The Year In Bad Tech

Badly edited by author

In the relentless pursuit of making the world a better place (read: making shitloads of money, normally at our expense), our tech overlords continue to destroy legacy tech and throw a torrent of new technologies at us.

This year might be the most overwhelming yet. With the continued wave of AI products and services flooding every aspect of our digital lives and daft trends like VR headsets going mainstream for a moment, it has felt like we've had to endure a record number of The Next Big Thing. Like in most years, the reality is that only a small percent of this tech is good; an even smaller fraction is genuinely revolutionary — most of it is unnecessary, unwanted, and designed with no market or problem in mind.

As is tradition at Trend Mill, I've reflected on the past year and picked out some of the biggest offenders.

Got one that should be added to this collection? Drop it in a comment below, and if I agree, I'll add it to the list.

Vision Pro

Apple's VR headset was insanely expensive, didn't look as lush as its other product lines, gave people sore necks, had very few use cases, and, frankly, entered into a market that failed to get on board with the idea of strapping on a headset to perform daily tasks. There may be hope for humanity yet.

Everything about this product reeked of desperation, of a company worried about slowing sales and the seemingly impossible task of inventing a new category-creating product line. So, instead, they followed the herd — a continued shift under Cook's leadership. Despite the usual slick marketing and early adoption from diehard fans, the headset sold an underwhelming number of units, and very quickly, no one cared. Headsets were returned. Updates went quiet. It lasted all of about 3 months. Apple's stock price took a little dip, and then everyone remembered they had billions in cash under the mattress and another iPhone line that looked the same to sell, and everything was fine.

Reports suggest Apple has already scaled back production of the device and may even kill it by year's end. The bigger question in the future is whether they will follow it up with iterations or call it quits.

Google Search

Once a core pillar of the Internet, a portal to all the knowledge one could ever need, Google Search fell off hard this year and is now an almost unusable, steaming pile of shit.

It fails to deliver results that are a) useful and b) earned fairly. Instead, it favors sponsored posts and paid ads and exerts its power and influence to control the pecking order. Most of the entire first page is now generated, sponsored or gamed, harming many businesses that were built on years of hard work and toeing the line with the platform's constantly changing rules. And, of course, where would we be without mentioning the worst update of all—generated AI overviews that pull from sources like Reddit as a source of truth? When it first launched this year, it suggested you should eat at least one small rock a day or that you try jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge as an answer to 'I'm feeling depressed.'

Google is quickly becoming the spam it spent the last 20 years trying to fight, all in the greedy pursuit of money.

Humane Pin

Described as "one of the worst reviewed tech products in history," Humane marketed its AI Pin as a future smartphone killer — but in its greed to push out a product that didn't really work, the only thing it killed was its own future.

It was half-baked at best and did little of what it promised (it turns out that's an AI hardware trend; see below). The money and marketing behind this product did not promise a prototype of something that could one day be a solution — it promised the solution. This was not a moonshot by some "builders" in their parent's garage. It was a hyped release from former Apple employees. They knowingly released a shitty product, and they were more than happy to take the SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS from any customer who fell for the schtick.

One can only assume the company hoped the hype surrounding AI would cover up the cracks, but it failed to do so — Humane sold very few pins and is reportedly trying to find a buyer for the entire company at a price of, get this, one billion dollars.

Rabbit r1

Move over "this meeting could have been an email," 2024 gave us a new kid on the block — This device could have been an app.

The Rabbit r1 was another unfinished, barely functioning AI device that delivered very little of what it promised and did the few things it could do very slowly and very incorrectly. But hey, at least it was colorful.

The launch was marred by poor reviews, most of which say something along the lines of "cool looking device that doesn't do much." The rollout was further dogged by an overly defensive, borderline deceitful founder, whose past as part of an NFT rug pull was exposed, and hackers showing the entire device was just a fancy ChatGPT wrapper. The hype faded as quickly as it turned up. The project had all the hallmarks of someone trying to make a quick buck, and it truly deserves its spot on this list.

Project Orion

Ah, Mr. Zuckerberg. The genius who envisioned one billion people in the Metaverse is now bullish on wearable glasses.

When he announced the glasses, called Orion, people were quick to call this Meta's iPhone moment.

It won’t be.

Sure, glasses are a better form than a headset, which is an absolute non-starter for most people. But the act of moving computing devices to our faces — at a time when people are looking to spend less time on their devices or are returning to laptops and computers so they can actually step away from screens — requires an enormous societal shift and a complete rethink about how we use technology hardware. The public has wisened up to the downsides of devices, and the pushback against the last run of wearables was stronger than ever.

The movement required to make these glasses a legitimate case for the next computing platform is not coming anytime soon. It’s going to be the Glassholes all over again.

Twitter X (and Social Media)

Social media had a year. Bots have overrun them, and thanks to AI, are getting more and more sophisticated — most platforms are now just homes for bots and bot engagement, with bots now responding to their own shitty content in some bot death loop. Most engagement is fake. Many accounts are fake. When we soon have AI imagery, video, and voice that are impossible to tell apart from the real thing, we’re going to be in a whole heap of trouble.

Speaking of X, we saw the platform shift this year into its true form — a space that serves to amplify its owner's thoughts and beliefs. It's grim stuff, and what's left of the user experience is fading fast. No matter what Frankenstein figures Musk or Yaccarino shout about, the platform is still in decline, losing users in droves. One point to note, though: with Musk's ascension to White House influence, advertisers are slowly coming back, worried about upsetting someone who could make their life harder. Who said tech leadership has no spine?

AI Chatbots

One of the 'breakthroughs' this year has been AI chatbots, which are one the most depressing and equally scary developments to come out of this wave of GenAI.

Whether it's creating fake characters/friends/girlfriends, giving them data to act like someone you know, or whether they are based on celebrities, the concept is deeply unhinged. There is a whole host of issues, too: privacy problems with personal information, concerns about data harvesting, and most of all, the blatantly obvious conclusion that they are not going to help solve the loneliness epidemic in any way.

Why?

Because, much like the Metaverse or any virtual world, it's fake. It says in the name for crying out loud — artificial intelligence. It is a connection at the most surface of levels. In reality, it secludes us from society, from interaction with other human beings, and from learning the critical skills required to function in the real world. Chatbots are another tech pitched as a solution (to loneliness) that will only exacerbate the problem.

Honorable Mention: The Wallpaper App

For someone who once wrote, "My rule #1 on the internet that's never been successfully broken is to charge for something that was previously free," Marques Brownlee launched one of the least well-received products of the year—his wallpaper app, Panels. 

It left him looking like the very grifter he is quick to call out. What's worse is the guy has the weight and audience to have brought almost any idea to life, and this is what he chose? For a man who calls out products — sometimes driving the final nail into their coffin — his decision to release something that lacks quality, lacks a market and deploys potentially egregious data harvesting was one of the strangest product decisions of the year. Risking one of the best reputations in tech for the sake of a $50-a-year wallpaper app full of ads and low-resolution images that track your location was certainly a choice.

Here’s to another year of this shit. Hey, at least it keeps me writing. After all, you can’t be an old man yelling at the clouds if there are no clouds to yell at.