Because there must be balance in the universe.
For evil there is good.
For fire there is water.
For politics there is common sense. (Somewhere)
For all other message boards there is the Straight Dope.
So what product features are pure genius?
My submissions:
Mute buttons on remotes.
And with the advent of DVR, the fast forward.
Also, start timers on automatic coffee makers so that first cup is ready when I’m dragging my butt out of bed in the morning.
The delete button on digital cameras – which has no counterpart on film cameras, where, even when you realised a moment later that you had taken a picture with a half second exposure at f/4 in bright sunlight, you still had to wait until the film was developed to see the beautiful jet-black negative. Now you can delete failures to instantly reclaim memory space.
I use the Source Insight IDE at work. A popular feature among IDEs is “symbol tagging”: the IDE parses all of your source files and records where every single symbol is defined, declared and used. This allows you to quickly navigate your program and follow what it’s doing. Insight does this one better by including an small window at the bottom of the IDE. This window shows the definition of whatever symbol is currently under the cursor. It’s hard to express why this is so useful, but it is.
If I’m every doing work in Java I use the Netbeans IDE. Netbeans has this amazing feature where it infers what the arguments to a function should be and fills them in for you. It does it based on type which makes it very accurate. My only complaint about the feature is that when several variables match the argument types it picks one arbitrarily if none of the variables’ name is similar to the parameter’s name. It increases my productivity immensely.
Something that Apple added on 3G iPods and iTunes, the ability to mark songs as “skip when shuffling” that way you can shuffle your songs while skipping podcasts, audio book chapters or other items.
DVR’s as a whole but the one of the best bits is recording shows based on name rather than date/time/channel like old school VCRs.
Wireless remote controls on EVERYTHING!
30 second button on microwave oven.
Kitchen sink’s built-in stopper with open/close control on the forward surface.
Small fish broiler built into stove.
Blow dryer on a washolet.
Spring-loaded battery door on cameras.
Oven doors that open upward.
Kitchen sink faucets that you can pull to make a sprayer.
Removable camera mount on tripod.
COMPUTER
Wireless connection between keyboards/mice and computer.
Automatic power-up and down on external hard drives (WD My Book line in particular).
WiFi on iPod Touch.
Ranking system on Google Search.
Magnets on the backs of hubs (USB and ethernet).
USB jacks on Apple-branded keyboards.
Laser-labeling (Lightscribe) on CD/DVD burner.
CAR
One-touch open and close on windows.
Windshield washers that do one more wipe a few seconds after they stop.
Automatic headlights.
Power jacks (cigarette lighter) in the trunk/boot.
Power jacks in the center console box.
USB and/or iPod connectors in the center console box.
Can you tell I love living in the 21st Century?
The way directories and adding links works in UNIX. The whole DOS version of directories that turned into Windows Folders is a pathetic imitation. They were called directories because you could use different ones to look up the same thing, like using your March directory or your Correspondence directory or your BridgeRepair directory or your WilsonPaving directory to look up the same letter. The idea that every file has to be in exactly one folder is as dumb as toast.