I miss when gadgets looked like they had escaped from a toy box. Not because they were better. A lot of them were absolutely worse. Worse batteries, worse screens, worse software, worse cables, and usually a little plastic flap that snapped off if you looked at it too confidently.
But they had personality. You could tell what something was trying to be from across the room. A transparent laptop concept, a brick-sized charger, a weirdly specific media remote, a controller with one extra screen for reasons nobody could fully defend. I have clearly had previous form here, from getting excited about a transparent Samsung OLED laptop idea to writing about a portable Quick Charge battery deal like it was an artefact from the future.
Modern hardware is often objectively nicer. It is thinner, faster, easier to charge, and less likely to require a driver CD from a manufacturer whose website now redirects to a casino. I do appreciate that. I am not asking for every pocket to be full of proprietary adapters again.
I just like gadgets that commit to the bit. Give me one odd button, one tiny screen, one hinge that exists because someone in a meeting got carried away. The boring rectangle won. Fine. It earned it. I still miss the strange little things that looked like they had a job, a gimmick, and a mild grudge against industrial design.
