Portable consoles. They're dead now or replaced by indie shit. No, the switch doesn't count, if it can't fit in my pocket isn't portable.
Any mechanical regulation process that used to be handled by actual machine parts. Think of the centrifugal governor, this beautiful and elegant mechanical device just for regulating the speed of a steam engine. Sure, a computer chip could do it a lot better today, and we're not even building steam engines quite like those anymore. But still, mechanically controlled things are just genuinely a lot cooler.
Or hell, even for computing, take a look at the elaborate mechanical computers that were used to calculate firing solutions on old battleships. Again, silicon computers perform objectively better in nearly every way, but there's something objectively cool about solving an set of equations on an elaborate arrangement of clockwork.
These huge mechanical clocks in church towers.
Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and the advent of much cheaper, more sophisticated, and more effective electronic navigational systems.
They were quite important for a long time. We used them for thousands of years, and they're often unique in form, iconic. And they're a good subject for photos and paintings, and I think that the light effect from them is neat. Lots of books and such using them, like ones on remote rocks, to get an isolated setting ("the lone lighthouse keeper").
But the past few decades of technological advancement have probably closed the end of their era.
A nixie tube is a bunch of tiny lightbulbs shaped into numbers in a single pack with different pins each turning on a number.
Clearly the modern number display is better in many ways, but you were asking for coolness.
The Internet.
Computers making Fennec Fox noises at each other over the telephone line. And that connected you to the world.
A lot of older tech had a way more interesting silhouette. You can see this clearly in how many objects live on in icon form. We still often use handset phones, magnifying glasses, gears, or the infamous floppy disk save icon. I think the staying power of these really comes from how ephemeral and formless digital tech can be.
Video games. Way back then there was imagination involved, and companies took risks. Nowadays every game seems to iterate on the same tired formula. The only recent entry I can think of that bucked this trend in the past few decades was maybe Portal, but there have been few to no other recent games that come to mind. Fight me.
You're talking about the AAA space. Fuck those games. Play indies. There are so many creators carrying out the legacy of game development you're talking about. Don't buy the games directed by suits. Currently I'm playing Factorio: Space Age, which is great. I recently played Lorelie and the Laser Eyes, which is a really cool puzzle game where you're actually going to want to write notes on paper, which feels very classic. There are so many out there, but you actually have to look because the don't have the marketing budget of Ubisoft or EA.
The imagination came from the limitations of the hardware.
Computers today are too powerful for gaming. Its resulted all the famous studios racing to the bottom with graphics their primary and generally only concern, and everything else coming a distant second.
But at least it left the door open for indie devs, whose lack of resources and experience are still capable of keeping that ember of imagination and innovation burning.
If you're only talking about AAA games, sure.
Along with the others I'd also mention Outer Wilds and Viewfinder
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