Water beds!
Remember the ad pitch? “Two things are better on water beds. Sleeping is one of them.”
From what I remember, there was kind of a transition as I grew up.
For portable audio we went from walkman cassette players, to walkman CD players. Then we had CD players that could play a CD full of MP3s. Then we had MP3 players, then we switched to streaming audio devices.
Its more how much music you could store. We went from one album, to many GB of music, to 300TB of music on spotify and youtube.
Lava lamps.
Lots of these while I was in China. The one that comes to mind first is the rental bike fad.
I think Mobike was first, and with its distinctive orange bikes and the whole new concept of pick-up-anywhere-leave-anywhere rentals, it was massively popular. For a couple years, dozens of similar ventures sprung up, such that many streets in Shanghai became difficult to walk down, because the pavement was jam packed with literally hundreds of parked bikes, in the different colours of the various startup companies.
And then very quickly it was gone. The economics were largely based on new users paying a deposit. The actual fees for riding could in no way cover the costs of repairs and relocating bikes to popular areas. I, like many people, never received my deposit back from multiple bike companies, because they folded.
Rental bikes still exist of course, but then again, so do most of the things mentioned in the thread already. But their number must be ~1-2% as many as there were during that peak.
Ubiquitous is probably a strong word. But bulletin boards (the pre-internet public computer servers) became a huge deal in the very nerdy computer geek circles I moved in as a kid. They died a death quickly when the actual Internet became a thing.
Definitely the MiniDisc (MD) format and players. Showed up in 1992 and good luck finding one now. Much better than portable cassette players without the size of portable CD players. The ATRAC compression was excellent (at the time). It was never that big here in the US, but I had several players as well as a home MD deck. (Still do, still work.) Strangely, I believe it is still a very popular format in Japan.
I use this as my ring tone. It gets some looks.
Strange, I haven’t seen CFLs for sale in years – it’s all LEDs now.
That’s good advice about colour temperature. I prefer warm incandescent-like lighting so I generally use 2700K LEDs.
Another rather important sidetrack is that many if not most LEDs use cheap electronics inside that is easily killed by heat, so they tend not to last long in unventilated enclosed fixtures, which pretty much all of mine are. You can get LED bulbs that are specifically rated for enclosed fixtures but they can be hard to find. I ordered a 4-pack of MaxLite bulbs from Amazon some months ago that are so rated, and they seem to be holding up well. The one in the study has often been on all night because I forget to turn it off when going to bed and it’s still going strong.
Yes, glass cables that someone needs to install. Wireless comms like Starlink do not have the same high bandwidth or low latency.
The question is, when, and who, started coercing departments to assign a specific, expensive, textbook that the lectures had to follow and that students had to buy? And are they truly gone in the sense that the PDF version is free? Also, it may not have been as ubiquitous as it may seem if we view universities worldwide.
Some people certainly liked them, but I thought CD sound quality was better. As for Japan, the philosophy of abandoning something that works is different, which is why you will still find popular (to some extent) use of compact cassettes, fax machines, and cash.
I took the PE exam last year. These days it’s computer-based and administered at approved testing centers. You may not bring any reference material, but you are provided with a PDF reference manual prepared by NCEES (who develops and scores the exams). It is still very common to purchase prep books for studying, or (especially these days) a subscription to an online bank of practice questions.
I graduated from college in 2021, and textbooks were still very common from my experience. Especially in the case of math, where students often had to use a term-length online homework portal, for which access could only be obtained by purchasing a new edition of the prescribed text book. I found selling used textbooks back to the bookstore nearly impossible, I think I managed to sell exactly one for like $5, a fraction of what I paid for it.
Replacing a crappy, expensive textbook with a crappy, expensive PDF version does not mean that they have gone away, quite the contrary. Even without the PDF, you would not have been able to sell it back since the publishers permuted the numbering of the chapters and exercises every year, forcing students to buy the latest edition.
If we are talking about the printed word in general, I would not say they have “gone away” quite yet, but some sales statistics are in order…
Answering machines? Have they been replaced by voicemail? I did a search and apparently you can still buy them. For the folks who still have a land line - like my sister.
So no more paper grocery bag homemade book covers?
That was an art that some (not me) had down when I was in school. I guess it’s gone.
Tivo TV recorders (themselves largely having made the ubiquitous traditional VHS VCR largely obsolete by that point. Maybe every household didn’t own one, but it was ubiquitous enough to be a plot point in the film Tropic Thunder in 2008.
Not surprisingly, it was a technology that soon became redundant with DVR recording integrating into your cable TV provider, then on-demand cable TV, then streaming services.
Another short-lived but temporarily ubiquitous tech was the iOmega Zip Drive. For awhile in the 90s and 2000s it served a useful purpose as a sort of “super floppy” when your data needs were too big for a 3.5 in floppy but you hadn’t yet invented cloud-based services like OneDrive or Google Drive or even multi GB thumb drives (which are mostly obsolete but were so ubiquitous that companies would give them out like pens at trade shows and conferences).
Do high school kids doing calculus still use graphing calculators? They were required when I was in high school, and were useful because they let you play Tetris.
I imagine that, for most kids these days, they can get the same function from a phone app.
Telephone books.
Rolodex files? There might be a few left out there.
Air popcorn fryers. Prior to c. 1980 nobody had them, then everybody had them, now no one has them again.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I had popcorn at home. Had it all the time growing up - MammaHomie would make Jiffy Pop or just pop it herself the old-fashioned way. It was one of the first things I learned to cook. Made it myself all through high school and college, then I married Mrs. Homie, who could take or leave popcorn, and I think I made it once in 25 years.
I was in a store this week and I was surprised to see one of those stove-top popcorn makers for sale. The kind that looked like a frying pan and came pre-loaded with popcorn kernels. I didn’t think they made those anymore. I figured everyone looking for home popcorn would buy one of those microwave bags.
I was thinking of the Franklin Planner which when I was starting my career in the early 90s had some kind of cult following among go-getters. But ten years later it was dead as everyone used electronic planners.
Overall microwave popcorn is subpar.
The Stir Crazy is the only way to go at home.
