The old adage, “out with the old, in with the new,” certainly applies to the tech world, but at a pace light years ahead of other industries. In 2018, we saw the flickering final days of many gadgets, apps and technology we had come to love/hate over the years. Or maybe you don’t remember these at all, which probably explains why they have gone the way of the Do-Do Bird. Here’s a list of the dearly departed, courtesy wired.com. May they rest in tech peace.
iPhone SE
Apple laid to rest the iPhone SE in September, after showcasing three flashy new, much larger iPhones. But honestly, the only thing you’ll probably miss about the SE is that it USED to fit in your jeans pocket.
Kindle Voyage
Amazon quietly stopped selling the Kindle Voyage, its upscale e-reader with a glass screen, in July. No worries. The Paperwhite is better anyway.
YouTube Annotations
Do you remember trying to watch your favorite grainy videos on YouTube and suddenly this ugly black rectangle would pop up, imploring you to “click to subscribe” or click on another link. Those were “YouTube annotations,” and they’re being phased out, with YouTube promising they’ll disappear forever by January 2019. Yay!
Apple Music Connect
Launched in 2015 as a social feed for artists, the platform never seemed to gain much traction. It played its swan song in December—not that you’d noticed.
Digg
The popular RSS and feed reader Digg went asunder in March. Its Reader app allowed users to curate and follow feeds from their favorite site.
FilmStruck
FilmStruck, the film streaming platform beloved by cinephiles for its classic and arthouse ouvre, went bye-bye in November. But fear not: film buffs have other options, like MUBI, Kanopy, and Fandor.
Musical.ly
Musical.ly isn’t quite dead—more like reincarnated. The lip-syncing app was taken over and morphed into TikTok this year, migrating users’ accounts into the 15-second video social media app.
Path
Founded in 2010 by a former Facebook employee, the more minimalistic and intimate platform flourished briefly, before finally being laid to rest in October.
StumbleUpon
With a single click, the discovery tool allowed users to click and be transported to a site that they might not have ever discovered. StumbleUpon lasted for an impressive 16 years, but ended its run in June.
Swype
Swype, the original app that popularized the swipe-not-type keyboard interaction, was pulled from the App Store and Google Play in February.
Tumblr porn
In December, Tumblr announced that it would ban “adult content” from its site. The transition hasn’t been popular or easy, and has led to heated discussions about the place of sexuality and community on the internet.
Google+, Inbox, URL Shortener, Allo
This year, Google announced that it will be pulling the plug on a number of its services, including Allo, Inbox, and their URL Shortener, who will all be buried by March, 2019. And Google announced that they will shut down its Google+ social network for consumers as well, after that major hack incident that compromised a half a million subscribers. Ouch.
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