Do you have disappointing technology?
We have a tumble drying that is supposed to detect when something is dry and then stop. It has a number of settings ranging from Iron Dry to Bone Dry. Guess which one we always use? That’s right Bone Dry. Even then it doesn’t always dry everything. The simplicity of placing a set of items in a drier, setting the time and coming back later for dry clothing has been replaced by a lingering doubt that the washing will, indeed, get dried. It’s so disappointing.
On a similar note, I purchased a drying rack. One of those things that you erect to dry clothing without the need for a drier. It looks great, but some of the clips that hold it into place aren’t up to the job and you get the frustration of placing wet clothes onto a part of the construction only for it to collapse while you are doing it. It could be so good, but it’s so disappointing.
I’ve owned many home network routers in my time. A home router is one of those things that you should just be able to connect to the network and forget about. Unfortunately each one has had an ability to stop working at the time when the technical support person is furthest away from being able to fix it. How disappointing.
I purchased a tiny iPhone charging cable that fitted onto my keyring so that I always had it with me. The first few times I used it were great, but it soon became worn and eventually one of the ends came off completely. Very disappointing.
Our Tivo box has decided that it doesn’t like playing YouTube videos. Another things to investigate and hopefully fix. Disappointing.
My work supplied Android phone has decided that it’s going to stop synchronising calendar entries into the calendar app that I like. It’ll synchronise them into the inferior in-built calendar app, but I don’t want to use that app, I want to use the one I like. Most disappointing.
As technology people we can sometimes get excited about this magical new thing or that incredible widget but sometimes I think it does us good to remember that technology can be disappointing.
Graham Chastney 
I think that you need to draw out the difference between things that don’t last – yes disappointing and those that just don’t do what we need or want them to do – much more disappointing in my view. You could argue that wear & tear or just entropy is inevitable. But also could say that somethings seemed to be designed to not to last.
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