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KISS
andyring writes "CNN has an interesting article about the increasing trend in electronics to add more and more features, less concise user manuals, and poor marketing, to products, which end up doing nothing more than increasing costs and frustrating users. As an example in the article, most people want cell phones that do one thing - make calls. Yet phones come with games, instant messaging, cameras, etc. You can't even buy a simple cell phone any more. Also cited, 25% of people think they own an HDTV, when the actual number is less than 10%. What can be done to make manufacturers get their heads into the real world?"
I like camera phones and phones with web access. But when I go to work, those phones have to stay in my glove box. Not because of the distraction, but because of the nature of the features themselves. Consider this: how many firms would allow a worker to walk around with a cellular, web connected camera? Any camera phone does that. And a PDA phone with blue tooth or IR? You are dreaming. Its the information...its all about the information!
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
What can be done to make manufacturers get their heads into the real world?
Fire the marketing department.
No, really. Some marketing genius does a study, asks some set of people "Hey, we can do this really neat thing, do you want it?". Each marketing genius in the department does this. Now the department goes to the C level and says "All our studies say that people want x, y, z, and also w".
Then the engineering dept gets the WORD FROM ABOVE, and creates the product. Instant plethora of features. The product gets built, goes to stores, and the MAJORITY of people say "whoa, too complicated".
Why do you think that Windows has a dumbed down menu set?
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Kyocera phones have had flashlights for quite some time now. They seem to be quite popular in india.
My daughter's Kyocera phone from Virgin Mobile has a built-in flashlight. It was such an obvious feature that, once I saw it, I couldn't understand why all phones don't have one!
Article:
The data also showed that 25 percent of consumers thought they already owned a high-definition television -- the true number is less than half that.
Slashdot summary:
Also cited, 25% of people think they own an HDTV, when the actual number is less than 10%.
By means of what app?
Remember, of course, that you're probably using an unencrypted WMA file. You could probably do the same thing with a 160kbps unencrypted AAC file.
Encrypt either and it's not easy at all. At least with the AAC file (namely protected ones from iTunes), you can use various utilities to write it out to CD/Virtual CD and re-encode. Who knows what permissions the WMA will have.
Of course, you're transcoding anyway. And it's not vendor lock-in when no one else makes players that support it (I don't recall Apple trying to fend off other AAC players you know.)
Apple's AAC's won't let you do that? Since when. I've been taking my AACs and converting them to Mp3 ever since AAC's came out. You just grab LAME (like iTunes LAME) and convert them. It's pretty simple.
And what is with making it a requirement to have a working remote with most DVDs to make the thing simply PLAY ad disc??? You think that would be a pretty darn basic function!
Then go find a Siemens ME45 somewhere !!! It really survives hard shocks and water. I've had it for 3 year before replacing it with a SE P800
No sig
Just to add some clarification...
Yes I have successfully popped popcorn by reading the instructions...
And I could do it in 1 gesture on the old microwave, based on my experience with the brand of popcorn and the miserable strength of the old microwave... But that is not the point.
There are over a dozen buttons on my new microwave. Including an add minute button, which is great for when I want to cook a garden burger or something...
But this isn't the point.
The point is that there are two buttons that reheat food and pop popcorn. It doesn't do it by simply using a fixed time and a fixed strength... It does it by detecting when the leftovers are warm, and when the bag of popcorn has expanded.
That is a non-trivial amount of instrumentation and programming compared to just a mechanical dial.
And the result of these features, is a microwave that is *easier* to use for the major if not sole use of the device.
Ohthankgod, I had thought aliens had secretly killed everybody else that knew machine language.
Also encouraging is things like Operas archive where you can still get an award winningly small (gads, only 3.4M) browser.
So I dunno if I share the doom and gloom of the article. To some extent eveythings eventually ends up in it's simplest and most efficient form because we aren't the only ones here that want KISS.
Need Mercedes parts ?