alt Hacker NewsThe tech monoculture is finally breaking
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> A Timex ad went viral this year: “Know the time without seeing you have 1,249 unanswered emails.”
Having to micromanage notifications is why I have two phones - one without a SIM card. It's nice to be able to do stuff on the phone and know it won't bug you. I simply put the one with the SIM card elsewhere (other room, leave in car, etc). No - I'm not going to spend too much time learning how to "effectively" manage notifications on a smartphone (and if I do, have it change on me with some future update).
I've been saying it since around 2004-2005 - even before smartphones - that consolidating everything into one device is a bad idea.
One thing I really miss from the 80's and 90's: When you buy a product (hardware or software), its features and capabilities were stable. You never had to worry about some update changing the behavior on you.
I really like some of the health features on Apple Watch. But I won't buy it because I don't want it to be my watch, and I don't want to pair my Apple account with it. I just want the health features and nothing else.
I'm not sure I agree with all of that - that single-purpose tech is making a real comeback. But I do have one example in my daily life that supports this: A Garmin watch.
Unlike "full" smartwatches (arbitrarily defined as: You can browse the web on them in some fashion) Garmin devices are intentionally limited but in return, what they do works very well and seems fully debugged. I spent several years recording outdoor activities with the Strava app on my phone, and always there was about a 1% failure rate where for one reason or another, the GPS trace was interrupted or corrupted. With the Garmin watch this simply doesn't happen. If it's recording, the recording is good, period.
It is that, that has somehow been lost. That devices that just do one thing and do it well have been replaced by apps on a device that, in the modern software fashion, are "mostly" debugged, get constant updates that may or may not remove bugs (or features!) and usually don't add anything useful. One app got an update which, on my lower-end phone, changed it from crisply responsive to incredibly slow (5+ second response time to a tap). It worked fine before.
What a weird techno-optimist blog post, full of cherry-picked examples, with a twist of consumerism. Refreshing take in a sea of nihilism, but saying people are interested in Pokémon and N64 games again when it's mostly post-NFT "everything is an investment" mentality is cute in its naivety.
> Meta shipped a wearable that normal people actually use
Literally the only time I've heard of anyone using these in the wild was some guy being an absolute creep and using them to secretly film women to create social media content[1].
>Looking at my own purchases from 2025, the pattern becomes obvious...
Is it me or does this list really goes against almost everything preceeding in the article?
The bit about "Canon, Sony, and Nikon may have replaced Kodak for professionals" was entertainingly silly. AFAICT, Kodak cameras were never used by a significant fraction of professional photographers? (maybe pre-WW2?)
Film is a different matter of course.
Looking at my own purchases from 2025...
This is like a "haul" video, without the video.
Call me a pessimist, but I don't agree with this blog post at all. The author's views seems a bit biased and narrow based on their social circle perhaps.
> VR is no longer experimental
Till it has practical everyday uses and is at least semi affordable, I would categorize it as experimental still
> Meta shipped a wearable that normal people actually use, thanks to a clever Ray-Ban partnership (and associated equity stake). 3D printers have become real household products.
I don't know a single person who actually owns a Meta wearable device or a 3D printer. Isn't Meta actually shifting their focus away from metaverse?
> Design matters again. In our devices, and in our lives
Design has been forgotten. Just look at your phones and computers and most of the web.
All I see around me are people swiping away at their screens (most of the time not using their headphones), getting their fix in bursts of 15 seconds, rinse and repeat.
It's getting harder to have fun with tech when you have to deal with things like:
* Operating systems that are actively hostile to their users (Windows and OSX).
* iPhone and Android being the only 2 choice when it comes to phones (the author did mention this). The chances of getting a 3rd player here seems negligible.
* Everyone trying to shove AI down your throat. At no time in the past did we need mandates to use a "useful" thing.
* A couple of players consolidating all the power in the AI space and millions of people having no ethical issues about using products from these companies, or opening up their source code and data for these companies to come suck it all up.
* No real disruption or competition in the browser space. It will be a long time before Ladybird will be usable.
* Bloated, heavy websites with popups galore.
* Everything getting a redesign every couple of months for no reason
* You don't own anything anymore. Even building your own PC seems like it will become a thing of the past given how price are rising.
I could go on.
Tech was probably the most fun for me in the mid to late 2000s. Definitely a lot more fun than whatever the tech industry has become now in 2026.
My ideal situation is that AI becomes commoditized so much that it yields relatively little value for the producers and an incredible amount of value for the consumers.
I don't really expect the prices to be this cheap for much longer, but my hope is that the seeds for the next generation of tech have already been sown.
It would be cool if software becomes so mundane and interchangeable that tech once again distinguishes itself with hardware.
I find this discussion interesting. I have been thinking about the declining appeal of a device that does everything, but on which you can only really do one thing at a time well. Ie, you put the iPhone in a cage and add a tripod and you could make a high quality video. But, then you can't use the phone like a phone...
Solution, a DJI osmo pocket 3, which is something that does video brilliantly. And you can set it up while doing the things you need to do on your phone when you need to.
I recently serendipitously found my sansa clip+ which to my delight has a battery that has somehow and miraculously not failed. It is fantastic for listening to a select few things at night; when I don't want to be starting at my phone screen hunting for playlists and albums. I checked the price on eBay for these things. They are going for 10x what I paid, I won't be selling.
I'm in my 20's now, graduated secondary school (as IT Technician). In meantime cured marrow aplasia.
I love 2000's era (especially tech, but music too). I think almost everything about 2000's tech was superior, from hardware to software. Things were solid, build to last. Software had clean, simple user interface. The user was invited, not forced to do something. For me nothing can beat philosophy of XMB (XrossMediaBar).
I don't know how to find my way in all this IT thing now. Never liked programming, what always intetested me was hardware and IT administration. But every day I wake up it just gets worse. IaC, SaaS, software is worse than ever before. And don't forget hardware speculations.
In 2000's tech was so easy, now it's just annonying, harder and obfuscated with every day.
I miss 2000's simplicity.
As other people have pointed out, the trend towards "retro" tech is like vinyl being popular - it's a nostalgia throwback, not a massive wave of consumer preference. There's a small but profitable niche of enthusiasts who want old electonics. Call me when a major consumer electronics company is making it a selling point that their devices are "dumb".
The Rayban-Meta partnership is such a funny thing to shoehorn in? Two giant monopolists creating a new surveillance-tech product which nobody likes. It couldn't be more "monoculture".
In the article, he lists his 14 major electronics purchases for 2025 along with "more mechanical watches than I can count". Serious question: is this a normal level of acquisition? I'm not a minimalist, but that's more electronics than I buy in a decade.
What the author describes seems to be more specific examples in his/her circle rather than a wider movement I’d say.
The walled gardens are imo getting worse. And opting out (dumb phone) isn’t the same thing as that dissolving.
That said I’m also cautiously optimistic in some areas. Linux on desktop in particular is on a good streak. Riscv seems promising. More people are understanding lock in risk etc.
This isn't really the author's point, but I think one effect of AI and the forthcoming robotics revolution will be the unrolling of a lot of consolidated supply chains for all sorts of products. It could usher in a renewed era of bespoke products.
For instance, when the cost of building a new (good) app goes to zero, it becomes economical to make a great app for a narrow niche, with a skeleton staff (maybe just one) and no VC money. And this can happen thousands of times over.
Robotics could open up bespoke local supply chains even beyond what's possible with a 3D printer today. For instance, if you had an actually dextrous humanoid robot "living" in your home, why wouldn't you have it just make all of your clothes? You could have any fabric, any style, exactly the right size. And only for the cost of materials (assuming you already own or lease the robot itself).
I do think the author is right in the big picture - the future will be more fun.
> Antitrust pressure has slowed consolidation, opened app distribution, killed the anti-competitive iMessage and AirDrop moats
iMessage is still only available on Apple hardware. Apple’s malicious compliance has made developing apps for third party app stores a no-go. I have AltStore installed but there are no apps worth installing.
> Art Deco is in vogue
Is it? I wish it was, but what is the author referencing?
I hope he's right! I'm terrified that like 4 companies own my entire life now. I do love the movement back to analog single-purpose devices. Would be neat if they had just enough tech to make them useful but not weaponized against me.
As an aside, can they bring back Symbian OS and Windows Phone?
He is saying that more devices that have single use is better? Maybe that’s true but the downside is you own more stuff.
Strong disagree. While I share the 90s nostalgia, the trend of just relaunching everything is a sad reminder of how bad tech is today, not an exciting new development
> Looking at my own purchases from 2025, the pattern becomes obviou
As far as I can tell he's among the techies that purchase a lot of e-junk each and every year, no matter the circumstances, not sure of how that's an improvement on anything.
Buying retro technology is not indicative of anything.
This article taught me nothing except first-world tech consumerism is out of control. Why is that interesting? Because I think it's part of why the tech bros consistently over-estimate the relvance, pace and world-changing potential of technology like LLMs. If you're drowning in tech consumerism, you see it all around and think it's _really_ important. But this is living in a silicon bubble. 90% of the planet just doesn't care, is not even aware of these "toys" and wouldn't see them as relevant to a normal life if they did, and is extremely innovative about getting their actual needs met with far more basic tools and materials available. And they would be largely right. Technology does change the world eventually, but the latest pair of smart goggles or a slightly better camera on your personal surveillance device does not.
The reason retro tech is fun now is because no one is making more of it, and the retro tech is as advanced as it could be without being ruined by enshittification and planned obsolescence. Every old piece of tech you come across is now a relic, rich in lore and history, and sometimes mystery when there are few people around who understand how it works anymore. These old devices are no longer things you just buy from a big corp, you have to find them in a pile of junk somewhere or trade a bit of money for it from some person, and on top of that the condition of the devices vary greatly, they are not fungible. This hunt for old tech feels very post-apocalyptic at times.
People will also look for creative ways to upgrade old tech and implement some quality of life improvements, doing things the original creators never thought of, or were simply limited by the technologies of their times. The result is much more variety in devices, no more homogeneous products.
And this effect will only get more pronounced as time goes on. Consider that in the year 2077, a humble N64 could be something sacred, handed down through many generations, each leaving their mark on the device, and people developing their own homebrewed games motivated more by fun than capitalistic ambition, or just pushing the limits of the device.
> Antitrust pressure has slowed consolidation, opened app distribution, killed the anti-competitive iMessage and AirDrop moats, and made big tech cautious about horizontal expansion.
Huh? In what reality is this remotely true? It certainly isn't in the one I live in.
The Big 6 control all media in the US, and mergers happen all the time (WBD->Netflix->Paramount?). Google owns web search and web browsing; Amazon owns e-commerce; Alphabet and Meta own adtech; Amazon, Microsoft, and Google own cloud computing; etc. All of these companies make frequent acquisitions and expansions. "Antitrust pressure" is just the cost of doing business.
What I think the author is referring to are the minor concessions Apple has made in some territories, mainly the EU. And even there, they're using every dirty trick at their disposal to do the absolute bare minimum.
Anti-competitive moats are still alive and well, and growing larger. It's curious that the author is positive about "AI", when that is the ultimate moat builder right now. Nobody can basically touch the largest players, since they have the most resources and access to mind-bogglingly large datacenters.
What a silly article. I don't understand how anyone can consider the current state of the tech industry "fun". I've been following it for nearly 30 years now, and it has gradually been devolving into a place that's anything but fun. Especially in these last ~5 years. I wish I could be optimistic about the future, but it should be obvious to anyone by now that technology, mostly but not entirely by misuse, is the cause of most of our problems.
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In my experience, people who "invest" in fancy watches usually have nothing of value to say. Same goes for people that buy supercars to drive on the street.
I think the author is correct to a point but I don't believe the examples they've chosen provide the best support for their case. Gen Z buying iPods and people buying N64 games again is not evidence of the monoculture breaking apart - it's a retreat into the past for the enlightened few because their needs are not being met by modern goods and services. You cannot buy a dedicated MP3 player today with the software polish and quality of life that an iPod had in the early 2000s (or even a Zune).
Instead, I see the growth and momentum behind Linux and self-hosting as better evidence that change is afoot.