The first full year of Annoying Technology

As the most annoying year in recent history draws to a close, we wanted to look back on it a bit – it was the first full year of us doing this fun little blogging project. A huge shoutout to the grumpy website, which inspired us to start documenting all the annoying things we used to just send each other via instant messengers.

At the beginning of this year we joked that it would be funny if we managed to get to 100 followers on Twitter by the end of the year – as of now we’re way past 250. We’re really happy that so many of you can relate to our grievances, thanks for making our 2020 a bit more fun!

We independently looked through all our (140!) posts of this year, and these are the ones we both chose as our favorites:

• Bluetooth and USB-C at the same time is like whack-a-mole, and this is still happenening on the new M1 Minis. Absolutely ridiculous state of affairs.
• Apple Music UI after the great rewrite. Check out this more thorough video review, too.
• The greatest time selection UI you’ll ever see
• Quick reminder that Apple hates the open web just as much as Google
• The web hates you too, though
• Apple bringing some much needed rest in this trying year
• We almost always try to also file bug reports, but sometimes that’s easier said than done
• This rather wordy post about how confusing one single Mail.app prefpane is. It took many hours before we felt like we really understood how it actually works.
• Calculating sizes is hard
• Not a big problem, but this confusing message feels like a good metaphor for the lack of attention to detail that is plagueing Apple these days.

By the way, we love to hear about the annoying things you encounter. Recently we added a submissions page to answer frequent questions regarding that. (We even got some requests for sponsored posts, can you believe it?! We’re not opposed to it completely, but it has to feel right – and so far it hasn’t.)

Here’s to a less annoying 2021! 🎉