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Ask Slashdot: Why Does Almost Nothing Come With a Proper Printed Manual Anymore?
OpenSourceAllTheWay writes: As someone who grew up with 1980s and 1990s computers and electronics and still has whole boxes of lovingly prepared printed computer, peripheral, game and software manuals from that era, I am continually surprised by how just many products ship without a proper printed manual these days. Case in point would be things like Android phones. Android has quite a few not-entirely-obvious functions built into it. And a lot of people aren't even aware they exist. No Android phone I've bought has ever had a printed manual included in its little product box. Not even a small one. Even expensive laptops ranging in price from 2,000 to 5,000 Dollars often come only with a few sheets of printed paper in the box -- warranty card, where to register the device, URL for downloading drivers and so on. Why is this? It can't be environmental concern -- the electronics devices themselves, when thrown away, are a hundred times (if not worse) more harmful to the environment than a little 50 to 100 page recycled paper booklet would be. So where are the manuals? Is it the cost of preparing the manuals? The cost of printing them? Is it a few grams of extra weight added to the product box? Is everyone supposed to look up everything online now, even in places where there is no internet connection? And why can't there be a print manual option -- e.g. pay 3 to 5 Dollars extra, and get a full, printed manual you can study on a couch?
Yes, devices came with thick, detailed manuals back then. People also typically didn't read those manuals. The vast majority of people either just stumbled their way through "figuring it out" or avoided the product entirely as being overly complicated.
These days, more work has gone into product design to make things intuitive so that people can just "figure it out" easier rather than providing the manual that will go unused anyways. At most things will typically come with a "Quick Start Guide" to give you the most basic of instructions to get the device up and going - and for the most part that's what the market wants.
Those manuals cost money - both to print and to pay someone to write in the first place. Offer the same product on the shelves - one without a manual and one that costs $5 extra that includes it. I'd wager quite a few dollars that the one without the manual will outsell the one that includes it 20 to 1.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
You don't seem to be familiar with medical devices. To get FDA approval they generally have to have very limited, very well defined functions. And if you're going to make any substantive changes, you need to go through an approval process all over again.
This leads to less-than-cutting-edge technology which has robust features and documentation. That's not shit that ships out with errors that need to be corrected most of the time. Often one model will be in use for years if not decades, and the manual will be unchanging during that time.
It's a radically different mindset than most consumer goods, which get booted out the door to meet the schedule, and bugs fixed later. Companies that ship medical devices with bugs and incorrect manuals don't tend to last long. There's not an analogy to medical malpractice in the consumer electronics world.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Well shit, that took all of 30 seconds. https://support.google.com/pix...