Things that were cool then but considered obsolete by todays standards.

[FoxyCryptid 4,327]

DVDs, I remember when they were first coming out and being hailed(especially by Disney) as the next generation of entertainment and every-single movie that came out during that time stuff was released on both DVD and VHS had the DVD copy absolutely packed with bonus features just to show off all the cool stuff DVDs could do that VHS couldn't. Hell, back then even second-hand DVDs in Pawnshops could go for like $8-$10 because the format was so hot.

 

Now it's just like "oh, a DVD, that's cool" and you only pay like a couple dollars for the things second-hand.  

[Lucky Bolt 34,914]

All my music CDs. Seeing as now that I have a phone with Spotify and a bluetooth connector for when I'm in my truck, the use of CDs for music is something I've done forgotten about. 

[Dreambiscuit 8,022]

It all depends on what is meant by ‘back then.’ In my own lifetime VCRs were pretty cool, and there was a really ridiculous obsession with pagers for a while, which has evolved now into a ridiculous obsession with cell phones. Nintendo was in its infancy and, in my opinion, better than it is now. And even though vinyl LPs were pretty much gone by the time I came around, I still think they’re cool and I have a nice stack of them. Walkmans were cool too, and I still have one sitting around somewhere, gathering dust along with my old cassette tapes.  

[Splashee 28,537]

9 hours ago, Lucky Bolt said:

All my music CDs. Seeing as now that I have a phone with Spotify and a bluetooth connector for when I'm in my truck, the use of CDs for music is something I've done forgotten about. 

Those CDs might actually be worth something in the future. They are lossless and high quality, and will probably stay that way forever.

Spotify: mp3, they are all jpeg in music form. Once you save a jpeg, and then save it again, you lose more of the original. For some artists that I know of, they only work in mp3. They will not be able to restore their music in the future. Also some jpeg images I had long long ago started falling apart by themselves with time, so I wonder what happens to my old old mp3s (some actually have hiccups in them) that might not be as good as the newer mp3 software out there to play them.

 

[Meson Bolt 2,647]

I had an MP3 player once. Some birthday present... I was like 8 or 9 at the time. But my friend (yes, singular) thought it was the coolest thing ever. It could hold like 250 songs on it!

Now I have a phone.

[TBD 17,228]

CD, DVDs, and VCR. I still use/buy them all but the VCR. MP3 is also one, which I still use. Downloading music to smartphones is such a hassle..

[The Historian 515]

I still have a floppy drive, I still get music on CD and movies on discs, I like my games on cartridges and I still play the Atari 2600. Obsolete doesn't mean useless. We may have moved forward but there's nothing wrong with using the past. I love my smartphone, high end computer and modern Nintendo handhelds but the classics never really die. Retro is a thing for a reason.

I celebrate the past as much as I look forward to the future.

[Will Guide 21,325]

26 minutes ago, TBD said:

CD, DVDs, and VCR. I still use/buy them all but the VCR. MP3 is also one, which I still use. Downloading music to smartphones is such a hassle..

Can you believe I still have a Gen3 Classic iPod that I got for my birthday 11 years ago? It has 80 GB and even at 200+ songs (Mostly from legal song ripping off of music CDs and others legally downloaded from the iTunes Store), several Phineas and Ferb Episodes (in SD), there's still plenty of storage space left.

And given I tend to listen to music on my sign-spinning job for a few hours, the battery life still holds up after all these years

[Denim&Venöm 16,471]

BlackBerry phones. Yeah they're still around, but only at a fraction of their original popularity. You were cutting edge and sophisticated if you had one. It wasn't just a status symbol. It was a tool for the work horses of industry. Now they're just seen as a relic of a pre-iphone age. 

But even with advances in touch screens, nothing beats a tactile keyboard for speed and accuracy. The Bold models came with a track pad that allowed you to use a mouse cursor on screen. Far more accurate than a touch screen. And BB phones are pretty darn durable compared to most phones today. Oh and they had great security. 

Heck, I miss diversity in phones. Everything is now a glass slab. You had BlackBerry, sliders, flip phones, bricks, candybars, clamshells, etc. It was an extension of your personality.

[TBD 17,228]

3 hours ago, Will Guide said:

Can you believe I still have a Gen3 Classic iPod that I got for my birthday 11 years ago? It has 80 GB and even at 200+ songs (Mostly from legal song ripping off of music CDs and others legally downloaded from the iTunes Store), several Phineas and Ferb Episodes (in SD), there's still plenty of storage space left.

And given I tend to listen to music on my sign-spinning job for a few hours, the battery life still holds up after all these years

I also still have the old version iPod but stopped using it. Now I use a regular mp3. I feel the older versions tends to be way better but as apple continue to get upgrade, it loses its values 

[Northern Star 1,023]

"Remote control" things when that meant that you were 3 feet away, but still attached to it th through some piece of styling or something. Or I guess in general, remote control cars, planes, etc.

I recall the DS was too at one point in school,  with a lot of arguments over the gameboy vs DS.

MP3 players were about the same, but I had an MP4 player, so I could watch things on it, granted the screen was the size of a stamp, but it was more than an MP3 player.

FM radio in phones I remember being a major thing, to the point of lawsuits.

Small phones, coming from bag phones and the big AMPS hand held phones.

CDs I remember being expensive, but if you had one it was something. Same goes for DVDs.

Then I don't exactly know how to say it, but at least as a kid, using one's mind/imagination to keep occupied? I don't know, but it seems like every kid has a phone or something, and I mean kid as in like a 5 year old...even on playgrounds...I mean when I was growing up, someone would make up a "cool" game to play or something...

[HedonismBot 217]

On 2019-08-02 at 10:10 AM, Meson Bolt said:

I had an MP3 player once. Some birthday present... I was like 8 or 9 at the time.

I had a Diamond Rio, one of the first commercially available MP3 players (and most likely the first one to achieve widespread commercial success). To get an idea for how old we're talking about: it connected to the PC through a parallel port (what printers plugged into before USB was invented).

I also had a first-gen iPod, from back when you had to use unofficial software to connect them to Windows PCs.

Edited August 30, 2021 by HedonismBot

[Lunaholic 892]

Burning music on CDs. I remember back in the elementary school we hosted school discos couple times to make some money for our field trip to Lapland. Our teacher (who was also principal) asked us to burn music on CD so we could play it. However, actually that was highly illegal to play pirated music in public (by a public school!) especially when the main point of the events were to make money! But did anyone know it back then? Nope