Missing Features
When did upgrading become a code word for removing features?
I’m not a gearhead. I would still have an iPhone 7 if I hadn’t been able to get a 13 for free. I’ve had my stereo since I got married 35 years ago. Truth be told, it came with my wife, who owned it a few years before I came along. My car is a 2013, we have one 42” TV and we still watch DVDs.
My excuse is simple: newer technologies have upgraded their features by removing things that made my life better.
Yes, I’m the old guy shaking his fist at the clouds right now, but hear me out.
Cars are the most obvious examples. Lots of safety upgrades which, evidently meant removing all buttons and dials. And adding a big screen TV where the radio and CD player used to be. My wife bought a “new” car last year. A 2019 that still has a CD player. My daughter’s 2021 does not have one. In fact, most new cars in 2026 do not have a CD player as a standard feature. Yeah, I know. You can still (probably) install one aftermarket or as a dealer upgrade, and you can use CarPlay or stream. But I want a CD player, damn it!
And then there is digital media. You can stream anything, but can you even buy a DVD or a Blu-Ray player anymore?
But one of the worst “improvements” over time is the evolution of iTunes (now Apple Music). When it came out, it was a godsend. It allowed me to digitize as many of my 500-plus CDs as I wanted and put them on my then-brand-new iPhone 3. I spent more time than I can remember sitting at my desk, burning Genesis and Blue Oyster Cult and Rush CDs on our MacBook, then syncing the playlists to my phone and popping in my corded white earbuds and listening when I was out walking. That MacBook hardly runs anymore because we have not updated its operating system in years. It still houses nearly 5,000 songs and gets fired up when I buy a new CD.
Why? Because newer versions of Apple Music suck.
If I burned a song on my MacBook in iTunes, I know that it ended up on my hard drive. With Apple Music, where does that file even go? The cloud? My hard drive? Space?
Is burning songs from CDs that I own even legal anymore, or should I hide my old MacBook in a secret safe in my hidden lair to keep it from the feds?
I’m afraid to upgrade and find out. The last time I upgraded (probably five years ago), Apple removed the ability to connect tracks. Remember songs like “Jesus Just Left Chicago” by ZZ Top? When have you ever heard that song on the radio without hearing “Waitin’ for the Bus” in front of it? “We Will Rock You” without “We Are the Champions”? You don’t. Those two songs are merged to the point that they are one song.
But they are two separate tracks. And now they can’t be merged if you want to digitize them. Even if you buy both tracks from Apple (or, God forbid, already own Tres Hombres or News of the World).
And with Spotify, some bands no longer put out long tracks. Now epics are separated into “parts”, each separately available for purchase.
One of my favorite bands, Marillion, has begun doing this. Their 2022 release, An Hour Before It’s Dark, has seven songs, but 18 tracks. Four of the songs are broken up into three, four or five tracks apiece. Marillion meant for a song like “Care” to be listened to as one experience, not four different songs with dead air between. I mean, what’s next? Digital eight track tapes with four programs? (For my younger audience, ask your parents about this reference.)
I get it. They get paid by streams, and if you listen to a 15-minute song like “Care”, they now get paid for four streams rather than just one. But unless you listen on a CD player (which you can’t do in a new car because, did I mention, they don’t f***ing have one), you can’t hear it the way they want you to: as one complete statement.
Another feature that used to exist was the ability to make slight edits to songs. You could take a song from a live album, and cut out the three-minute spoken introduction to the song. Note: I never edited out Peter Wolf’s rap before “Musta Got Lost” – I’m not a monster!
I used to be able to digitize vinyl through iTunes. I did it through some third party software that never was updated, so that is more of a software issue, but there are so many albums that I own that this is frustrating.
Those are my music-related frustrations. I have plenty more (like why do I get ads on streaming services that I pay for), but remember that I’m an old man and you should expect me to complain. It’s my right as your elder, ya damn kid!
What “improvements” have taken away features that you miss? And do an old man a solid: let me know if there are workarounds to the ones that I listed here.