[Technology Tuesday] The Cry of the Consumer For Fewer Features
Laptops would be so much easier for novices to use if they weren't developed to do so much!
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have a Blackberry Storm, and I love it — this little device can do so many things that I’m finding myself using my laptop less and less for routine tasks like checking email or goofing off on Facebook, and finding myself anchoring my laptop to a desk more frequently.
Aside from those two devices, I have a PSP that I’ve loaded custom firmware onto, giving me a dedicated entertainment platform that can play so many games that I really have no need for the vast array of video game equipment I have. That means that between three pieces of hardware, I can have more functions than I know what to do with — and every week, I’m finding a new and novel use for one of them.
In the tech industry, one of the big buzzwords over the last ten years has been “convergence” — the idea that as technology evolves, there’s going to be less of a need for multiple devices and that more and more emphasis will be placed on using a single device for all of our technological needs. Right now, it appears that that device is going to be the cellular phone, though it’s possible that once long-distance wi-fi towers are a standard, VOIP will replace cellular technology entirely. In another decade, wireless networking will probably be everywhere, at a price that puts today’s rates to shame. And we’ll all be using a small portable device to take advantage of it instead of the bulky notebook computers we lug around today.
But there’s a downside to technology — the tendency to add new features to products that are already doing a pretty good job. It’s not enough to put out a nice product and leave it alone anymore — every new model has to include some improvement over the past model, even if it doesn’t make sense. We’re rapidly approaching a time when the cry of the consumer is not going to be for more, but for less. And it could happen sooner than you’d think…
Personal computers have always been a “one-size-fits-all” sort of device — they’re designed to be customizable so that users can install software, change settings, and make the computers do the sorts of tasks that they want them to do. Never mind that most people would never need to use a computer to, say, run CAD software, render 3D objects, or write code; if you have a PC, you can do all of those things if the need arises.
But there’s sort of a weird tradeoff for all that customizability — the operating system has to be powerful enough to handle all of those advanced tasks while still being user-friendly enough to catch all of the other folks who just use their computers to download music, read the news, play fantasy football, write a couple of documents here and there and goof around on Myspace. Those people could actually use a much simpler machine to do those things, but they wind up getting a personal computer because that’s what’s available. They don’t know or care about things like hard drive capacity, available RAM or processor speed – they just care that when they turn it on, it does what they want it to do.
Think about all of the problems caused by these casual users for a moment. Most of them aren’t very careful about the software that they install or the websites they visit, so they’re very prone to viruses and phishing scams. Many of them don’t know how to solve simple problems, which has led to a rip-off industry of computer repair businesses that do little more than re-install Windows whenever they’re faced with a major problem. Casual users also clog up bandwidth by jumping on P2P clients like Kazaa or Limewire and allowing people to download all their music without even realizing what they’re doing.
So, why doesn’t a tech company develop a PC that’s not so much a swiss army knife as an actual, personal computer that’s geared at just doing simple things, like running a web browser, running MS Office and a few other essential programs, playing media files, and allowing for video chatting? Such a piece of technology could be locked down a lot easier than a normal PC to be protected against viruses and other malware, and it could be mass-produced and sold at such a low price that everyone would want one. Power needs would be less, which would mean batteries would last longer, and the computers would be so idiot-proof that they wouldn’t need adjustments to their software when things went wrong.
For whatever reason, this idea hasn’t caught on in the PC industry, since the perception is that PC users want to have a lot of features that they don’t really need. But this idea has caught on in the cell phone industry, and it’s the driving force behind the PDA smartphone, which is really just a personal computer with very limited functions.
But the gap is closing quickly. Take a look at the iPhone or the Blackberry Storm and you’ll see a lot of applications that already handle most of what the PC can do. Word processing? Check. Spreadsheets? Check. Powerpoint? Check. Media creation? Check. Media playback? Check. Web browsing? Check. Internet chatting? Check. Gaming? Check. Calendars? Check. E-mail? Check. And the list goes on. What’s more, you can extend the functionality of these devices further with third-party software and bluetooth accessories.
Now, imagine that one of the upcoming versions of these devices includes a set of glasses with LCD screens in them that allow you to experience their interface in a big way. They als0 come equipped with a small bluetooth keyboard that you can pull out whenever you want to do some serious typing, and a sensor you can put on your finger to move your cursor around. Most of the major software developers have created casual versions of their software for the device, and you can even use applications like Adobe Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements quite easily. There’s no need for a virus scanner, since viruses can’t easily operate on these devices, and even if you get one, you can easily reinstall your firmware and reset everything without worry, because your settings and data are stored seperately from your operating system. What you lose in terms of applications you can easily download again. Would you even need a personal computer anymore?
That’s where things are headed, and personally, I think it’s a good thing. What’s going to be really interesting, though, is the fact that consumers are going to be less interested in new features and more interested in simply being able to use those that are already built in. After all, what good is a powerful piece of software if no one can figure out how to easily use it? The future of software development and hardware design lie not in adding features, but in making the features that already exist easier to use.
It will be a sad day when we have to set aside our many portable devices to embrace those which are smaller, simpler, and easier to use, and the PC as we know it will probably continue to exist in the workplace and in fields where it is needed (like graphic design, engineering, and computer science). But on the other hand, it will be interesting to see technology reach a point where it is so ubiquitous that everyone has access to it, all of the time. The future may seem a strange and frightening place to those of us who were raised on computers with two-color monitors, floppy disks and 640k of RAM… but the technology should at least be a lot less focused on features… and more focused on being useful.
Tags: blackberry, computer, convergence, future, laptop, network, playstation, portable, psp, storm, technology, wi-fi
[Technology Tuesday] | SeanJJordan | 
January 27, 2009 12:30 am
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