Thanks to social media, we get plenty of practice, and we’ve honed our whiny skills to near-perfection. We need to talk about all this. Please lie down on my purple chaise-longue and think of all the things that fill you with distaste, disaffection and even downright loathing. Now narrow those feelings in the direction of gadgets. Which ones fill you with despair? Which ones force you to scream at them? Which ones have you considered head-butting? Let’s now check if you’re in concert with your fellow Americans. You see, the nerds at Electronics Hub took it upon themselves to stare at many thousands of whiny gadget-focused tweets. Yes, just to see which gadgets are loathed the most. Would it stun you that, of America’s top ten most complained-about gadgets, eight are made by Apple and Google? I wonder, though, whether it would stun you to see which gadgets they are. Please take a bow – and don’t straighten up again – the iPhone 6S, the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 12. You’re all in the top ten. I’ve no idea why. I’ve no idea why the iPhone XR isn’t there. But still, bravo. You made it. Now to Google’s greatest hits (on the head). Here we have Chromecast, Chromecast with Google TV, Nest Protect, Nest Thermostat and Nest Wifi. Are you feeling a theme here? I feel that Chromecast and Nest products drive people so far up the wall that they emerge through the roof, screaming. Oddly, none of these Apple and Google devices is the most loathed of all. That honor falls to the Philips Hue Bridge. And the only other non-Apple-and-Google product in the top ten? Welcome, Roku Ultra. But let’s not imagine that Twitter represents society’s whole. Even if the noise it makes seems to rival the decibel level of society’s whole. And let’s not imagine that America is the same as everywhere else in the world. Everyone else in the world will tell you it isn’t. So I’ll just offer a couple more highlights from this fascinating analysis. The world’s most complained about phone? Google’s Pixel 6. The world most’s complained about laptops? HP. One more thing. Of the ten most complained about phones in America, you’ll find eight iPhones and two Google Pixels. Samsung is nowhere to be seen. The shame of it.
