Apps that updated for the worse or taken off the market

[Lance Uppercut]

YouTube must really want people to buy premium

First I kept getting these stupid banners on my videos that would show up when I play something on chrome cast that I have to manually Dismiss. Then I I keep getting a pop up everytime i opened the app. Now they removed the “play next” or “add to queue” button unless you subscribe to premium.

It’s such a small but annoying change.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

It's amazing how YouTube "Premium" is literally just regular YouTube but with the features they removed from regular YouTube. What a complete scam. Just get some plug-ins or use third-party sites if you really need those features.

[Lance Uppercut]

I also use Google translate a lot. For all the jokes people used to make about the translations, the app itself is amazing for something that’s a free download.

Google lens translates images in real time, can translate uploaded documents and pictures, give you romanized pronunciation for words that don’t use the standard western alphabet, conversational person to person translation.

They had a great voice translation that I could use to translate my international friends’ voice messages over various messenger apps.

But the recently updated Google translate on my iPad (but not iPhone for some reason), and it’s so glitchy now. It’s only translates about one sentence at a time, so maybe 5-10 seconds of dialogue. Where before I could translate a whole minute or two of talking giving me paragraphs of information. It still works normal on my phone with the old version of the app, but not the new one :-(

[Gerard Gerard]

Duolingo seemingly has one of these every other month between the revised progression, the slightly suspect repeating material that just pops up enough to go "hey, this isn't about repetition and reproduction anymore" and the constant feature-bait. It's an invaluable tool but genuinely a lesser product than it was even say last year.

[Lance Uppercut]

I have a flash card app that’s great but sucks for anyone new astute took it off the Apple Store.

It’s called GWhiz+. You can set up your cards to quiz you and shuffle and re quiz everything you missed. You can import cards from your gmail account using spreadsheet.

Now it’s gone. I can still download it from my library of past downloads surprisingly whenever I have a new phone or tablet, but if you’ve never had it before, you can’t get it. Though, the Google spreadsheets card import feature no longer works so now I have to manually make cards one by one.

[Gerard Gerard]

Jun 30, 2023 15:48:50 GMT -5 SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman said:

It's amazing how YouTube "Premium" is literally just regular YouTube but with the features they removed from regular YouTube. What a complete scam. Just get some plug-ins or use third-party sites if you really need those features.

I have this weird recurring nightmare that Google somehow gain the right to sue me for whatever revenue they've claimed to have lost as a result of my years of using plug-ins, blockers and workarounds to make the site as functional as it was in 2008.

[Kalmia]

I think Facebook is the master of making updates that nobody asked for and make the user experience worse.

[Sponsored by Groose Wipes]

Turntable.dj when they removed being able to add your own music. The site might be back but it's super gutted.

[G✇JI☈A]

Flight Radar.

A site that tracks air traffic in real time. One time is app that you could use the basic features for free, and had one one off payments to use more features like a 3D map, remove ads from flight and airport details pop ups, and more accurate plane markers that look like the plane they are supposed to be tracking rather the generic plane avatar for all aircraft.

But a few years ago they shut down the free app with the one off in app purchase system and replaced it with a free app but with subscription based model to access premium content. And for what it is and how frequently the app is used... No f***ing way i’m paying a monthly fee when I just use it to look up the details of the plane flying above is. And now it had ad videos that take up the whole screen if you click anywhere

[Cyno]

Jun 30, 2023 17:02:03 GMT -5 Kalmia said:

I think Facebook is the master of making updates that nobody asked for and make the user experience worse.

Its sister app Instagram is very much in the same boat, too.

[Cranjis McBasketball]

Jun 30, 2023 16:49:04 GMT -5 Gerard Gerard said:

Jun 30, 2023 15:48:50 GMT -5 SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman said:

It's amazing how YouTube "Premium" is literally just regular YouTube but with the features they removed from regular YouTube. What a complete scam. Just get some plug-ins or use third-party sites if you really need those features.

I have this weird recurring nightmare that Google somehow gain the right to sue me for whatever revenue they've claimed to have lost as a result of my years of using plug-ins, blockers and workarounds to make the site as functional as it was in 2008.

My cable box has YouTube access, which would be cool, if YouTube weren't an unusable mess without blockers.

[Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!!]

I'm not experiencing these YouTube issues myself. Is this maybe a regional thing?

[Gerard Gerard]

Jul 2, 2023 2:03:35 GMT -5 Cranjis McBasketball said:

Jun 30, 2023 16:49:04 GMT -5 Gerard Gerard said:

I have this weird recurring nightmare that Google somehow gain the right to sue me for whatever revenue they've claimed to have lost as a result of my years of using plug-ins, blockers and workarounds to make the site as functional as it was in 2008.

My cable box has YouTube access, which would be cool, if YouTube weren't an unusable mess without blockers.

My Mrs watches YouTube occasionally on her Roku stick and I have legitimately no idea how the ads (and ads within ads and super frequent ad breaks) don’t drive her nuts.

[Sponsored by Groose Wipes]

I got another one. Geoguesser.