Posted by ivewonyoung 4/15/2025
Too bad this question has become so commonplace that few people seem to challenge it anymore.
I get that it's more eco friendly, and that it allows each dish to have more space for a photo and detailed description; but I hate the experience of staring at my phone to try to pick a meal.
My intentions were to work from the cabin for the week in peace and quiet. Have some nice secluded time to relax. The rub was that the WiFi password simply didn't work. The owner of the cabin was being no help, said the password on the note was correct and I could otherwise plug my laptop in to Ethernet directly. My MacBook had no Ethernet port.
In the small nearby town there was a RadioShack, and inside I find a single make of USB Ethernet adapter. I buy it, and take it back to the cabin. It doesn't work with my MacBook. Activity lights don't come on. I don't know if it was a driver issue or what. It came with a CD, but that's no help on a relatively recent MacBook.
I needed to get work done, and in pure frustration end up resetting the firmware on the wireless router using the button on the back and reconfiguring it with their hard wired Xbox One's built in browser. This infuriated the owner of the cabin as it knocked out their temperature and water sensors, which I ended up setting back up for them. I was however able to get work done. Probably not what I should have done but it worked.
On my way out of town, I swung back by the RadioShack to return the Ethernet adapter. I explain to the guy behind the counter that it had not worked with my MacBook and the guy proceeds to argue with me that it's Mac compatible and accuses me of buying it, using it, and returning it. I have to argue with the guy for what seemed like several minutes, and recounted him the story of resetting the WiFi. I've never had such a hostile return process in all my life.
Anyway, that's the last time I ever visited a RadioShack.
- Anything small and where part numbers matter greatly is going to have advantages when sold and bought online. You'll be able to type in a part number and get a straight answer on cost and availability. This can also happen if a store has a good customer service representative but that stopped being a thing somewhere between 9/11 and the GFC of 2008 - also around the time Walmart had to raise it's starting wage to $10/hr. just to get people in the door.
- Less people are repairing electronics and less electronics are repairable. The way consumer electronics are built are different now than say in the 80's or 90's - components are often surface mount and often things are just a CPU/MCU+RAM+flash on a board with a bit of surrounding surface mount stuff.
- A lot of what used to be consumer electronics exists on everyone's smartphones. No more clock radios, walkmans, boomboxes, tape decks, VCRs, DVD/CD players, landline phones, etc. I would bet Bluetooth speakers have essentially replaced home stereos for many. One thing Radio Shack did sell was media and all forms of converter cables for home electronics and there just isn't a great need for that anymore with how everyone interacts with media now. Desktop PCs are niche now, non-gamer non-business laptops are disposable. Many just use their ISP router for WiFi. Home assistant stuff had to take on a friendlier, non-hacker image to gain acceptance.
I still seem to use a lot of electronics: bluetooth and wired speakers, headphones and earphones, power strips and adapters, USB cables and gadgets, SSD enclosures, phone accessories, game systems, all sorts of computers, tablet/e-reader, monitors for computing/gaming/video, musical instruments and amplifiers, functional and decorative lighting, chargers for everything, networking/WiFi stuff, automatic cookers, etc. RadioShack and Fry's used to sell those things.
It's a shame that the maker/DIY electronics revival turned out to have limited appeal, because I'd like to visit a store that had Raspberry Pi and other microcontroller boards, components for real-world interfaces and robotics, 3D printers and supplies, etc.
In addition to the electronics components aisles at Fry's, I miss their PC component section. And their convenient return policy. I'm surprised that there aren't more shops for PC customization. I also wish there were a shop where you could put together your own custom mechanical keyboard, picking out switches, keycaps, etc.
Which falls apart when you have competitive online shopping.
Which falls apart further when you buy a giant bag of what you need online cheaper.
Sometimes these kinds of things escape my notice, but I recall RadioShack because the minute I heard they were shutting down, I hopped in the car to get to the one nearest me and loaded up two shopping bags of electronics components, switches, banana jacks, oddball high-wattage resistors, etc. Because it's RadioShack, even at 75% off the prices were only "meh" but it's all stuff I was more or less guaranteed to use eventually in projects or repairs.
Speaking of, I really hate buying one-off components from Amazon. I needed a panel-mount BNC jack the other day and literally the best option was $7 for 10 of them. So effectively I paid $7 for one (which is way too much) and now I have 9 that will be sold for pennies at my estate sale a few decades from now.
And now the tariffs are basically going to shut down my usage of AliExpress for bulk orders of cheap components, I'm pretty sure I'm just going to end up dropping electronics as a hobby altogether in the long run.
The real bargains were the component cabinets themselves. Those big commercial chest of drawers retail for thousands of dollars. My co-worker bought the entire aisle of drawers after they were empty of components for I think a hundred bucks. Organized his entire basement shop into them.