Tech Graveyard 2023: The Year “X” Killed Twitter, Apple Changed Its Historic Charging Port, and Other Technologies Became Obsolete

2023 ends and, along with the year, some technologies are going away. Twitter still exists but it’s called X and the blood of the murder of one of the most iconic brands on the internet runs on Elon Musk’s hands. Apple launched its first phone with USB-C port, to put an end (forced by the European Union) to over 10 years of incompatibility with the rest of the sector. And, although perhaps few people knew it, Netflix has closed the business branch which will continue, in 2023, He sent the DVDs home.

The bar for the tech harvester in 2022 was high: two heavyweights in the history of technology, Internet Explorer and the iPod They were buried in Silicon Valley Cemetery. But 2023 has some historic ones that will be part of the computer museum.

Here are the technologies that have abandoned us in 2023.

Twitter killed the bird

Since Elon Musk purchased Twitter in October 2022, several changes have affected the most used microblogging social network in the world. The idea of ​​creating an application that centralizes everything in one (“The everything app”), from social networks to payments, has always been in the north of the richest man in the world. But what few expected was that Twitter, like this and as we knew her, she disappeared.

Both the brand and the tweets stopped being called Twitter and tweets: it became the social network “X” simply; the tweets, the “posts”. This meant some compatibility issues, including those Apple had in the App Store for operating with a single-letter application, or the huge amount of pornography associated with the letter “x” on the Internet.

Additionally, the company has made access to the platform free for third-party applications (it made connecting to its API paid), which means customers like Tweetdeck had to change their access plans, making them paid.

There were not even traces of the iconic bird that represented Twitter, the most iconic and successful microblogging social network in history, for 17 years.

Twitter is not dead, but all the classic “branding” of the brand, which even had terms included in the dictionaries of different languages ​​around the world (The RAE has incorporated the word “tweet”.), passed away in 2023.

Although many continue to tell you, and will tell you, Twitter and not X.

Netflix stopped sending DVDs and eliminated password sharing

Netflix hasn’t always been an online subscription streaming service. In the United States, the company began in 1997 to offer a system of shipping films without late fees (main difference with successwhich penalized members for late declarations).

In 2007, the company pioneered streaming which today is already a standard in an industry that has imitated this idea for music, series and films. Given the success of the model, in 2023 the company decided to stop sending physical films by post.

It is news that had no impact in Argentina due to the remoteness of the service, as of 240 million subscribers that the service has worldwide, the vast majority are unaware of these origins.

What had a direct impact in various countries around the world was the end of the account sharing policy. Known as “password sharing” (key sharing), Netflix started charging “extra houses”. A very common practice among users is to pay for a subscription and share it, so that all the expenses do not fall into the same wallet.

This ended in 2023, when the company had warned that it would stop this practice used for more than 100 million users.

Apple has said goodbye to its Lightning port

After a long struggle with the European Union, Apple has decided to surrender: iPhone 15, launched this year, includes a USB-C port instead of a Lightning.

Lightning is a type of connector used by Apple to charge and transfer data on some of its devices, such as iPhone, iPad, AirPods, and Siri Remote. It was introduced in 2012 and replaced the previously used 30-pin connector.

The European Union had imposed the application of this standard starting from 2024, but Apple was early in adopting USB-C. The EU measure aimed to reduce e-waste and facilitate compatibility between different brands and models.

The company also left its 13-inch MacBookwhich included the controversial touchbar.

NFT on Meta and Instagram

For some reason, in 2020 a group of “cryptobros“wanted to convince the world that NFTs were a good idea. These certificates of ownership of digital assets, however, were short-lived. Or at least the fever for them: by September of this year, 95% of the market no longer had value.

Several companies had launched services to buy NFTs, with Meata at the helm. Facebook and Instagram They were part of this wave that, in March this year, discharged him.

Google Glass (again)

Google’s smart glasses have been an interesting project. In the idea of ​​offering augmented reality, facilitating navigation in social networks, maps and interactive content, they had a certain life more as an idea than as a gadget: low battery, a very high price ($1,500) and a privacy controversy.

The project, which began in 2012, never saw the light of day for end consumers and was canceled in 2015. However, some time later it was relaunched for businesses, in 2017, with the name “Corporate edition”.

In March of this year, Google announced that it would stop producing this enterprise version.

notebook

A simple and easy to use word processor, included in Windows and much loved by all for taking notes. Wordpad has given journalists, writers and editors many years of stability, or simply to those who didn’t want to install the Office package but needed something a little more sophisticated than a notepad (change the font, for example).

Starting with Windows 95, this software has been found on all Windows computers. In 2020, it had already become an optional program in Windows 10. In September this year, Microsoft announced that would not be available in future versions of the operating system.

Many will miss him.

Cortana on Windows

Cortana was a Microsoft assistant for Windows, the most used operating system in the world. Inspired by an artificial intelligence from the Halo video game saga (owned by the Redmond giant), It was released in 2015, on both mobile and desktop devices.

In 2023, with the integration of AI assistant Bing into Windows 10 and 11, after the explosion of generative artificial intelligence powered by the alliance with OpenIACortana stopped making sense.

In August this year it had the latest update.

Youtube Stories

The “stories” format has been adopted by all social networks since Instagram blew up the format created by Snapchat.

YouTube was one of them: short videos in infinite scroll format to compete, without much success, with TikTok.

The company, however, remained with the “Shorts”, a format which was much more successful and which comes closer to the experience of the social network of the Chinese giant ByteDance.

E3

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3, was the industry’s largest video game trade show during. The trade show, held annually in Los Angeles since 1995, has been the best time and place to announce new products for nearly 30 years.

The fair had historic moments, such as the presentation of consoles such as PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64, or emblematic games such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, considered by many to be the best of all time.

However, as time passed, various large companies such as Sony began to withdraw to hold their own events. In addition to the shutdown due to the pandemic, the change of era has left E3 behind and buried it in oblivion. Clarín attended the conference on more than one occasion.

Thus, among other services and products, a year comes to an end in which other technologies less appreciated in these latitudes have gone down in history. Amazon Smile, a charity service from the company founded by Jeff Bezos, Messenger Lite, a lighter version of Meta chat, Google’s Podcasts app (which by the way wasn’t bad but was terrible), PlayStation Plus and Omegle collection (a social chat and video network for meeting people) were others who said goodbye.

The technological grim reaper is already preparing to reap its first victim of 2024.