n. The recognition that some older, low-tech products are superior to the newer, high-tech products that are supposed to replace them.
2004
The electric can opener. I hate it. Now there is a term for this type of buffoonery: an electric-can-opener question. Die, electric can opener, die.
1999 (earliest)
Ultimately, the question for potential Iridium buyers was what has sometimes been called the electric-can-opener question. Why pay a lot of money to buy something which you know to be inferior to an older, cheaper technology?
The model for this phrase is, of course, the electric can opener, which most people consider to be markedly inferior to the cheaper and easier-to-use manual can opener.