Technology is ever-changing, and there are always new products and services emerging. 2022 saw a huge purge of tech products, from Amazon culling 5+ products, through to Google and Apple making many of their spin-off pieces of tech obsolete. You can find the full list here.
Change isn’t a bad thing, though. It makes room for bigger and better products and platforms and ensures that technology is always evolving. 2023 has been an interesting economic year. Many businesses have felt the financial pinch, and the market hasn’t evolved or grown as much as it has in previous years. Crypto has also taken a substantial hit, with the “Crypto Winter” starting in 2018, and slowly coming to a halt post-pandemic in 2023.
“The 2022 crypto winter was triggered by U.S. inflation surging to multi-decade highs, prompting the Federal Reserve to aggressively raise interest rates. In response to rising rates, investors began selling risk assets, such as cryptocurrencies and stocks. Falling crypto prices exposed over-leverage among crypto lenders, exchanges and hedge funds.” - Forbes
Although there are talks of a “Crypto Spring” emerging in 2024, it’ll be intriguing to see how this evolves. With increased regulation, the Crypto market looks like it could bounce back, but it’ll operate differently.
But, what are the pieces of tech that we’re going to have to leave behind in 2023!?
iPhone 14 (discontinued)
Apple has been working overtime this year with bringing out and upgrading its product line. However, in the wake of the iPhone 15 being released earlier this year, the iPhone 14 (along with a few other iPhone models) has been discontinued. There is speculation as to why this has happened, with some saying it’s to encourage the purchase of the new phone whereas others think it’s because there may have been faults with the iPhone 14. Reports of Face ID and WiFi not working, along with other smaller performance problems have evidently caused Apple to make considerable improvements to the iPhone 15 (or so we hope!)
After Musk purchased Twitter in late 2022, it’s gone on a downward spiral in 2023. Since the purchase, 13% of its daily users have stopped using the platform, and the traffic on Twitter has continued to be volatile due to the varying changes made by Musk. Although the changes aren’t all doom and gloom, the glory days of Twitter, now renamed X, seem to be over. With Musk also making significant staffing cuts, which left many in uproar, cancel culture took over which made it hard for X to recover. Will X be back in 2024? We’re not so sure.
Google Glass
Just like Amazon and Apple, Google has been busy creating new products and service lines. From the humble search engine through to integrations with our household products, Google is home to pure innovation. However, we’re saying goodbye in 2023 to Google Glass. This was a product developed by Google, which were in essence, smart glasses. The idea unfortunately never took off, despite the actual idea in practice being great.
“Google Glass is a wearable, voice- and motion-controlled Android device that resembles a pair of eyeglasses and displays information directly in the user's field of vision.” - TechTarget
So, why did this piece of tech not work? Some would argue it’s ahead of its time, whereas others simply didn’t see its need. Unfortunately, we are living in a world where there are so many tech products available at our fingertips. From our sat navs to our smartphones, laptops, and home products - some could argue that these products didn’t have relevance in a market that is already over-saturated. Now that Google Glass has been discontinued, it’ll be interesting to see if it resurfaces in the coming years…!
What tech are you leaving behind in 2023? Let us know in the comments below.
