting, like pinstriping in menus that matched the machine itself, shiny jelly buttons and icons that looked more alive and interesting. While it can be said that they leaned in too heavily to this sometimes (brushed metal and stitched leather were…a lot) the overall experience was engaging. People were trying new things and there was variety, even from a company demanding a uniform market like Apple.
Now look where we are in 2025. We have Liquid Glass, which is just loud and in my way, inefficient and less functional. We have AI everywhere which does everything we could already do but without any accountability or responsibility so there’s no consequences when it fucks up like if a human did. We have companies competing against eachother to see who can most effectively suck the life out of their customers rather than who can make the most appealing product the get customer buy in.
Nobody cares about the consumer anymore. It’s all just a big money laundering operation for shareholders. Business majors ruined the world.