Top 10 annoying technologies

Normally, the point of technological advancement is to make life easier, faster and more efficient. New features are supposed to streamline old tasks and automate tedious routines.

That isn't, however, always the case. Sometimes a new technology not only makes things more complex, but also frustratingly difficult and time-consuming. Be it a poor design, an unnecessary extra step, or simply a well-intentioned but poorly-placed bell and whistle, occasionally new technologies do nothing more than irritate the hell out of everyone they meet.

This week, we look at a few of those pet peeves of the technology world. Not surprisingly, this list was difficult to whittle down to ten, so there are a couple of honourable mentions.

As always, we invite users to share with us their thoughts and some of their own little electronic annoyances.

10. iTunes

Iain Thomson: When iTunes first came out I was really impressed. Here was a media player that did a really good job, from the fade-in and out of music to an excellent cataloguing system.

But with later versions it all started to go wrong. The software got more and more clunky and intrusive, then you couldn’t download it without getting QuickTime as well.

The sharing music feature sounds very good but do you really want your co-workers to know you’ve got a few folk music CDs burnt onto your driver or that copy of Charlene’s “I’ve never been to me” that you downloaded to annoy someone with?

The latest version is even worse. The sounds like a good idea, but to use it you’ve got to give Apple your credit card number. Oh, and it’ll suggest a whole host of music you wouldn’t be seen dead downloading. Once again, Apple’s hype isn’t met by reality.

Shaun Nichols: I don't share Iain's sentiments on this one, mainly because I use the Mac version of iTunes, which is understandably better integrated with the operating system. Bundling QuickTime and Safari with iTunes for Windows was a pretty bad idea, both in terms of annoying customers and inviting legal actions. It is, after all, what got Microsoft in trouble a few years back.

I have my own thoughts on Genius, which could very well prove annoying when you have to scroll through the bad stuff you purchased in varying degrees of coherence.

9. MacOS "classic" error messages

Shaun Nichols: No major software release in the last decade was more sorely needed than MacOS X.

The sleek, ultra-stable Unix-based offspring of Steve Jobs' project replaced a Macintosh Operating System that had become badly antiquated as Apple struggled with its direction in the late 90's.

While there was no shortage of complaints about MacOS 8 and 9, most notably the lack of true multitasking and poor memory management, the thing that truly made you grit your teeth was its handling of errors and crashes.

It's bad enough when your clunky, unstable operating system crashes on you. It's even worse when you can't figure out what the heck is wrong. Rather than simply being told "the hard drive is full" or "the application ran out of memory," users were presented with "error type -34" and "error type -108" messages.

These types of reports were obviously designed to make things easier for developers and troubleshooters in the earlier days of the MacOS, but as time wore on and the system began to truly show its age and limitations, they became ever more frequent and frustrating for users to deal with.

With OS X now seven years old, the "classic" errors have long gone the way of PowerPC chips and ResEdit. Application crashes and errors still happen, but they're rarely the sort of system-crippling issue that would lead to a crash or force a restart. Even better, they're explained in plain English.

Iain Thomson: Oh Shaun, you young pup, you have no idea what it was like in the earlier days of Apple. If you think version eight was bad then the first Apple computers would have made your head explode.

Back then Apple came up with the idea of having a special graphic, dubbed ‘Sad Mac’, which popped up when your Apple didn’t feel like working, along with a string of hexadecimal numbers that disappeared before you could write them down. You can see a similar face when your iPod crashes.

To add insult to injury the computer would also play the sound of a car crash to you. You were left wondering how the computer could do all this stuff but couldn’t open the document you’d slaved on for days.

I saw a fair few of these over the years and they always made me want to put my fist through the screen, preferably followed by Steve Jobs’ face.

8. Bluetooth

Iain Thomson: Bluetooth was such a good idea, a great way to get the cables off the desktop and free up clutter.

But the problem was it was too good an idea and every manufacturer wanted to make sure that they could sell you their Bluetooth devices rather than leaving it to the free market. So they started putting their own code into the software stack and before you knew it connecting a Bluetooth device was a gamble.

Then there are the headsets. In days of yore if someone was walking down the street yammering away at themselves you put them in a waistcoat with long wrap-around sleeves and house them somewhere where they couldn’t harm themselves. Now the streets are full of people having animated discussions with someone and it’s difficult to spot the oddballs.

Plus they look ridiculous. I tested the first ever Bluetooth headset and it was massive. I felt so embarrassed to be using it I hid in the testing laboratory. Things have improved but there’s still a sizable proportion of users who look like pseudo-Borg on their way to a cut-rate Star Trek convention.

Shaun Nichols: Bluetooth is especially troublesome in San Francisco, which has a surplus of both early adopters keen on trying out the latest gear and mentally-ill people who hear voices. These days, it's becoming harder and harder to tell the two apart.

I'm reminded of an old George Carlin bit about wireless headsets. We can't go into much detail here, as it is the late, great George Carlin after all. Needless to say, he had some suggestions for what people should do with their freed hands.

7. Terms and Conditions

Iain Thomson: The devil may have the best tunes, but I’m willing to bet he’s got a fairly well stocked legal department as well, turning out endlessly long terms and conditions.

You’ve all seen these things, long lists of what you can and can’t do with an application, what the company can do to you in return if you break them and probably a legal indemnity in case you get electrocuted just by pressing the power button. You may have all seen them, but have you read one, ever?

Basically the T&Cs are there to cover the backside of whoever is selling you the product in question. They are long winded, frequently incomprehensible and usually a complete waste of time.

A case in point. Bill Gates was giving an address in a US university and after he had finished a student bought up a copy of his Windows 95 CD and asked Big Bill to sign it. Gates refused, saying it wasn’t the student’s CD, it was his and then recommended the bewildered fan read the T&Cs that came with it. It turns out he was right – by some convoluted logic the student didn’t own the CD, just the software it came on.

As we’ve recently seen in the T&Cs the courts are going to have a field day when it comes to enforcing these lines of legal gibberish. It’s illegal to set up a Facebook or MySpace page under a pseudonym – try enforcing that and there’s going to be a lot of teenagers working on chain gangs.

Shaun Nichols: Almost nobody ever reads terms and conditions. As such, they are often used by companies to lock people into things they'd otherwise never want to do.

Companies such as Zango are for loading their T&C's up with consent for extra software installations, while other unsavoury groups will use the T&C fine print as permission to solicit user information.

In some cases, terms and conditions are even more than an annoyance, they can be a danger.

6. iPhone spelling correction

Shaun Nichols: I must say, the is a really, really cool device. Most of the features are completely intuitive, and the rest are learned within a matter of minutes.

There is, however, one feature that at times makes me nostalgic for the my old keypad-type clamshell Motorola. The iPhone's auto-correct feature is terrible.

I know, it's well intentioned, and with any messaging system, particularly one that uses a touchscreen keyboard, spelling correction is essential. The problem is, the iPhone uses the space bar to accept it. In other words, what you type gets auto-corrected when you move on to the next word, whether you wanted to change it or not.

Type the word "cook" only to have it changed to "cookies" when you're done, and you're not only left with an embarrassing misprint, but that Sunday dinner you're making for your diabetic grandfather just took a turn for the worse.

Auto correction is a great technology, but you'd think that Apple could at least find a better way to implement it than the space bar.

Iain Thomson: You have to say this was a bit of a gaffe on Apple’s part. Sadly this isn’t just a problem limited to the iPhone, they’ve installed it on the iPod Touch as well.

You’d think that since the device is all about touching you should be able to tap the suggested word to use it, but no, that deletes it instead. Also the words suggested aren’t even that close. Try writing ‘cream’ and it suggests ‘fee’ instead. I think they need a dictionary in Cupertino.5. Vista

Iain Thomson: is annoying for a number of reasons.

Firstly it got my goat because it took so long. Bill Gates was originally talking about it coming out in 2004 but the deadline kept faster than the Elephant Man’s blind date.

Then there was the actual software itself. At first this was billed as a ground up rewrite of Windows, with security built in from scratch. As the deadlines whistled past more and more was cut out of the operating system until we were left with a tinkered version of XP with a flashy, and resource-hungry, GUI.

As the deadline for launch was finally set January 2007 hardware manufacturers kicked up a stink, pointing out that this would leave them with stock on the shelves as no-one would buy during the important Christmas season. So Microsoft came up with the Vista Capable sticker for hardware that could apparently run the new operating system. In fact, some machines barely could and Microsoft is now in the trying to sort that little mess out.

When it finally did come out, and in spite of the long delays, device drivers weren’t ready. So you had a spiffy new operating system that refused to recognise your add-ons. It also had the annoying habit of producing more pop-up windows saying “Are you sure” than any previous operating system.

So, all-in-all, quite annoying.

Shaun Nichols: Perhaps Vista gets a bit of a bad rap. These days, if you buy a decent new system with Vista pre-installed, it runs just fine. Unfortunately, the software had built up such a huge reservoir of bad sentiment that people were afraid to use it just based on reputation.

This lead to the yet another Vista annoyance; the commercials. That Microsoft now admits the only way people will use Vista is if they are tricked into it is both a little sad and kind of irritating, considering all the hype and promises that surrounded its release.

4. Microsoft Office assistant

Shaun Nichols: Many people don't like someone looking over their shoulder while they work, others get irritated when backseat drivers try to tell them what to do. The Office Assistant combined both of these irritating traits with a dose of annoying cartoon characters thrown in.

Just in premise, the idea of a talking paper clip that watches what you do and tries to correct or re-format your work is more than a bit irritating and even slightly creepy. In practice, it's all those things and more.

"Clippy" has taken his place amongst the upper-echelon of a very formidable pack of irritating Microsoft products. Thankfully, he was removed from the latest version of Office.

Iain Thomson: I attended the launch of Office XP in Seattle and remember well the moment when the opening speaker was finishing his presentation and said “Oh, and we’re turning off the Office Assistant as a default.” The ensuing whoops and cheers were unmatched at any point in the day, much to Microsoft’s annoyance.

On the face of it Clippy sounded like quite a good idea. Who doesn’t like help and I’m sure the originator, who has never dared reveal his or her identity, was inspired by the best of motives. Science fiction is littered with computer helpers to humans, so why not put one in Office?

They should have known better to be honest, for Clippy was basically Microsoft Bob all over again. Bob, designed by the current Mrs Gates, is considered by many to be the company’s Edsel.

Clippy had the annoying habit of popping up when you least wanted him, getting it wrong most of the time and has rightly been extensively parodied. Personally I’d have ranked him higher than this.

3. Are you sure?

Iain Thomson: In the good old days of DOS computing, when command lines was the only control you needed, erasing data was simple. You told the computer to erase something and then it did so. If you made a mistake then you learnt the hard way not to do it again.

But with the introduction of the graphical user interface (GUI) all that changed. Now, if you try to do almost anything the computer starts second-guessing you. Am I sure I want to delete that file? Well let’s see, I highlighted it and pressed the delete key – that’s a pretty clear indication that I wanted the thing off my computer.

As operating systems have moved on there are more and more of these annoying little prompts. Are you sure you want to close a multiple tabbed browser window, do you want to save your password, shouldn’t you save that document before closing it. It’s like the computer has suddenly morphed into the grandparent you love to hate.

People have got to learn to take responsibility for their own lives and this goes double with computers. Accidentally deleted your presentation? Then tough – you’re a moron and the only way you’re going to learn not to do it is by experience.

Shaun Nichols: Part of expanding the appeal of computers is simplifying and adding protections for normal users. Often these extra precautions will become a hindrance to more advanced users who simply want to get things done.

An option to disable the "are you sure" dialogs would have been a very welcome addition. These days, extensive backups and widespread use of the "undo " command provide ample insurance for most tasks. Time to retire the "are you sure" precaution once and for all.

2. Voice recognition systems

Shaun Nichols: What starts with "account" and ends with "go **** yourself"? That's right, a call to your bank's automated call system. Voice recognition was designed to be a replacement to the old "press one for…" system which was highly irritating in its own right.

The problem was that most systems don't really account for things like accents or different pronunciations, meaning that unless you talk like the guy from movie phone, you're in trouble. If you're calling a system in a foreign country it becomes almost comedic (listening to my former Dutch boss check airline reservations was a favourite pastime.)

Only now are prototype voice recognition systems that account for these things being developed, meaning we should have at least a few more years of having to repeat the word "reception" over and over again.

Iain Thomson: When the first voice recognition systems for the PC came out I was sold instantly, it’s what I’d always wanted. No more aching fingertips from hammering a keyboard and you’d be able to tell the computer what to do just like the movies.

Sadly the promise wasn’t fulfilled. The early software slowed your machine to a crawl, later systems weren’t much better and the software takes ages to get used to your voice. It also throws a strop and refuses to work if you get a cold. When I got a press release from Lernout & Hauspie claiming their system could be trained in a few minutes it got filed straight in the circular filing cabinet.

Things may have improved slightly nowadays but basic problems still remain. The software is incredibly poor at recognizing names and useless with companies. In the end you spend so much time editing documents you might as well have just typed it in right first time.

1. Pop-up ads

Shaun Nichols: Sometime in the roaring 90's, some enterprising advertising mind thought it would be a good idea to use pop-up browser windows to display advertisements. I like to think that there is a special spot reserved in Hell for that person, right next to the cast of "Friends".

The pop up ad has become perhaps the most annoying single thing on the internet. Even worse, the things can actually cause browser crashes and result in identity theft and malware installations.

The business of stopping pop-ups has become quite serious, as pretty much every recent browser release has installed some sort of pop-up blocking feature. That doesn't stop advertisers from continuing to use them, however.

Iain Thomson: Occasionally, in the depths of the night when sleep won’t come and the house is quiet, I have a dark fantasy about getting the inventors of spam, pop-ups and viruses together in a room. As this is a family web site I won’t continue but suffice it to say that a sandblaster, a vat of industrial strength rubbing alcohol and a truck-load of enraged echidnas are involved.

Pop-ups were an easy winner when we were drawing up the list. They have to be the most annoying form of advertising known to man, worse even than Mormons knocking on the door at 8am on a hung-over Sunday morning. If I see a pop-up I make a mental note never to buy that company’s products, which is why I have yet to get a Netflix account.

But the advertising industry loves them. After all, the name of the game in advertising is getting in your face and when it comes to reaching internet users then that’s exactly what they do. Block them, boycott them, do whatever you can to destroy this scourge of internet use.

Honourable Mention - SMS

Iain Thomson: Of all the data services available on a phone SMS is still the most popular, and one of the most annoying.

Why is it annoying? Because it’s unstoppable – the minute you turn on your phone the message pops up. If you’re trying to avoid someone then there’s no recourse, short of saying you’ve lost your phone.

It has also led to SMS speak, a bastardised polyglot of emoticons and phonetic language that is more trouble than it’s worth. I showed my mother how to SMS and have regretted it ever since. In order to be ‘down with the kids’ she’s invented her own form of text speak. If I had a cent for every time I’ve got a message and had to call my sister to ask what on earth Mum was saying I could afford that Caribbean island with the nuclear rocket launch pad I’ve always wanted.

Now the phone companies didn’t invent SMS, it was an engineering function left on phones that people learned to use without prompting. So to make up for that the phone operators MMS. Now you get annoying messages with tacky photos attached; double the annoyance – and I know of at least one couple who have broken up thanks to an ill-advised picture being sent.

Shaun Nichols: SMS gets my nod simply for what it has done to the English language. It seems that these days, pretty much anyone under the age of 23 is incapable of actually typing out such basic things as "you" "are" and "thank you." And it is not just in SMS conversation, text speak has infiltrated e-mails, blog postings, and even formal papers.

Honourable mention - The emoticon

Shaun Nichols: Emoticons didn't quite make our list because they're not really a technological advance so much as a cultural plague.

The idea started out well enough; a practical way to convey tones that did not translate to text communications, such as sarcasm or teasing. Unfortunately, all it turned into was an easy way to identify annoying people.

Iain Thomson: OK, hand on my heart I have to say I use the odd smiley face once in a blue moon. Because email is slightly tricky when it comes to sarcasm then the occasional smiley face can be the difference between a good chuckle and causing mortal offence.

That said they are to be used sparingly. If you get an email loaded with the things you know you’re either dealing with someone who’s just learned about them or an individual who, back in the days of writing, would dot their ‘i’s with little hearts.