I just got a new car stereo. It has the capability to be used as a hands-free phone, by communicating via bluetooth to my cell phone. The voice quality is really good, and it even does voice dialing with my iPhone. When I get an incoming call, I only have to push the big control knob to answer the call - perfect! However, to make a call, I need to push the source button three times, then scroll to the dial menu, then press ad hold the big knob in! I mean, what a stupid user interface - didn’t anyone ever use it before they froze the firmware? Why not just have a dedicated “call” button?
OK, here’s another one.
I have a very nice multi-phone wireless phone system at home. If I get a call, I can scroll back though the caller ID, and hit re-dial, and call the number. Except - if the caller ID comes in with a “1” before the number, and it’s a local call, I can’t dial the number without editing it. Why can’t I tell the phone to strip the 1 off of any numbers from local area codes?
My DirecTV DVR doesn’t adjust to programs not starting on time. For Og’s sake, the system is computerized from one end to the other. Is it really that hard to track the actual begin and end times of a show?
Yes, because the information isn’t available. AFAIK, real-time updates to TV schedules are not broadcast along with the program, even though the technology has existed in other countries with different technical standards for television broadcasting.
The firmware in my home security system is pretty goofy. Nice alpha-numeric display panels that can tell me a window in the guest bedroom is open, rather than something cryptic like FAULT ZONE 3, but the core workings are out of 1983 - to update the time, I have to enter something like * * 1 6 <access code> 2 HHMMDDMMYY # <AWAY> <EXIT>
Get that wrong, and you’ll probably have an armed response in five minutes. Speaking of firmware - the unit was made before the Daylight Saving date change, so for a few weeks out of the year, the displayed time will be incorrect.
By comparison, our embroidery machine gets it generally right. Boot it up and you can easily pick a sewing stitch and select length and width. Plug into a PC and it mounts as a drive so you can move embroidery patterns to it, or you can plug in a USB stick, or plug in a CD-ROM drive to copy patterns to the machine. Where it falls short is CD drives - it should be able to work with any USB-connected drive, but in reality, it can only read data from five or six specific and obsolete models, and only two of these are readily available on eBay. The machine is not crappy by any stretch, but tweaking it so it can use any CD drive would be spiffy.
I’d like to be able to use any mp3 as a ringtone or SMS notice on my iPhone. Is this quick and easy? NO! To make a ringtone I have to convert it through some convoluted process in iTunes, then import it over to my phone, then set it. This took about a half hour to do as I’d never thought it would be such a hassle. And to make custom text message tones? Well, Apple says I don’t need that. I have to jailbreak my phone, then install Cydia, then download one of their apps to convert the proper mp3 just so I can hear “ni!” when I get a goddamn text message! Every phone I’ve had since 2005 has been drag-n-drop for mp3 files then I just assign them in the phone, took all of 5 minutes.
totally dumping the legacy BIOS on PCs. it might not be used that frequently, but Macs have always been nice about having pre-boot flexibility for those odd situations.
and I know UEFI is a finished product, I just wish it would get used across the board.
I actually like the old-school BIOS. Sounds goofy, but I find it very reassuring to see an 80s-vintage POST screen on power-up. And you can always adjust the boot order in BIOS. I’d hate to see it go.
The clock radio in my Nissan has 18 pre-save positions, 6 each for presets A, B, and C. I like it because I can have AM and FM presets intermixed - I don’t have to change bands. So the “A” list is mine (which includes my AM talk radio stations and FM music stations), the “B” list is my wife’s, and the “C” list is my daughters.
I hate it when I get in a rental car and find that the presets are band-specific - you have AM presets and FM presets. Why the hell anybody, in this day, would program them that way is beyond me.
Linksys’s WRT54G wireless routers were significantly improved by open-source projects that replaced their firmware. There’s a lesson for hardware companies there – not that any of them ever seem to learn it.
The XM Radio Built into my Car. My Honda Insight has a big Navi system built into the dash. What I would like is
A) A way to scroll through the channels to see what’s on the other stations without leaving the one I’m on. It has a ‘guide’ that will list the other stations, but it always starts at station 1 and it only gives you the name of the station not what’s currently on. But since it can do that, it clearly has the physical space and the layout ready to go. All my previous XM radios could do this, it was very convenient.
B)If you use the Tune button on the radio itself, clicking it will change the station (for XM) by one number, holding it down will go to the next preset. I like going from one station to the next. The thing is, the button is pretty high up and there’s no place to rest your arm. Luckily my car has steering wheel controls for the radio. Unluckily, it’s long hold to go from one station to the next, just tapping the button (or accidentally releasing before you’ve held it down for a full ‘long hold’) will make it jump to the next preset. Pisses me off.
I’m sure it’s this way because most people go from preset to preset with the radio and the XM was aftermarket, but it’s still obnoxious. If I had known about these two things, I would have stuck with my SkyFi2.
Just out of curiosity, what happens if you just dial on your phone? In my car, as soon as I start it, it syncs with my phone. If I dial with my phone and hit send (on the phone) it will still come through the car speakers. Nothing extra has to be done, the car just automatically grabs the call.
It’s marketed as just a color e-reader, but it’s built on top of the Android phone/tablet OS. All it takes is a simple rooting process to remove the software/firmware locks put in place, and it turns into a cheap (under $250) yet still very good 7" Android tablet.
It seems to me, that it would be in Barnes and Noble’s best interest to sell them AS the fully-functional tablet they could be, at the same price. They’d make a KILLING. Well…assuming they actually make a profit on the hardware. I suspect the only reason they don’t do that is because they sell the hardware at a loss, and make it up in absurdly high e-book prices.
But there is a bit of irony in buying a B&N e-reader, and then being able to install the Amazon Kindle app on it
I’m staying at my mom’s place for a while. The TV and microwave are less than optimal, from a UI point of view.
The microwave: If you put something in, close the door, and press a number button, it automatically starts cooking for that number of minutes. (Up to 4 minutes, I think; it won’t autostart for 5.) This drives me nuts. If I want to set it for 2:30 and forget about that, it starts up when I press the ‘2’ and then I have to look for the cancel button. Then I have to press ‘Time Cook’ (or whatever), ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘0’, ‘Start’. I want it to work one way, all the time; not different controls for minutes or half minutes. And if I just want to use the timer, it’s ‘Timer’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘0’, ‘Start’. ‘Start’. ‘Start’. No, wait, that doesn’t work. I press ‘Timer’ again to start the timer. (My mom loves the even minute thing. For 5 minutes she presses ‘3’ and when it stops she presses ‘2’. For 2:30 she presses ‘3’ and then just opens the door when there’s 30 seconds left. This would drive me insane.)
The TV: Strictly speaking, I think it’s the cable system. Press the "Guide’ button on the remote and it shows a list of what’s on all the channels. Ah, but if you press it after :25 or :55 minutes past the hour, it jumps forward to showing you what’s on at :30 or :00. I may want to watch the last few minutes of what’s on now. And it shows what’s on for the next hour-and-a-half, so if it went to the current shows you could see them and what’s coming up in five minutes. Ah, but it doesn’t treat that five minutes in advance as the current time. Press ‘Guide’ and scroll to what you want, then press ‘OK’ and it won’t change to that channel, it will just ask if you want to set a reminder for when that show starts. So it assumes you want to see what’s coming up, but not that you want to change to that channel now.
Minor stuff, but for something you use that often, the minor stuff gets annoying, fast.
Does the microwave also have an “Add 30 Seconds” button? I ask because ours does. For your example, I would push the “2” to start it cooking, then push the “Add :30”. Ta da, 2 minute and 30 second cooking.
It’s my understanding that many cheaper, crappier electronic products have the same electronics as the more expensive versions, just with programs to disable or degrade various functions. It’s for “market segmentation”; rather than provide one good, cheap product, they produce several tiers of product they sell at different prices to different customers; that lets them charge rich people more for a better product and charge poor people less for a crappy product without outright admitting they are really the same product.
Remove those degradation programs any the product in question will work better.
Sony was noted for building brilliant hardware and then crippling it in the software.
The minidisc (MD) is a great example. Sony came out with a small, convenient magnetooptical disc that could be used for music and data, cound hold hundreds of megabytes in an era when the 1.4-megabyte floppy was still alive and the 100-megabyte zip disc was exhibiting severe reliability problems, and looked damn cool as well.
But what did Sony do? Enforce an artificial distinction between “music” MDs and “data” MDs, which meant that you couldn’t just buy one disc and use it in your computer or in your sound recorder. The music MD came out first, and, here in North America at least, blank music MDs became fairly common for a time. When the Data MD drive came out, discs and drives were hard to find, and expensive when you did… and you couldn’t use any of the easier-to-find music discs in them.
The whole minidisc thing just slid off to the side, and got replaced by recordable CDs a little later as they came down in price.
It tries to be “smart” and turn headlights off after a short period of time to avoid killing the battery, but it is keyed to an arbitrary combination of signals and order of signals involving some (and probably more) of the following which may or may not match what I desire.
Ignition on
Ignition standby
Door open/closed
Headlight knob off/on
Door locked once (double click on keyfob)
Door locked twice (double click on keyfob)
Mix and match the order of any of these and the headlights may or may not shut off immediately, after a short time, or never. Damned if I know what the logic combination tree is.
I don’t have any specific knowledge about the Minidisc, but something remarkably similar happened to standard CDs, and it wasn’t driven so much by technology as politics.
When the first blank, writable CDs came out, the “record” companies saw the potential for users to cheaply copy expensive CDs and knew that they would fail to get royalties from the copies. They pressed for a law requiring a royalty to be paid on ALL blank CDs, but that didn’t set well with the computer dudes, who might never be copying music at all.
So they reached a compromise, and now you can buy standard CD blanks or “music” CD blanks. They are identical except the music ones are marked in a way that some readers can read, and the consumer pays more for them, since the extra amount is funneled to music royalty distribution networks; i.e., Elton John’s pocket.
Most computers ignore the special music flag, and will read and write the same on any CD: music, computer data or whatever. But the newer standalone CD/DVD players have software that rejects a home-made CD that doesn’t have the special flag.
Of course the average garage band never gets royalties anyway, and has to pay higher prices for their blanks, which only go to enrich musicians like Elton John. The system works.
Anyway, the MiniDisc situation might be similar to the CD one I just described.
