And then you have to find the manual to figure out what that weird symbol that appeared means and how to put the settings back.
This is my complaint about product design–I don’t speak “icon” and I have no idea what easily half of the standard icons mean. I understand where they don’t want to give undue advantages to the literate who walk among us, but I imagine they could provide some option, like writing in English (or other languages) the verbal equivalent of these stupid things. “Push the BACK button three times” doesn’t do me much good if I can’t figure out which of these incomprehensible hieroglyphs is intended to stand for “BACK,” does it?
The HP printer, of course, has more than a dozen icons on its screen.
My BMW is similar.
But I use a parking lot at work where I have to get the shockingly expensive wheels and tires about 1" from the curb at the tollbooth-like check-out point to be able to reach the place to put in my payment card. I have orangutan arms; the problem is they set the payment screen & card acceptor device well back from the curb. Why did they do that? So the giant vehicles with great big extended mirrors sticking out don’t whack the thing.
My car is rather long and it’s hard to know where the front corners are. Gotta approach the pay point at a very shallow closure angle or there’s no room to turn the front tires to pull away again. So I’m slipping along for 15-20 feet within a couple inches of the curb driving by the cameras and the tempo of the parking assist beeping. When it’s acting excited bordering on panic I’m in the right place.
Bottom line, there are plenty of places where parking assist noisemakers and cameras are handy. Despite the fact the noise is sometimes a false alarm.
I bought a new dishwasher last year. Looked at about 10 models and nine of them had the controls on the top lip. I’m thinking, how can you access those, when the granite countertop covers it? I guess the idea is that you open the dishwasher, push the buttons you want, and then close it. Screw that. I bought the outlier model, with the controls on the front.
No such luck with my new clothes washing machine. Once you close the lid and start the cycle, you are locked out. No “gee, I need to toss in another pair of socks,” or “now to add the bleach.” Once the cycle starts, I am SOL. Unless I cancel the whole cycle and start over again. Oh, and unless I choose the “deep fill” option, the machine uses about 2 thimblefuls of water for a wash cycle. Every time I forget and use the “normal” cycle," at least a third of the clothes don’t ever see water until (maybe) the rinse cycle.
My wife’s laptop does not have a physical “off” button. Found out the hard way. A couple of months ago there was some sort of automatic update that didn’t cycle completely through. No problem, I’ll just reboot. Uh, no. There’s a sleep button or something but not a “turn the computer OFF” button. I’m holding it down for 30 seconds. Nothing. Holding it down for 60 seconds. Nothing. There’s no way to log in to access the user prompts, and no way to cancel out the stalled “updating.” I took it to Geek Squad and they said I’d have to let the battery run out and then reboot. Took a couple of days.
I too thought that was weird. Until I had one. You still need to open your front-control dishwasher to add the soap and perhaps the last of the stuff to be washed. Once everything is loaded up & ready to go …
With top controls you then push the [On] button and the [whatever] cycle button, then close the door until it latches and starts.
With a front control dishwasher you close the door first then push the buttons.
It’s a change of habit but no more or less effort or steps once you think about it.
Not to put too fine a philosophical point on it, but shouldn’t the person who designed this get fired and blackballed from the industry forever? I don’t see how you can hold a job in design after a screwup of this order. It’s not as though the company doesn’t get about four angry letters every day, is it?
I have a KitchenAid toaster. When the toast pops up, it also gives a little high-pitched scream. Nowhere on the box was there any warning that it would contain this “feature,” and I cannot imagine a human that would find it useful: even blind users can hear the toast pop up.
I contacted KitchenAid: there is no way to disable this “feature.”
Here is how I imagined the fluorescent light bulb and ballast came to be invented:
I used to own a Renault Le Car. Stupidest design were the rear side windows. The hinges were glued to the glass and the part making contact were about the size of a quarter. They adhesive would constantly fail and the windows would slip down. It was difficult to get adhesive that wouldn’t fail, so it was back to the dealer to fix for a few months.
The pipes heading to the muffler would only last a year before they burnt through and you had to replace them and the muffler. Not cheap
A minor issue was that there was a lever to turn on the lights right next to the turn signal. You go to make a turn and the headlights went out.
Physical on/off buttons on desktop PCs went out when ACPI was introduced in 1996. Ever since then the on/off switch was just a signal to part of the firmware running in the CPU or one of the support chips. laptops & later tablets are the same way. In no sense did it interrupt the flow of electricity. it simply instructed some software to issue a command to some other software inside the power supply to interrupt the flow of electricity.
So no, nobody needs to be blackballed for heresy. At least not in the last ~20 years.
I’ve got a Bosch version of the top control dish washer, and it’s design flaw is that if you push the on button and don’t wait .5 second, or whatever, before pressing start it gives an error. If you wait more than 30 seconds, or so, then it turns off.
All you people with beeping seat belt reminders are getting off easy. The Tesla Model 3 will stop if you go too fast without a seat belt on. It will then scold you.
I had a Miele dishwasher. I didn’t pick it out, it came with my previous residence when I bought the place. Great machine except … that when you pushed the [On] button, nothing happened for a second or so. At first I intuited that it was programmed as a press-and-hold switch which amounts to a form of “Are you sure?”, a way to reject spurious inputs.
Later experimentation showed that nope, the shorted possible momentary tap would turn the machine on. But with no audible or visual feedback for over a second. then finally the “On” LED would illuminate, the time remaining display would light, etc. Which second is an eternity when you’re pushing multiple buttons in sequence. Bottom line: I feel your pain, truly I do.
The bane of my existence are computers that are slower than I am. In my current car I car push the start button, have the engine light off, then move the console shift lever into D and press the adjacent parking brake release switch before the computers have finished waking up and they ignore my parking brake release command. Then I add throttle pedal and there’s no going. Pisses me right off.
I am a mere version 1 human wholly made by unskilled labor. These are modern silicon chips, the best money can buy. They’re supposed to be faster than I am. And I have to physically move my hand to 3 separate controls probably 15" and 4" apart in proper sequence while all they have to do is shuffle electrons a few millimeters at most and I still beat their sorry silicon asses. Fume! Fuss! Curse!
I recall what I think was a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, although searching just now came up empty. My second thought was Garfield, but that search also came up empty. Anyhow, in it one main character says to the other something close to “This new microwave oven can heat [whatever] in 30 seconds.” The other more curmudgeonly impatient sidekick exclaims “Thirty Seconds! Who’s got that kind of time??!?!”
That’s me. Sounds like it might be you too. 
Here ya go:
I believe that is from the Simpsons, though perhaps not, or convergent jokes.
Yes, having to wait for a computer to wake up is one of those really long 2 seconds that are extra annoying. The Kenwood stereo in my truck has to do all kinds of light dancing before it’s ready. I can be backed out of the driveway and down the road before finding out I have to pull over because it didn’t connect to my phone properly.
Seems my memory was not as perfect as I thought. Thank you. That’s it exactly.
Here’s a comment I regularly make to various hotel desk clerks, retail checkout people, and airline gate agents:
If computers are so fast how come we spend half our workday waiting for one?
This usually elicits rueful agreement, but once in a while that really triggers the poor soul and out pours a truly epic rant. Everyone is good for something. Me? I’m a pressure relief valve for modern life stress. Or something.
When I was a kid, Mom would absolutely refuse to even start the car unless all occupants were buckled up. It stuck. Now, I reflexively put on a seatbelt as part of the same action as sitting down in a car, and I feel awkward sitting in even a parked, driverless car, without a belt.
My goodness. I don’t roll without tunes!
I on the other hand drive to my pool every morning at dawn, when I have never seen a car on the road, and the trip takes about a minute at 15 MPH, or exactly enough time for me to hear incessant chiming for the last five or ten seconds of my ride. If they would treat us like adults and have the chiming start at an optional point, 1 minute OR 1:30 OR 2 minutes, I’d set it at 1:30 and be very content with the safety of this drive.
I remember a joke like that from The Simpsons as well. The way I remember it, Marge was out for the evening and left dinner for Homer in the fridge with instructions to reheat it in the microwave. Upon reading the note, Homer whines “Aww, 30 seconds. I’m hungry now.”
I use a variation on that when I hear about “life hacks” that recommend doing food prep ahead of time. Them: “You can throw dinner together after work in 20 minutes!” Me: “Aww, but I’m hungry now.”
And I would definitely use the Park Assist feature if it were (a) relevant to my driving patterns, and (b) made with nice German technology.
The key reason the GMC version is a fail is that they provide no way whatsoever to turn it off permanently if it doesn’t fit my lifestyle (or if all it does is cry “Wolf!”)