Originally published @ http://tinyurl.com/a5cuvxj
I have been involved in some or other form with IT since I first touched, with a sense of awe, a Commodore 64 back in the late 80’s. By today’s terms the 64K memory of the C64 had would be a great deal more than just laughable as current cicuitry in an air conditioning system is probably more advanced.
From what I recall however, the Commodore 64 worked. I only used it a couple of times to do assignments but it worked. Somehow, in the interveining years, complexity has increased by a huge factor, output and capabilities have increased by a similar number, but the actual ability of devices to just work has not. It almost seems as though we have sacrifiiced the workaility and user-friendly nature of earlier products for all the bells and whistles, that if we are honest, non of us ever use.
A perfect example of this is a smart phone. Raise your hand if you are a power user of a mobile phone. You are able to tell me all of the awesome stuff that it does. You use all the great functions (other than email, sms, camera and internet). Nope? Your hand is not in the air. Well then you’re one of the majority who also do not use Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or any other desktop software to its fullest extent.
A mobile phone can do all these wonderful things but what are the chances of your battery running out before lunch time, calls being dropped or the dissapearance of the Blackberry Internet Service that you are so attached to? Probably quite high.
And that’s really my point. Many of these IT things we have not asked for. Steve Jobs has decided that he knows what we need before we do. If you look at the sales figures and revenue for Apple and Samsung you would say that he was definitely on the right track. But what about stuff just doing what you need it to do (as opposed to all of those features that you want but don’t need) and working, each time every time.
You probably saw the joke that was doing the rounds a couple of years ago about what would happen to your car if it was made by Microsoft: For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a week, every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car, occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all the windows, shut off the engine, restart the car and then reopen all the windows before you could continue. For some reason, you would simply accept this. And so on.
The point being that we as consumers seem to have an increasing level of acceptance of things that don’t work the way they should, the way the packaging says they would or the advertising promised.
Maybe we should start being a little more fussy and using the channels that we have available to tell the brands that we deal with every day that this is an ethical issue. Reminding them that all we really want is something that works like it should. Like my trusty Toyota that always starts, never breaks down and just goes and goes.
