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What's the Worst Technical Feature You've Used?
kooky45 asks: "In an effort to make our lives easier and more entertaining, technology designers pack more and more features into electronic devices, but often they're more nuisance than they're worth. An earlier article on LEDs discussed some of these. Another example is my Nokia 6320i mobile phone which has a back lit screen that drains the battery life at an alarming rate. When the phone is not in use the back light is off; if the battery starts to run low, it gives me regular warnings by beeping and turning the back light on! What other examples of designer stupidity have you seen?"
Clippy.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
if you're in a noisy enviroment or listening to headphones beeping and turning the back light on is a great idea. It is better to be alerted your battery is dying, than to discover you've missed hours of important calls.
Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
The daily upgrades kept making the machine slower and the system was overly paranoid with too many unwanted pop ups.
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
My honda, and I think many others - have a security feature for the entertainment system. If the power is ever out to the unit, the owner must punch in a 4 digit code to turn it back on, after power is restored. If you forget the code, and don't have it written down somewhere - you can get it. You just need to remove the unit from the dash and call a dealer with a number written on the outside of it. This is not an easy process - and dealers will do it for you but it costs around $200 last time I checked. In other words - the only person who can easily get at the information necessary to the code is someone who already has the stereo out- like say a thief.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Ugh, the worst feature ever. It would turn on silently if you held down one of the outer buttons (which my pocket did, by itself, frequently.) Then, when a call came in, it would shout, over speakerphone, "Call from... <silence, because I hadn't entered any voice recognition names>"
Thankfully, they removed it from the more recent models. It was so damn disruptive...
I have a microwave that refuses to start cooking until it scrolls a 30 second message on a 1 line display.
I SO want to get out my jtag programmer
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
There's a computer on my desk. Doesn't that make a metaphorical stack-overflow?
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
I don't know about the LED thing.
I sometimes plug in my USB flash drive, which has a very bright blue LED on the end, just for the light.
that uses Windows CE or Palm OS to run. My wifes company keeps insisting these peices of crap will make them all more efficient. All I know is the interfaces make dialing a simple call a nightmare and who wants a phone that needs its battery pulled when it locks up?
Just last week here Verizone CE based phone continuously called me with the speaker phone on even though it was simply sitting on the cars center console! Government mandated spy feature hmmmmmm?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
The sales person made it sound like a great feature. Never miss another call he said. Alerts you no matter how distracted you might be or how noisy the environment, he said. That may be true, but let me tell you, it is not nearly as useful and convenient as the sales people would have you believe.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean?
My Motorola v260 beeps loudly ever few minutes when the battery is low. I know when it starts beeping I have another 12 hours. There is no way to shut off the beeping.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Speaking of Microsoft (Clippy), back in the days of DOS 6.something (6.2 ?), when upgrading from a previous version of OS, if the Mircosoft installation program detected something besides a DOS partition, it would blithely inform you that it had detected something non-Mircosoft and it would take care of it for you!
That was a disappointment.
I lost a lot of work until I found the work-around.
Best regards.
Gore-Tex in running shoes. The water will get in at the top of the shoe (as it is only 3cm high), and never get out, since Gore-Tex is watertight. Besides, when running, my feet sweat, so water will end up inside the shoe even if it isn't wet outside.
Handsfree with short cords. I still haven't found one that allows me to have my phone in my side pocket in my pants. And I still haven't found a bluetooth handsfree with traditional lanyard design.
DVD-covers. They are larger than CDs for no good reason.
Flatscreen TVs with grounded powerchords. Apparently they cause fires because the antenna is grounded too, only not to the same "ground".
I think that's it for now
My first sub-brick-sized mobile phone was a Samsung flip phone. The "flip" section was designed to only cover the keypad, leaving the screen, menu nav keys, and send/end keys exposed at all times. It also had a key-guard that, by default, would automatically engage when the phone was closed. Clever, right? (Well, for its day, it was.)
There was only one problem: To disengage the key-guard, you had to hold down the always-exposed menu select button! Worse, if the key-guard was disengaged while the phone was closed, it wouldn't turn on again until you opened and re-closed the phone.
I don't know how many times I killed the key-guard as I leaned against a desk or something. Most of the time, I just ended up deep in some unexpected menu, but I recall at least two accidental phone calls initiated while the phone was in my pocket. Eventually, I got a case, and tucked some paper under the button area to make it harder to accidentally kill the key-guard.
Samsung must have gotten the hint, because my next phone didn't have any exposed keys when the flip was closed.
This sig intentionally left blank.
Definitely digital controls for almost anything. I can't stand them.
If you're in your car and working the climate control, those controls are analog for a good reason. You can see what they're set to and change before you start the car. Stereo systems are another great example (quickly turning volume up/down, not having it reset all the time). Analog dials of all kinds also give you far better real-time feedback about a given signal (delta, etc.).
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
In Handspring Treo 180, there was a "World Clock" program that could display time in any timezone. It allowed to change my current timezone, but it would not change the time! So I move between timezones, I would need to update the timezone AND the time. Perhaps the software was not tested on real word travelers.
Fuck Context Menus /mac user
thats right, i said: "fuck context menus"
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
Speaking of Slashdot, you know when you browse at -1, nested mode in a story that has 400+ comments and it gets broken up into multiple pages? So you click on page 2, and there's the very same comment that started out page one. Then you click on page 3 and still the same damn comment starting the page? Same thing with page 4 or 5 or 6. Go to the HOF and click on a story with 4000 comments. You have to click to about page 25 before you see a comment that is not the first or second post from page 1.
That's been a Slashdot bug for years. I even reported it like 10 times at source forge. It just gets closed with some snide comment, like "stop submitting this bug" or "this is not a bug". It's a bug, they could at least leave it open or mark it unfixable.
My cell phone has a Camera button on the outside edge. Every now and then, I hear the fake shutter sound that lets me know my cell phone just took a picture of the inside of my pocket.
I'm surprised no one else has mention the worst feature ever: DRM.
Education is the silver bullet.
Cancel or Allow? feature.
Press F1 to Resume...
In my day (I'm in my late 20s) we had answering machines, and you know what? They were good enough. If I left the house and came home a few hours later, I could see if there was a message, and I knew it was left sometime within the past few hours. Barring a few really specific and improbable scenarios, I don't need to know the exact damn time it was left, nor do I need the other BS like mailboxes, saved messages folders, varying greetings, and all the other claptrap.
Today? If you're the caller, you have to listen to the person's personal greeting, then suffer through another 20 seconds of "At the tone, please record your message. When finished, hang up, or press the star key for more options. To page this person, press nine. To listen to your personal horoscope..." Just shut the hell up and let me leave the message so I can get on with it, please?
If you're receiving voicemail it's even worse. "You have...two...new messages and one...saved message. To listen to...new messages...press one. To listen--" One. "First...message...received...at...ten...fifty eight...AM." SHUT UP. JUST PLAY THE GORRAM MESSAGE WITHOUT THE PREAMBLE. Christ. Why the hell do I need to know the exact freaking minute someone called?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
You know the single molecular layer stuff with infinite strength that is used to encapsulate CDs, or the thicker and even stronger stuff that small electronic devices like CF drives come in. I once broke a pair of scissors trying to cut one of those open. I am surprised some smart lawyer doesn't do a class action lawsuit against the manufacturers of that sort of packaging - there must be lost of people who have injured themselves trying open these packages.
I just called that number to complain about the vending machine being out of taco pellets. They were very helpful and understanding. They also have a website
Man, you really need that seminar!
It's not an issue on the "new Discussion system", which just puts them all on one page anyway. Perhaps that's why they didn't bother fixing it recently (although it's been around since *long* before then).
Yeah, it's also not an issue if you view in threaded mode too. But I want to see every single comment expanded when I read Slashdot. Threaded and the new system collapse them. Nested is the only way to have them all open (at least that I know of.)
As far as submitting the bug, I think the last time I submitted it was around 2002 or 2003.
You are experiencing a bug with Microsoft Update, not WGA. It's been driving us crazy here at work for months now.
Thankfully, Microsoft finally released a hotfix for it.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Why the hell would I want to mix folders and files, all ordered alphabetically??
Not to mention the hockey puck mouse.
Oh and hardware locked DVD drives.
The entire user interface for Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not the free reader) is a nightmare. I have used thousands of GUI programs and never found anything that comes close to sucking so much. How a company that has produced so many other great interfaces managed to push that turd out confounds me every time I have to use that awful program.
I don't think anyone else has mentioned this so I will - why on earth put a print button on the camera? While this may make sense for some cameras and some users (cheap point and shooters especially), they're now popping up on more advanced DSLRs like the Canon 30D. Who buys a $1,000 DSLR and prints directly from the camera with no post processing and not even a look at the images? Worst of all, the button can't be remapped - you're stuck with a useless button. Why, why, why?
Says it all.
But if you're a DVD exec, I want the buttons on my DVD player ('fast forward,' 'top menu') to work as they *should* without playing "Mother-may-I?" with the embedded OS. The menu should NEVER be restricted. That doesn't even make sense! What harm could my having instant access to your product's menu do to your bottom line?
Also, on my DVD player I can't even turn the darned thing off reliably. Is it too much to ask that a power switch be an actual -power switch- and not a "send power down signal to the OS" switch? It's not like there's a hard drive in these things. There's no need for the absurd length of time it takes for most DVD players to go from a power off *command* to a power off *state*.
Same goes for the tray eject button. Kill the motor and eject the disc already! I don't need "pretty" or "graceful," I need my disc back in less than five seconds.
Worst "feature"... Ever.
--
Toro
It's a pretty big tank. One US gallon. Seems like a good idea, since I'm in the US, and windshield washer fluid is sold by the gallon. Just buy a gallon, fill the tank, done.
Except that's not how it works. I've got a "washer fluid low" sensor and light on the dash. It comes on when there's about 1/10th of a gallon left. Plenty of time to put more in before running out.
So I go to the store, buy a gallon, pour in (by now) 15/16ths of the bottle, and now the tank is full. And I'm left with a 1 gallon jug with 1 cup of fluid in it. So the almost empty jug has to sit in the garage or the trunk until I use a little fluid.
Sure would have been nice to have a 1.1 gallon tank.
I am not a crackpot.
It's a design "feature", so that if someone's standing beside your car on the other side, they can't get into the car when you unlock it.
Why the heck can't it show me the size of directories in detail view? When I need to find out which program has suddenly eaten the remaining 12GB of hard disk it's tiresome to recurse through every directory, right clicking and checking the size.
In the world of user design foolishness, the worst by far are programs that interrupt you while typing with error windows, pop-ups or windows suddenly gaining focus. Internet Explorer, I am talking to you here, as well as every other program that pops up a brain-dead window demanding me to hit cancel or OK while I'm busy with more important things. It's like stopping the State of the Union address to change a lightbulb.
In addition, any web page that doesn't follow sensible usability guidelines becomes a real pain in the neck. I read Jakob Nielsen to avoid most of these pitfalls when I code or design.
technical writing / development
I few 'doh' moments using VMWare.
Why does it let Ctrl-Alt-Del through to the hosted machine? It pops up a box telling you that you probably didn't want to do that, since both the server and the host see the keypress; but it sends it anyway. Result: lock your windows PC and reboot your virtual Linux box. Well, fine, I can get around that. (Just stop Ctrl-Alt-Del from rebooting the Linux box).
But why have Ctrl-R reboot the hosted machine? Ctrl-R which is used all the time when interacting with a shell. It's not exactly difficult to accidentally press Ctrl-R when the VM window has focus but the hosted machine itself does not. Gah.
Sigh.
Since I'm posting as an AC, I doubt this will get seen, but what the heck:
This is not the fault of Motorola, it is the fault of your wireless company. Motorola allows the phone company to add any features to the phone that they want, and allows them to "lock" several features so they cannot be changed/deleted/etc. There is no way to get around this on the phone itself, however if you connect it to your computer there are several utilities that can fix the problem. Check out http://www.motomodders.net/ or http://wiki.howardforums.com/index.php/Motorola for details on the fun stuff you can do with a computer link.
1. Universal remotes. Great idea in theory, but they're often hard as hell to program, especially after you lose the programming guide. Even when they're programmed correctly, they still can't perform some important function that the original remote can, so you end up having to keep both of them around, which defeats the purpose of the universal remote.
2. The meaningless icons on many electronic devices. Yeah, I know, they use them so they don't have to label the buttons in different languages for each country they sell the products in, but all these things seem to do is equally confuse everyone around the world as to what they mean.
3. Convoluted shower controls. I swear, every time I take a shower in a hotel, I have to spend several minutes figuring out how the damn controls work. How about faucet manufacturers stop trying to be cute and just give me one knob for cold, one knob for hot, and a control to switch from bath to shower. I can take it from there.
4. Wall warts. I know they serve a purpose, but do they really need to be on the end of the cord, where they take up three spots on the power strip? How about placing them in the middle of the cord, so I can use more than three plugs on my six-outlet strip.
5. Windows XP's habit of constantly reminding you that the computer needs to be restarted after an update. Memo to XP: I told you five minutes ago that I didn't want to restart, and I haven't changed my mind. How about you shut the fuck up, and when I'm ready to restart, I'll get back to you.
6. So-called water-saving toilets. Sure, they use less water, but they don't work worth a shit (pun intended). So, do you really save any water when you have to flush them twice because the first time wasn't entirely successful?
Cars that bing at me are my pet annoyance.
Let me explain. I have a Toyota Camry, 1993 vintage. No Bings. When you leave your lights on, the car _turns them off for you_ when you open the drivers door! Nice stuff, works very cleanly, and I only turn my headlights switch off occasionally.
My parent's car (Ford Falcon) does bing. "Well turn the stupid things off yourself, then!" is my standard response.
One day, progress will move forward. But I am not holding my breath.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
I know that SysRq originally had a reason for existence, but its functionality was never used, and that was many years ago. If it hasn't been used by now, it won't be, so how about reassigning that key to do something useful. Just pick a use, since just about anything is better than its current use, which is absolutely nothing.
There is a reason those messages are so laborious with unnecesary pauses and bad order of menu options etc...
... another 10-20c... so one excahnge = 4 minutes of talk time. 4 minutes on the phone could accomplish a lot more... and uses way more bandwidth, but once again the tel-co's have it setup so that the more laborious the process, the more it costs you.
The time you spend with your answering machine is money to the Tel-Co. If you have Pay-As-You-Go it DEFINTLY counts as 10c/minute. Considering that they bill you for two minutes even if you hang up at 61 seconds, its a very easy way for them to make millions.
No joke, the more time you spend on the phone going through the various menu's the more time gets racked up, even if your on a plan your still burning minutes just trying to leave a message on someone elses phone.
Text messaging is almost worse in its cost vs value, a singel text message is generally 10-20c (sending party and recieving party), and generally requires at least one reply
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
It's actually "Paper Cassette".
Because I know you care. <3
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
As a graphic designer, I often find my own business card too bothersome to make well, so I got for the simple stuff. My carpenter friend normally makes simplistic furniture for his house, choosing not to make wonderful works of art like he makes for other people. With that logic, I should assume that /. programmers would rather be modding NES pads to control their alarm clocks, running linux off a toaster, or reading comics than getting rid of minor annoyances like that one. And I like it that way.
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
With picture of a stupid smiling biatch on ever screen, the last going much like "Please take your card, your money and your receipt IF YOU REQUESTED IT."
My reaction, every time I see this, is an internal rage attack going like. "No goddammit ARGGGGH FFS I just said NO RECEIPT - You are a f*n computer program, FFS! ARRRRRRRRGH........ may your programmers rot in &@&%^T"
If someone at Westpac or their ATM suppliers is reading this, please read the following and contact me for my contracting fees (I'll let you have it for a mere $10k, you'll more than make up for it in customer retention).
IF (bReceiptRequested) {
print "Please take your card and your money";
}
else {
print "Please take your card, your money AND your receipt";
}
ISO certified == THX certified
You should try mine, then. The instant I plug it in, the damned thing goes from whatever setting it was on, to "Loud". Now, as I usually charge my phone at night, this is a BAD thing. Really, Motorola, why can't the damned thing just keep whatever volume setting it was currently at? My old Nokia never had this problem. Plug in the power cable, and the only change was the battery meter would animate to show me it was charging...
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
The Blackberry OS has a lovely feature that tells you when the battery is too low to attempt to make a phone call-- but yet, it can power the backlight, let me read email I've already received, etc. for hours beyond that point.
I discovered this "feature" at 3 AM, on the side of I-55 in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi, sitting in a rental car with a flat tire.
Hey guys, when I buy a phone, I want it to be to expend its last bit of battery power WHILE MAKING A PHONE CALL.
Slide the slider on the left to make them all expanded. What's the problem?
Then it shows all the comments on one page. I just tried that for a story with 3500 comments and it crashed my browser (firefox 2.0) and nearly locked up X. It worked OK in windows (also firefox 2.0), but still all the comments are on one page. So the new system only allows you to see them all on one page expanded or not to some degree. I've tried the new system before. I'll stick with the old system. At least I know its quirks/bugs/crap design and it has never crashed my browser.
It is absolutely pointless to be able to eject a DVD from across the room. You still have to get up and walk over to the device. Unless you are strong with the Force. Then you wouldn't need the remote for anything.
My boss has a Mercedes SUV that will not start the engine if the engine computer detects that any of the three brake light bulbs have burned out. Now, there's a good idea -- when you burn out a brake light, you can't even drive to the store to buy a replacement.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Fuse: a $3 part protecting a $0.01 piece of electronics.
Here are a few I can remember:
- Cordless phone with backlit display. When you press a button, the display lights for several seconds. So, when press end to hang up, the display lights for several seconds, making you think the phone is still on. My dad always got confused by this, and rightly so. The display even lights when you press an ignored button while the phone is off. "Hey, lighted display even though I'm off!"
- Electronic version of the De Longhi portable oil-filled space heater. Terrible user-interface with hard-to-press buttons and a button layout that seems more guided by aesthetics than logical arrangement. Lost power to the thing, even for just a second? No heat for you until you re-program it. Give me an electro-mechanical thermostat and power switch any day over this electronic crap.
- DVD player often refusing to respond to my commands. Oh, wait, that's intentional.
- Just to contrast, once I got a small programmable electronic outlet timer at a garage sale and had the thing figured out in just a few minutes without a manual. Somehow they managed to pack in something like 14 independent program slots, each able to turn on and off at set times either daily, weekdays only, weekends only, particular day only (separate days for on and off). It only had around 7 buttons (no numeric keypad), yet was logical.
I don't like brands, i prefer to build clones myself, even for servers.
For some crappy services, like a small router, or some backup DNS/Mailserver you just pick some cheap motherboard, and most tend to NOT have an option to just boot even when no keyboard is plugged.
Now it doesn't happend that often, but I used to fix this by using a crafted keyboard DIN or mini-DIN conector with no actual cable or keyboard attached to it.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
A while back, I went to work at a new place, and they gave me a Samsung cell phone. I carried it around in my pocket. One day it rang. I answered, and the person on the other end wanted to know if everything was OK. I was confused and asked them who they were. Turns out they were the 911 (emergency services) operator, and they claimed I'd called them and hung up. I told them I certainly didn't do it on purpose, that I was OK, and that I was sorry for disturbing them.
Then the same thing happened a few more times, and there were other occasions on which I took the phone out of my pocket and saw a display asking me to confirm whether I wanted to dial 911.
After several calls to the carrier, I talked to someone who tracked down the problem. Seems that Samsung had put in a feature where if you hold down the "9" button for several seconds, it dials 911. And in their infinite wisdom, they were concerned about what might happen if you had an emergency while key lock was on. So they made it so holding down "9" dials 911 even while key lock is on.
Thanks, Samsung. I love "features" that might get me fined or imprisoned when someone concludes I'm making repeated prank calls to 911.
Of course this meant that as the phone bounced around in your pocket or purse, it would hit random buttons. All of these would be blocked until a 9 was pressed. It would bounce around some more until a 1 was pressed. And so on for the final 1 and 'talk'. So basically the keyguard assured that pressing random keys would always result in a 911 call.
This is one of life's great mysteries, I guess. Why on earth are the 1-9 keys on my numeric keypad be completely the flip of the keypad on my telephone?
The weird part is, I don't know about others, but it has become second nature when using either keypad, without looking, I still know where the digits are.
(yet another one of life's great mysteries)
HEX offender mugshot ID: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
The default Linux behavior of locking the CD tray and refusing to eject when I press a button. On some devices, the lock stays in place even after a soft reboot, forcing a power cycle.
I don't give a damn if the FS driver will throw a hissy fit or the system will panic. It's read-only media, you'll eject it when I press the button or I'll eject it for you with a paperclip and get the sudden urge to crash some developers' skulls.
I honestly can't name a single design decision in a modern Linux system that is worse than that misfeature.
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I'm not here to read -1 comments....no one gets through to my screen (except some random zoo.pl friends) without an ACTUAL HUMAN deciding their content is worthy of my eyes.
That might work for you. But it's my opinion that there is pervasive group think amongst the moderators and thus I choose to make all determinations myself. Once Slashdot implemented this feature, that was I really needed to brush off what moderators think. Besides, there are some real gems at -1 if you have a broad sense of humor and an open mind. If your humor is limited to Monty Python, Office Space, overlords, "we have always been at war with Eurasia" and DVD encryption key jokes then yes, moderation is probably for you. On the same note, if you toe the copyright/ip/patent line, moderation is probably also for you. I'd argue that you are going to miss some, no - many valid and interesting arguments and opinions. Well, I think they are worth consideration and thought anyway. You, of course, are free to let the moderators tell you what opinions are worth your time.
As to your +3, nested oldest first comment: Consider this - browsing that way is going to show you many responses to comments that are less than +3. What's the point in reading a +3 response to a comment that wasn't up to your beloved moderator's standards? Where's the context? Does it even address the original comment or is it just spewing slashbot talking points? How would you ever know if you set your "standards" so high? An once again, why even bother?
Some Volvo's have the same feature. Were I worked a couple of years ago, the manager went over to get his brand new Volvo. The salesman (also a manager) was showing all the nice features of the car. They were admiring the nice exterior of the car when suddenly there was a "click" and the doors locked. Too bad the keys were on the front seat and the spare keys in the dashboard compartment. I don't know exactly what they had to do to get into the car, but he returned without his shiny new car.
Also fun are the keyless cars (Renault has them here in Europe). You get a credit card size "key" which on some models just has to be near the car to be able to start it. A friend of mine was testing a couple of Renaults for a magazine which had this feature. Accidentally he switched keys with another person. They both were able to start because they were parked close together and the range of the "keys" was large enough. Sometime later my friend had to stop while the other person drove on. After stopping the engine and trying to restart it he discovered that he had the wrong key. He quickly phoned the other person and told him NOT to switch off the engine and drive back. Later models have a warning system where the car starts to beep and shout that the key is out of range. Long live progress :)
1) There's a power-off key on some Windows keyboards.
Hit it by accident and it shuts off the machine,
no confirmation or anything - just powers down!
A friend had a keyboard with non-standard layout.
There was no gap between PrtScr/ScrollLock/Pause and Ins/Home/PgUp - that block was moved one row up. The room of "Delete/End/PgDn" was occupied by the power buttons. "Power" was in place of "Delete". I switched the computer off three times in some 15 minutes before I learned not to use Delete.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
So a few years ago, I bought a BMW 530. My wife took it to the mall for the first time with my daughter who was about 6 months old. Upon returning to the car, she put my daughter in her car seat, and in doing so tossed the keys into the driver seat. She closed the door, walked around, and lo and behold, the BMW had locked itself up before she got to the drivers door.
The AAA locksmith shows up some time later, my daughter stuck inside a VERY hot automobile. They have no idea how to get in. So they used one of those airbag things to split open the driver door to stick a coat hanger or something inside the car to get it unlocked.
I have to call the dealership and ask where the unlock button is.
After I find out where it is and relay that to my now very panicked wife who fills in the locksmith, we come to find out that the car has detected a break-in and disabled the unlock button.
All the while we are yelling at them to just take a hammer to the window to break in. Apparently the damn car has some sort of unbreakable glass.
I finally get through to BMW's version of on-star and guess what - they can't unlock the car via satelite. As it turns out, the only thing BMW on-star is good for is asking for driving directions (there's a GPS in the car) and reserving movie tickets.
In the end, after consulting with the dealer again, I have to tell the now on-scene fire department that they CAN break the glass on the short split section of the passenger side rear window - apparently a feature designed just for these situations. Of course, that's exactly where my daughter is sitting, but thank goodness we had window shades that were drawn up.
So my wife brings my 1 day old car home that I haven't driven yet and it takes 6 weeks to get a new window. Of course, when the 6 weeks comes up and I discover they haven't ordered the window yet, they are all of a sudden in abundance and it only takes 24 hours.
So... pointless/counter-productive/bizarre features?
1) auto-locking doors
2) overly extravagent security
3) satellite communications link for directions in a car with a GPS
4) a window designed to be broken
Of course I haven't even mentioned
5) voice command (more distracting than buttons)
6) GPS Volume button is the radio button. You have to adjust the volume WHILE the GPS lady is giving you directions.
7) A radio that mysteriously reboots.
8) An integrated car management system that disables radio, air conditioning, and navigation when it doesn't boot properly.
9) A flat tire sensor that has presented at least a dozen false alarms and has never actually detected a flat tire.
Go to about:config. Type "dom" into the search box. You can disable all that resizing and button-removing guff from there.
Not so good if there are times when you want those features on, of course...
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
So, in other words, it is the fault of Motorola?
It's not documented anywhere obvious, but hold Shift while clicking No -- this works as "No to All" on those dialogs. I think my brother found this by accident one day.