I have a smart TV and, while I hate that fact with every fiber of my being, I've never been through any of the particular bullshit you're describing. I absolutely can just plug a thing into it and it works when I switch to that input.

I'm going to go with video game console disk trays. Back on the PS1 and GameCube, you just hit a button to release a lock and then a spring popped the lid open. Now, I'll admit these newfangled interior conveyor belts we've had for checks calendar almost two decades have never actually broken on me, I resent the fact that if they were to break then I'd have no actual ability to get disks in and out of the machine.

That is, of course, assuming your console has an option for physical media at all, which is a very troubling direction in itself.

One wheel

The original

• easy to replace batteries,

• easy maintenance,

• most important: highly customizable

(I mean, yes, you could blow yourself up with the gigantic lithium pack in your garage, but the community around one wheel has a lot of rich guidance to prevent you from doing that)

Entered version 2

• batteries are now locked to the device.

• hey! Ride carefully! Battery pack unplugging (even by accident) bricks the device 😆

• uuuh, I bricked the device. What now? Send the device across Atlantic ocean to HQ in the US to plug it back in 🤣 🤣

Keyboards. They had way better and more innovative switches back then. You'll be hard pressed to find anything today that doesn't use cherry, or cherry clones.

Autocorrect on smartphones. Arguably, smartphone keyboards in general. The old iPhone keyboard was second to none in my opinion, but it feels like they've all got worse.

Going with MacBooks. Used to be you could upgrade RAM and other components. Now, you have to get a new machine.

VGA just worked. HDMI and DP aren’t nearly as reliable.

Roads. Used to lay down concrete and they’d last for a decade. Now they put down asphalt on top of a concrete base. Granted they cost less in the long run to maintain.

I remember back a decade or so ago when phones had a fully customizable ringtone option, wouldn't constantly tell you they're overheating when it's only thirty degrees out, had a block function that actually worked, didn't dump spam calls on you, wasn't always spying on you, and didn't cost so much per month, often coupled with the possible fact you don't actually use it everyday and maybe only have it to keep your overworried parents pleased.

I don't know about you, but for the unforeseeable future, mine is, for the large part, ghosted. I remember being in a dispute with someone where they asked what my number was as a form of feeling secure about me. "What age do you live in" he bitterly asked, "everyone uses a phone, are you a fake zoomer who is BSing me". This is the pedestal the existence of phones thrives on. Imagine if I was Amish, do you think I would survive past the job interview stage of finding a new job?

Even when I had high hopes, the way people would market the thousand-app aspect of it was absolutely fierce, you couldn't go tech shopping without the person selling you stuff going on and on about the smallest nook and crannies in each extra feature like they were Steve Irwin trying to teach you the beauty of whatever animal you just happened to step on (RIP Steve Irwin), and you couldn't do so much as go to a festival without a business person from the phone stall running up to you asking to pay for new plans like a Jehovah's Witness on a leash (always stood out to me because they were the only ones who would operate like this).

Phones today are borderline what they are in Futurama.