Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Tech That Died in 2022”.
Every year, when we come to the end of December, I hold a memorial for the tech. We lost the tech that died and shook down and was canceled and this year 2022. I have quite the list for you plenty of iconic Tech medit’s end, but this year also, the list got personal for me because of a very special Gadget. Amazon killed, but not just killed, bricked and it affects my children. Let’S get into it, shall we we started.
The year losing a gadget, you probably already thought, was long dead on January 4th all old Blackberry devices stopped working. It’S dead. It’S really really dead, now dead dead. So if you were keeping an old Blackberry in your junk drawer, well better check if it can do anything because the company behind Blackberry stopped running the Legacy services for the 7.1 operating system and earlier Blackberry, 10 software, as if any of us were still keeping track Of what OS Blackberry is running and there’s always a little glimmer, this little Spark Le of hope that maybe someone will buy the Blackberry name and remake something with a keyboard.
A texas-based startup called onward. Mobility bought the license from TCL and it was gon na remake Blackberry as a new Android phone and nope nope nope nope nope nope not happening onward. Mobility said in February. Let the Blackberry, 5G phone plans it had are dead and the company is shut down.
People got ta move on from Blackberry. I can’t keep talking about Blackberry being dead. If you won’t, let it die, and this is the year 3G service is totally kaputch a t shut off, it’s 3G cell tower service, and so did T-Mobile Verizon waited until the end of the year to shut it all down. The few customers who still hold on to an old 3G phone could have gotten an upgrade to something that can tap into 4G. Verizon was sending out old, flip phones to customers, phones made by TCL Nokia and something called orbic. So it’s nothing too hip just something to get Folks by with a working phone.
Sorry, if you still got an iPhone 4 with the 30 pin, connector yeah, that’s useless, just trade in for a flip phone at this point in May Apple killed. The last iPod Apple discontinued, the iPod Touch ending the iPod product line, another icon gone and when it debuted 20 years ago, the iPod Changed music forever. We had many versions, there was the mini, the Nano, the shuffle the model that we we call the iPod Touch. Well, that was released in 2007 as a bit of an iPhone, an iPod hybrid, but it was overshadowed by the iPhone.
The last time we got a new iPod Touch was back in 2019., the next month after all, that iPod drama Microsoft, fully retired Internet Explorer 11.. Another piece of software Tech that you already thought was dead is now for reals dead. It’S even got a gravestone in South Korea check this out.
A software engineer spent the equivalent of 330 dollars to make it only to kill it again by printing this on it. He was a good tool to download other browsers dude a little cruel, but it is a beautiful work of art, for it is a web browser that we all hold close to our young computer Hearts uh. It was in our lives since 1995 and Microsoft pulled the plug on support on June 15th. Now we are at October, Google announced it was shutting down stadia. That’S the cloud gaming service, but Google is at least giving money back to customers, giving refunds for all Hardware purchased through the Google store and all games bought on the stadia store.
The service ends January 18th and all refunds should be wrapped up by mid-January Stadium, launched in 2019. It sold some solid games, but it just failed to evolve, but yes, you’ve been watching this video waiting for me to tell you what’s the personal thing. Well, it comes down to this big fella, the Amazon glow, it’s a product designed for young kids to talk to their distant family members and read books and play games together. It’S a very awkward shaped giant thing, but I explain it as a mix of a video chat system with a video game system.
I reviewed it and I liked it so much. I paid 300 of my own money to buy it, so my kids could play in a new way with their grandparents, who are hundreds of miles away. They could talk while reading animated books and playing puzzles and making Doodles and playing card games and other simple silly activities. Kids see the video chat in front of them on a screen and a projected image is beamed down to the table below where kids are doing. All the touching and that’s where they’re playing games and interacting with content, and it’s completely bananas. This is a bananas product.
Okay, I’m not that surprised to hear Amazon is giving up on it after a year. Maybe they just didn’t Market it enough. You know like it’s. It’S hard to get this concept across, but this kind of innovation you don’t just see every day and it brought out something different in my kids that they can’t get from some FaceTime chat or an iPad game. It was really fun and smart play with family.
So, yes, Amazon stops selling the glow goodbye glow. Okay, I get it, and Amazon is refunding me all my money. It’S offering customers a way to mail, the unit back to the company to keep all this hunk of tech out of the landfill.
But what? If I just want to keep having it, I want my kids just play with it as a game system. Nope, an Amazon rep told me that, when support ends on the last day of 2022, the system will not be able to connect to any of the books or games. It’S a four pound 14 inch tall, brick, that’s the sad state of our current Tech landscape.
You don’t even own the gadgets that you buy, they could just be remotely made useless. I hope companies do keep innovating new ways to connect with tech. Even if it’s weird like the glow, we need new thoughts, and hopefully these products don’t just become utterly useless garbage. In a year, if there is a service or Gadget, you love that ended this year. Let me know in the comments, I’m sure, there’s something I might have missed until next time, thanks for watching.
Thank you. .