BlackBerrys, PowerPoint, iPods and other things we miss in 2023

Reporters look back (mostly fondly) on gear and gadgets that better software and increasingly inexpensive components have rendered obsolete.

BlackBerrys, PowerPoint, iPods and other things we miss in 2023.

The advent of a new year encourages us to make many forward-looking declarations. Many of ours involve our relationship to gadgets, like the way some of us have taken to not sleeping next to the phone, which serves as an all-too-tempting portal to YouTube. The difficulty of actually doing this has made some of us long for a time when technology was less omnipresent, less powerful, just … less.

Here, writers of different generations pen obituaries to that bygone era, stories about the tech they miss the most. For each, we’ve highlighted current gear or software that might help anyone feeling a similar loss recapture – or even improve on – the magic.

Film cameras

The scent of my Gen X adolescence wasn’t watermelon Lip Smacker or the Body Shop’s white musk; it was a vinegary combination of hydroquinone, acetic acid and sodium thiosulfate. Known as “developer”, “stop bath” and “fixer” in darkroom parlance, these pungent potions made printing photos from film cameras possible. From 1989, when I took my first photography class, to 2003, when I taught my last class on the subject to high school students, I inhaled a lot of this stuff.

Healthy? Probably not, but it was all part of the process. You had to print photos by hand from the film negative in the dim amber glow of a safelight, using sensitive paper, a device called an enlarger, sloshing trays of the aforementioned solutions – and a whole lot of tactile trial and error. The ritual required attention, and attention made it special.

By the time I was initiating a new generation of shooters into the fold, digital cameras had become common. I hear that Gen Z boosters are leading an analog photography comeback. I suppose if it can happen for mum jeans, it can happen for the darkroom.

— Sarah Karnasiewicz

A modern alternative: It doesn’t produce an evocative stink, but the Fujifilm Instax Mini Link 2 photo printer lets you add filters and effects to your otherwise plain mobile phone snaps.

PowerPoint

Modern slide show programs steer you toward building slickly produced “decks”. This wasn’t the case during my middle school years in the 2000s. Microsoft PowerPoint, with its massive library of hideous bells and whistles, practically insisted that you create truly stupid masterpieces. Star wipes, drum roll sounds and swivelling WordArt ran rampant. Actual scholars and executives deployed PowerPoint’s unofficial mascot, a needle-nosed clipart stick figure, to unveil serious research and earnings reports. In my favourite image, the cartoon is scratching his head while looking at a bomb’s lit fuse. PowerPoint was the perfect tool when logging on meant enduring a screechy dial-up symphony, high-flying professionals unselfconsciously used the word “webinar” and Clippy was omnipresent. Now every deck I’m forced to watch – explanations of benefits, management training – tries to look like it’s my friend. Bring back the bomb guy!

My sisters and I still make each other slide shows of the old, janky variety. Their tone is white-collar absurdist, faithful to the medium. “Get Inspired,” chimes one recent slide’s heading, followed by a bulleted list of schlocky advice. Once, this would absolutely have passed at a team-building off-site – or at least earned someone a solid B+ on an eighth-grade final project. Next slide, please.

— Amy Rose Spiegel

A modern alternative: You can still make silly PowerPoints with your pals, but a game like “Talking Points” will generate ones for you to present. The catch: You won’t know what’s in them until you’re in the middle of your speech.

The iPod

I went to record shops every weekend during my high school years, stretching my budget to build out my collection. In 2006, I did an about-face, spending $349 for the fifth-generation 80 gigabyte iPod, a portable music library that could store the contents of 40 vinyl crates.

That year, iPod sales represented 40 per cent of Apple’s revenue. It seemed like everyone had one, white headphone cords dangling from their ears. I used mine to go deep into the edges of music, especially once I started digitising the metal demos I’d buy while accompanying friends who played in bands on their tours. Soon, the collection of files I “owned” didn’t just mirror my physical collection, it dwarfed it. My turntable became a shelf.

A year after I bought my iPod, the first iPhone came out, which made tagging and syncing up MP3s feel like the chore it was. Eventually, I gave up and began paying for Spotify. More recently, frustrated that the service keeps removing albums I like, I’ve started downloading music again. If I really love an album, I buy it on vinyl. That old iPod still sits near my turntable. But only one of them is collecting dust.

— Sami Reiss

A modern alternative: Get a record player, pick the weirdest album you can find at your local record store and drop the needle. Embrace the lack of a skip button.

BlackBerry

Just a year ago, BlackBerry announced that it would shut down its proprietary operating system, but many of us had felt the sting of its loss much earlier. The BlackBerry was the first piece of technology that made me, a millennial, feel like a grown-up. They were so much lighter (therefore cooler) than the bricks our parents carried. Their raised keyboards elevated hand-held typing to an Olympic-level sport, and Brick Breaker was the only game we needed. Emails fired off with élan.

BlackBerrys felt exclusive and executive, but they weren’t just a work phone – they were pop culture. The Hills star Lauren Conrad typed about boyfriend drama on a BlackBerry Curve. Kim Kardashian carried a BlackBerry Bold to answer emails, though she took selfies on an iPhone. Even former president Barack Obama refused to part with his beloved BlackBerry once he took office.

Today, phones are all screen, rarely have a keyboard and easily perform all sorts of gymnastics. But after 10 years of iPhone ownership – 10! – I still fumble with the on-screen keyboard, misspelling words and struggling to select text. I’m confident I never made a typo with BlackBerry’s tactile typers.

— Todd Plummer

A modern alternative: The digital Fleksy keyboard allows you to customise the stock set provided with iOS and Android software, and tends to be more responsive and accurate.

And just in case you needed more reason to long for less-advanced days, here’s six more nostalgia-inducing gadgets.

Six-disc CD player

Car versions varied: my sister’s was in her boot. Listening with these players was simple, but stocking them was a pain. So you planned out an extended mood. You could still skip tracks to bypass soupy ballads and rap skits. You might override a whole album – but you would immediately be met with another.

— A. R. S

VHS tapes

There is no better medium for showing off a film collection than the VHS tape. Sure, that’s not the point of the collection, but I miss having my tapes before me as a prominent, physical display of my movie-viewing options. I’m even a bit nostalgic for the whirr of the mechanical rewind.

— Magdalene J. Taylor

Duck Hunt

Even when anything can be rebooted, this 1984 Nintendo Entertainment System title, in which you would shoot hapless fowl out of the sky, will probably stay in the past. That is because the game’s controller, a fake gun called the Zapper, was only designed to work with old-school, cathode-ray tube TVs. I didn’t know that when I, barely out of nappies, grabbed the hardware from my older sibling and took aim. No birds (or bros) were harmed.

— Paul Schrodt

Tiny TVs

Before innovation drove down the price of the massive LED panels you’ll find in most 4K TVs, the only idiot box I could ever imagine myself buying had a 22cm screen and a VCR slot. When my parents got one for their bedroom, it became my favourite way to watch episodes of Arthur they had taped for me.

— Daniel Varghese

Tamagotchi

I discovered the Tamagotchi at a school camp in 2003, six years after the New York Times called the pocket-size device housing a blobby digital pet “a sensation around the world”. I treated mine as if it were a real pet. Leaving it wrought anxiety: was his poop accumulating too quickly? By comparison, my cats are easy.

— Jane Starr Drinkard

Label makers

Up-to-date models of Martha Stewart’s preferred labeler, the Brother P-touch, are Bluetooth-enabled and offer 800 symbols and more than a dozen fonts. Mine, the Dymo Executive 3, is chrome-handled, with a rotary alphabet wheel and a spool of red plastic embossable tape. I used a similar one in the 1980s to label folders and mixtapes. Today, it keeps my spice drawer looking punk rock.

— S.K

The Wall Street Journal