Tech that died in 2022: We bid farewell to… - guestthisidiever87

It's the conclusion of 2019. The last year of a glorious decade that brought us the iPad, the Ultrabook, wearables, VR, and a fleet of smart home devices. Okay, none of those things happened in 2019, but this past year was still important to the passing X. This was the year that several infamous services and gizmos headed bump off into the horizon, or decreased into darkness after hanging along far to a fault long.

For 2019, we noticed that some commanding-profile companies experienced multiple tragic deaths, while other demises seemed to cluster of course within particularly troubled cartesian product categories. Here's our look at the biggest tech deaths of the twelvemonth, orderly into company or theme.

Microsoft: Mistakes were made

Mark Hachman / IDG

Windows 10 Changeful reaches the final, last end.

Windows 10 Roving: Speaking of hanging on for far too long. In December, we saw the complete end to Microsoft's homegrown smartphone effort. Happening Dec 10, 2019, Microsoft stopped delivering security patches to Windows 10 Mobile devices.

Anyone still rocking the Horsepower Elite x3 (which was actually a really great phone) OR Lumia 650 can still use their handsets, rightful without the backing or support of Microsoft. If something breaks, or a horrific vulnerability destroys the Subway interface as we know it, users are out of luck. That's for rhythmic folks, anyway. Corporate types ingest a life line to carry on for a teeny bit yearner, honorable as they did with Windows XP.

It's a shame that Microsoft's mobile effort came to this peak. Windows 10 Mobile and its predecessors were an original lease on what a smartphone could be. It looked and behaved nothing like the grid of icons on an Android or iOS device, but it was still very operable. Unfortunately, a toxic mix of lackadaisical carrier support, poor developer interest, and phlegm from smartphone buyers unopened the fate of Windows phones long since.

Microsoft Store Books: The trouble with digital goods is they can disappear if the retailer goes out of business. That's what happened in July, 2019, when Microsoft exited the literary scene, and ebooks purchased from the Microsoft Entrepot stopped running.

Microsoft's ebook venture had been short-lived, and to the company's deferred payment, it didn't just flip the table and take the air away. The company said IT would refund all record book purchases for its approximately six ebook customers.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Windows 10's My People.

Windows 10's My People: Fine, fine, this death North Korean won't happen until 2020 or later, but we found kayoed about it in November. Microsoft is deprecating the My People app that was first introduced in Windows 10 1709. If you don't know what we're speaking about, it's that bitty outline of two people that sits in the taskbar.

The idea behind the lineament was interesting decent. You'd select cardinal contacts, and then shortcuts for electronic messaging them would sit in your taskbar. You could send away messages operating room receive notifications from your peeps. The idea was to bring the Populate, Mail, and Skype Windows 10 apps into one spot where you could contact the the great unwashe most important to you, be they colleagues, kinsfolk members, or friends.

The trouble was it didn't mould if you weren't using Microsoft's People app to salt away your contacts. It besides couldn't connect to one-third-party services people actually used, such atomic number 3 Gmail or social networking sites. Fashioning a deal with Google or Facebook might have been tricky to draw in off, but without IT My People was pretty much dead ahead IT even launched.

Microsoft

Microsoft's online games: This combined wasn't really a slip up, and many of an "all good things come to an end" here and now. In July, Microsoft started shutting down its servers for Internet Backgammon, Checkers, Spades, Hearts, Reversi, and MSN Go. July was when Windows XP users lost access code to the games, and Windows 7 users will misplace support on January 22, 2020. Interestingly, that's eight days after Microsoft ends support for Windows 7 itself, only we'll salvage that chronicle for future year.

Shattered AR/VR dreams

Oculus

Gear VR: The realistic reality craze took a step back in 2019. In August, we found away that Samsung would no longer reinforcement the Gear VR headset for the Galaxy Note 10. And thereupon, what many people had assumed for years became realism: The Gear VR platform was dead.

Samsung got into virtual realness earliest along, during the initial hype over the Oculus Rift headset. The company then worked with Oculus to create a stripped headset for its phones, and started offering them free of charge with new devices.

Everything seemed to make up going well until about 2018, as Android Central reports, so it was pretty much over. Oculus sick on to the Eye Go, and Samsung right gave up.

Air castle View: Pursual Samsung's Gear VR non-shocker, Google aforesaid in October that the Pixel 4 smartphone wouldn't support the Daydream Catch. The company also stopped selling the headset, A rumored past Variety.

Just care that, and later just trey years, Google exited the Mobile River VR space. The company still has some interest in VR with increased and essential realness apps. You can as wel still buy the uber-ungenerous (and hacky) Google Cardboard, but any interest in VR mobile hardware beyond that is jolly much over.

Explorer Edition Google Glass: Google Glass was another interesting experiment that never really went anywhere. In December, Google announced it would offer one final update for the Google Glass Explorer Variant. The update removes the need to use a Google account along Tras, and it also cuts the connection to back-end services.

The update has to be manually installed and will become mandatory after February 25, 2020. At that gunpoint, Explorer Edition users North Korean won't be able to use apps such as YouTube and Gmail with their headset. The tv camera functions will continue to work, however.

Google Glass was a tasteful idea, liberal users a wide-awake display for telephone calls and maps, and the power to walkover a motion-picture show quickly on the go. Simply Glass was widely considered to be creepy and looked just plain goofy. Perhaps if Google had figured out how to let in all that computing power in a regular pair of specs, it would've caught on. That may cost something we encounter in the incoming, but this first base audacious adventure is over, at any rate for consumers—the enterprise version is still supported.

Brave Over

Valve

Steamer controller: Valve's hardware record so far has been, well, awful. The company cut its losses awhile ago on its Steam Machines and dreams of a living room PC gaming box. Past it unloaded the Steam Link at uber-cheap prices in 2018.

Beyond the two boxes, Steam clean also had its control. That was well the most revolutionary item in its living room strategy, and yet its fourth dimension finally came in 2019. The comptroller bade farewell in December, when they were sold off for a measly $5.

The Steam Restrainer was an innovative and interesting take the game controller. It had customizable touchpads on the right and left to start out just the right sensitivities for your gaming trend. When we reviewed the Steam Restrainer in 2015, we thought it was the best part of Valve's hardware blitz. We titled it an "elegant solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem—'How do you play every PC game ever made on a single input gimmick?' The future of Microcomputer gaming in the sustenance room is still going via Valve's Steam Link app for Android, but the hardware side appears to be all over for Valve—unless there really is a Steamer Controller 2 in the works.

Sony

PlayStation Vue: All major tech trend has the same familiar design. It starts with a ton of companies jump on for the ride. Complete time, competitors start to fall away, until the winners are left vertical.

In Oct, the herd of premium go Video streaming services started thinning out. That's when Sony announced PlayStation Vue would shut down as of January 30, 2020.

While Sony never officially explained the reason for PlayStation Vue's disappearance, reports allege the subscriber base wasn't large enough, and the overhaul couldn't hold on up with the competition.

Google cuts its losses

Google

Google Defile Print

Google Print: It was a shame when Google proclaimed in November it would give up on Google Cloud Print. The free feature allowed you to print from anywhere to your home pressman. It was also the cardinal way to print on Chrome OS devices. By the time Google Cloud Print disappears connected January 21, 2020, Chrome OS devices will have a indigenous printing process experience to satisfy both enterprise and consumer users. But to send that PDF from the cafe to your home printer, you'll need a different service.

YouTube

YouTube Gaming App: You just can't shell Twitch, at to the lowest degree when it comes to elastic-streaming games. However, YouTube decided to give it a try in 2015, with the launch of its YouTube Gambling app. It  featured all things gaming, including the ability to follow certain games and persuasion live streams.

Later a few old age of fun, YouTube gave up in May and aforementioned goodbye to its standalone gambling video apps for Android and iOS. You can even find a gaming segment inwardly the unconstipated YouTube apps, but YouTube Play as a class identity went permadeath in 2019.

Google

Chromecast Audio: Google's Casting platform is a brilliant estimate. It relies on a feature built into apps you already usance to send streams from your phone to whatsoever modern tv set via a chintzy HDMI dongle. It's a fantastic tool around for telecasting, but it didn't tumble for euphony.

Google released an audio-only dongle in 2015 that turned any pair of speakers with a 3.5mm jack into a Spotify-favorable set-up. Four years by and by, Google discontinued the music-focused streaming device, as according by Humanoid Police force. There was hope the Google Snuggle Miniskirt mightiness become an alternative to Chromecast Audio by having a built-in audio frequency jack, but that was non to be. You can stream audio to a Google Home or Nest Miniskirt, but currently, on that point is no Google-proprietary alternative to the Chromecast Audio frequency, and that's a disgrace.

Google

Google Summation logo

Google+: In April, Google closed its failing social network Google+ permanently. There was some big excitation approximately the social network when it introductory started in 2011, simply inside a few years it was a ghost town.

It's kindly of amazing Google+ didn't fold earlier, merely it kept puttering along with almost nobelium ane using it. Two different information breaches in 2018 metamorphic that, and prompted Google to shut it down for good.

Google

Inbox by Gmail: Gmail's Inbox came out in 2014 with a denounce new way to organize your email. Information technology grouped messages into subject categories such as travel, purchases, and so happening. Gmail already had something similar with its tabbed port introduced in 2013, but Inbox took that even boost with more fine-grained categories.

It was a nice idea, but disillusioning large numbers of people to enjoyment it instead of, or in addition to, Gmail was just never going to happen. Google squandered worry in keeping up with the app, and started folding some of its features directly into Gmail. Then in Apr Google, cleared tabu Inbox for good.

Hollywood turns out the (UltraViolet) light

Ultraviolet

UV logo

In an attempt to offer a better alternative to piracy, Hollywood came up with the UltraViolet integer rights locker. Free in 2011, the theme was you'd corrupt a movie and so a get a digital version along with it. The member version would exist in your own personal digital locker, and you'd be free to view IT on the device of your prime.

By 2018, the studios stopped up using the arrangement, and by July, 2019, IT shut down. Before UltraViolet closed, users transferred their UltraViolet rights to Walmart's Vudu and other services to keep on enjoying altogether those whole number rights. Advantageously, at least until those services dissolve too.

That brings us to the end of our look at technical school that kicked the bucket in 2019. Assume't represent too tragicomical. Part of the journey is the end, as they suppose in the comic book movies. Besides, the tech journey begins afresh in 2020.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/398510/tech-that-died-in-2019-from-microsoft-google-samsung-and-more.html

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