Solutions to problems that don't exist

In My Humble Opinion
1

I like my technology, a lot. But I also hate, hate, hate new devices or processes that don’t improve on anything and seemingly justify themselves by changing around the interface or incorporating unnecessary “conveniences” or fixes to problems that aren’t really problems. I’ll give a few examples and then await what others say.

Now I realize not everyone will agree with my examples or those given by others. I’m less interested in debating the merits of this or that device than simply hearing instances of what people find useless or pointless in the technology they use.

Keyless car ignitions

In my job I drive a lot of rental cars, more and more of which have a push-button ignition that works when the fob is onboard. No key needed. I can’t for the life of me figure out what problem this feature solves. It keeps me from having to… what, take it out of my pocket?

Worse, It seems like an invitation to leave the car without realizing the engine is still running. In this article we find that over 20 people have died of carbon monoxide poisoning after making exactly that mistake. That’s way more people than have been hurt by driverless cars, and we seem to be having a minor freakout over that lately.

In an alternate universe I can imagine keyless ignition systems being the standard from the beginning until one day an engineer came up with the idea of physically turning a key as a safety and certainty measure. Then that would be the big change going forward.

Various iPad interface features

I use iPads extensively at work and personally. Tablets are great for a many tasks, and the first time I used one at work I realized it would be a game changer. That being said, I can’t understand what the engineers are thinking with certain aspects of the user interface. A particularly mystifying one is the dock control for varying screen brightness. When you touch the brightness meter, it dims the screen while you make the adjustment. Releasing the control, it brings everything back and you see what you’ve done. Then you repeat the process because why the f*%! did anyone think it was a good idea to change the brightness during the process of changing the brightness?

Another is at the bottom of the home screen an app icon will appear periodically based on usage. If I use the browser a lot at a certain time of day for example, its icon will pop up down there. Why? What problem is this solving? If I already use it a lot, I obviously know where to find the icon. Why bother with the effort to code this behavior?

What else have you got?

2

By far, the most widespread “problem that does not exist” is food past its best-by date. The solution: Eat it.

The best-by date is the last date on which the seller of a product will stand behind a guarantee that it meets all freshness criteria. That date has absolutely no other meaning, implications or significance.

3

Ever seen Shark Tank?

4

I’m still finishing up a jar of TJ’s salsa verde with a best-by date of 1-20-2017.

  1. The salsa is still good.

  2. As best as I can tell, 1-20-2017 was the best-by date for pretty much our entire reality.

5

Like evolution, things that kill people go away, things that you don’t see a reason for can exist just fine.

Regarding the push button start/keyless entry, personally, I like it. I never have to dig my keys out of my pocket (particularly annoying if I’m already sitting), when I’m carrying stuff to my trunk it opens with just the push of a button, it’s just about impossible to lock your keys in the car and probably other things for other reasons.
But don’t forget, you don’t need most of the features in your car. This is a good example of something not necessary that people like regardless.

6

It’s the keyless ignition I have a problem with, not the fob itself. My car has a fob I can use to unlock the doors and pop the trunk, but I also have a key that goes in the ignition. Seems to me that’s the right combination of convenience and mechanical certainty.

7

Life without keys is a very freeing experience - may not be that noticeable for a rental car experience. For years I lived with my doors/windows unlocked and a car key in the unlocked car ready to go. My pockets were empty of keys, and I never needed to look for keys. Life is good. Having this where one can place a transponder in a wallet, and although one is carrying the hardware, does feel like keyless living. I also find the ability to leave the car running and locked a benefit, and keyless systems lend themselves to this. The problem is what the key was trying to solve, keyless entry was the correct solution to the problem that the key was trying to solve. It’s amazing that one would accept carrying a key on a chain for life, a chain not unlike Ebenezer’s ghost has to carry, as a solution.

Also my car still requires the turn of the ignition device, not pushbutton FWIW.

8

That’s really what I like the most, the key really never leaves my pocket as long as I’m out of the house. During the entirety of winter, I just keep it buried in a zippered pocket in my coat that’s otherwise unused.

See, now, I can’t lock my doors with the car running and the key outside the car. We had a big thread about that a while ago. I know it’s possible on some cars, but for my Honda, if I get out of it, it’s either locked with the engine off or unlocked with the engine on.

9

You’ll have to pry the fob for my wife’s keyless ignition system from her hands, but you’ll never be able to do so because it stays in her pocket book all day. It’s actually a very elegant system that provides security and convenience. You may not desire to use it, but it’s a must have feature for any car we get, along with heated seats.

10

My car has a keyed ignition (albeit an optical fob instead of a metal key). Nevertheless, I don’t care what mechanism starts my car: I would never use my attached garage for precisely the possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning. I guess if a hailstorm with hail that could actually damage my car was occuring, I would use it. But I would leave the garage door open and windows open, and make extra sure the car was off. And I have a carbon monoxide detector: I am just not sure it works properly. I think the real non-solution is the attached garage. Do you consider me paranoid?

11

I once ate 2 eggs a bit past their best by date, confined to bathroom dry heaving most of the night. Yes I like having best by dates.

12

Shifters in cars that are not consistent in design or intuitive, including ‘dials’ used to shift transmissions through Park, Drive, Neutral, Reverse. These new designs solve no problem that existed at all.

Whether there is a shifter or dial, to control your automatic transmission, there are all sorts of hokey things going on now, from interfacing with the electric parking brake, to requiring some combo to make “Park” work, and generally making reversing that much slower that you can’t park easily, because there is no natural way to go from D to R that is anywhere near as good on the old PRND shifters.

Parallel park with a shifter dial? This solves nothing.

People have been killed not knowing whether the car was in Park (run over when they got out), or because they needed to move their car in a hurry (stuck on railroad tracks), but couldn’t because the parking brake set itself, etc. A Jeep product in the former; a Mercedes product in the latter.

(no cites provided. Meh)

13

The shifter in a automatic is not optimized and car manufactures know it, it is a problem. It takes up valuable space for ‘legacy’ reasons and prevents many of the possibilities of a 3rd passenger up front, along with limited space in smaller cars for the front seat occupants. Not saying that anyone has hit upon the ‘ideal’ yet, but at least they are trying. There is no reason for such a clunky non-mechanical switch anymore.

14

I was gonna let your comments die on the vine, but surely you realize column shifters ('member those?!) and stalk shifters, which can be shrunken and/or relocated, which just be evolutions.

What you say needs to be done (free up space, apparently) doesn’t require that anything be re-invented, since it is something that works well. Size and location changes are not re-inventions.

Column and stalk shifters work well, with PRND designs. You could argue they don’t, so feel free to do so. Shrink and move 'em, if their size isn’t proportional to the actual mechanics required behind the scenes, since they are mostly electronic interfaces.

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15

Meh. My 1962 Chrysler had a pushbutton shifter like this one. Packard, Studebaker and Edsel also had pushbuttons at one time or another.

I loved it, partly because it’s the only U.S. car I’ve ever seen that gave left-handed me something to do with my dominant hand. The story goes that Chrysler owners loved it, but GM and Ford users wouldn’t consider switching because of it.

16

We have an especially chilly room in our house for which we bought an electric oil filled radiator. It heats the oil it’s filled with, then continues to give off heat after the heating unit shuts off. And it worked well for many years, but then needed to be replaced.

Bought one, got it home, only to discover the dial heat controls had been switched out for programable electronics. After fussing with it a bit, I realized you had to reset the programming, which wasn’t user friendly, every time you turned it on. So I took it back and switched for one that had the dial controls. It looked a little different but was essentially the same thing. Made by Noma.

What a piece of junk it is! They have reengineered the fins to be razor thin, and the metal isn’t something that holds heat in any way. So it cools off like, immediately after the heat unit stops.

And it smells of oil, and a tiny bit leaks out onto the foot with every use!

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the design and controls of the original model. It worked with ease, and did the job perfectly. Grrrr!

17

I absolutely despise the push button ignition feature on my car. When I first got it, I inadvertently left the car running several times. I’ve broken that habit, but still resent that useless push button.

18

This is the thread where I can out myself as a luddite.

No thanks. :wink:

19

Sure, they work well - if you are used to them. There is nothing intuitive about them. If anything, it makes more sense to have park in between drive and reverse, to keep people from shifting into reverse while the car is still moving.

But in any event, there is no way to tell what gear a column mount shifter is in unless there is a display on the dashboard, whereas with a dial shift you have both a dashboard indicator and the pointy thing on the dial.

20

Just after I moved into this rental flat, the oven broke. The landlord very nicely replaced it with a shiny new one, the updated model of the old one. The only significant difference is that in this one features a clock. Great, an inbuilt timer, right? Except… the oven won’t work unless the clock’s ‘set’.

I’ll frequently go weeks without using the oven, I use the gas hob for most of my cooking, so I turn the oven off at the wall most of the time. This means I have to press ‘set clock’ 4 times to set it to 12:00 before the oven will actually turn on (normally with sticky dough covered hands). I’ve only set it to the actual time once in 6 months.