Top 12 technology pet peeves

ENDLESS notifications, dwindling battery life: we’re shaking our fists at technology’s annoyances — and want to know yours.

YOU know those days when your phone battery doesn’t even make it to dinner? And Facebook pings you 12 times about people you haven’t cared about since sixth grade? And your printer fails so spectacularly that you just want to back over it with your car?

We love technology, but this week we’re shaking our fists at it for all the ways it annoys us.

Instead of picking punching bags like Windows 8, we’re focused on issues that tech companies still need to face.

We made a long list of our pet peeves, then selected 12 issues big and small that frustrate us to no end. We’d also like to hear your biggest tech annoyances in the comments section below.

Never-ending Notifications

Buzz! There is a sale at Amazon. Buzz! Your third cousin’s former colleague has a new job. Buzz! You have a meeting in 10 minutes. Buzz! Some band is finally on Spotify. Our lives are constantly being interrupted by notifications, and there’s no good way to get just the important ones.

Email services like Gmail and Outlook.com offer special social media alert filters, but that’s largely to make up for the fact that the social networks themselves are getting increasingly spammy. In iOS, Apple allows you to specify contacts as VIPs, so only certain emails will trigger an alert. Google offers a similar person-specific notification feature in its latest Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system.

But as smartwatches enter the picture, we need new ways to separate the helpful notifications from the flood of irrelevant ones.

Battery Life Is Too Short

Charging is the party pooper of every mobile gadget. Yet phone-makers keep designing them thinner, hurting — or at least not improving — battery performance.

Until wireless charging becomes common (or scientists perfect some alternative power technology), here’s the solution: Make fatter phones. We won’t mind a few extra millimetres if they could extend the life of a phone by a few hours. We don’t need phones thin enough to slice cheese. We’re already shoving the slenderest models into unsightly battery cases, or at least lugging power packs around.

Updates Bog Down Old iPhones

Hooray, new iPhone software! Oh wait, you may not want to install that.

New versions of iOS have brought security updates and needed capabilities to older iPhones and iPads. But both iOS 7 and iOS 8 came out initially in versions that weren’t tuned well to older phones, and caused owners to report slowed performance, overstuffed storage and shorter battery life.

Is this planned obsolescence? Probably not. A few months after both releases, Apple came out with updates that it said sped things up for older devices. The company says its latest iOS is compatible with six different phones, and that the vast majority of its customers choose to install updates.

But it’s an approach that doesn’t serve those who can’t afford the latest and greatest hardware. If Apple can’t tune things right from the start, why not just keep the previous iOS — and its compatible apps — available? Microsoft services older versions of Windows for years.

Waiting for Android Updates

The problem with Google’s Android is just the opposite: Many Android phones never even get the latest version of Android. And if they do, it can take months. Right now only 3.3% of devices run the latest version, Lollipop, released nearly six months ago.

The holdup? It’s a combination of the phone-makers’ usually none-too-helpful software additions and the fact that mobile carriers, at least in the U.S., have to test and distribute those updates. Samsung, HTC and others need to follow a company like Motorola, which gets Android updates to its users faster because it doesn’t mess too much with the OS.

Privacy as a Luxury

The valuable information in our searches, email and even location is the real price we pay to use Google, Facebook and other vital services. Too many technology companies have made this privacy trade-off the core of their business models.

Now they’re creating a new conundrum: treating privacy like a luxury good. AT&T raised eyebrows last month when it said it would charge customers of its ultrafast internet service an additional $30 a month just to avoid being tracked for marketing. AT&T says the tracking is a way to reduce the cost of the service.

We’d rather see companies develop privacy tools that differentiate themselves from competitors. Privacy could become a trait of all popular products, not just something that belongs only to the elite.

Printers Are Still Terrible

Paper jams. Overpriced ink. Flaky wireless printing. The only thing you can really count on a printer to do? Break after a year or two.

Why is it still like this? The contraption — full of thousands of metal and plastic moving parts — has to talk to multiple operating systems, and deal with uncooperative paper and messy ink.

HP, the No. 1 printer manufacturer in the U.S., says it’s constantly improving the technology and offering subscriptions for cheaper ink. But the entire process should be easier.

Die, Passwords, Die

Passwords are hard to remember, and not always effective at keeping things safe. To use them adequately, passwords need to be complicated. Password manager programs can help, but they feel like a stopgap measure.

Now that we have fingerprint sensors and cameras that ID our faces and irises, why are we still punching in strings of text into laptops? Our computers should be smart enough to know who we are by now.

This technology exists. It needs to be integrated widely.

Kickstarter Isn’t a Store

Buyer beware: That 3-D-printed drone for dogs you shelled out for on a crowd-funding site probably will arrive late — if it arrives at all.

Sites like Kickstarter have let a thousand ideas bloom, bringing us tech like the Pebble smartwatch and Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. But they’ve also been home to many cancelled projects and frustrated backers. A Wharton study from 2012 found that 75% of Kickstarters arrived late, yet the crowd-funding site doesn’t think that’s a problem.

Most micro investors aren’t in a position to judge whether a team has what it takes to deliver its product, let alone create a sustainable business. That risk used to be mainly on the shoulders of more experienced investors like venture capitalists. Kickstarter has upped the requirements for hardware fundraising, but still doesn’t vet them. And backers only get their money returned if there’s any money left … or if they sue.

A Kickstarter spokesman says that it warns backers that it is not a store, and that backers enjoy being part of a project’s development process.

Inaccurate Fitness Biometrics

“Your heart rate is 76 beats per minute. Wait, no, it’s really 120 … ish.”

“You walked 899 steps today. Well, at least we think you were walking.”

That’s what fitness bands and smartwatches might as well be telling us. Our heart rates and step counts are measurable numbers, yet devices report only guesstimations. That’s not acceptable.

Companies like Microsoft, Basis and others say the optical technology being used for heart-rate readings from the wrist is getting better. Until these devices can be as accurate as chest-worn monitors, their makers should tell customers that all biometric readings are for novelty purposes only.

App Addiction

Mobile tech is like a drug. It offers too many apps designed to get us hooked on their stream of distractions.

There’s a phenomenon called Phantom Cellphone Syndrome, where people imagine their phones are vibrating. Doctors are just beginning to understand phone addiction, but one impact is already clear: Checking our phones 44 times a day is a drain on our limited time. Many apps make money selling our “engagement” to marketers. They’re incentivised to invent reasons for us to keep checking in, rather than design efficient services. We’re on to your game, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and Candy Crush!

Email: Older, but Not Wiser

Email, now in its third decade of widespread use, refuses to fade away — or reinvent itself. We wake up every morning to overflowing inboxes with everything from important messages from the boss to incessant Banana Republic sales chatter. Worse, we don’t have tools that go beyond Reply, Reply All and Forward, which keep conversations going and going and going.

There is no lack of companies trying to solve the problem of email overload. And services like Outlook.com and Google’s Inbox deserve props for including essential email management tools. But what we really want is a fundamental change in email that matches the pace we do everything else online. Even harder: Once we recognise the tools that will help with this, we all need to start using them.

Baffling Bills

What takes longer to read: all the Harry Potter books or your monthly cellular or cable bill? The statements — whether delivered via snail mail or email — seem to be purposely confusing and lengthy. We’re never quite sure where our money is going. Reading the fine print sends you down another rabbit hole.

Some companies have attempted to make this easier with tutorials and videos, but that just underscores the problem. What they should do is streamline the bill into a basic summary — without using that as an excuse to hide fees.

The Wall Street Journal

—What did we miss? We’d like to hear your biggest tech annoyances in the comments section below ...