Wednesday August 25, 2004

Having gone through a recent painful experience of getting an OS to work on some hardware, from which I have created some new words for Websters dictionary, I am quickly reminded of the value that Sun and Apple provide. I have an iMAC at home which I use for my "Digital Hub". Everything works extremely well. Period. Install Solaris and/or the Java Desktop System on hardware provided by Sun and ... it works. It is all integrated and tested as a whole. You may argue usability beyond that point, but at least it installs and works out-of-the-box.

Occasionally while doing errands on the weekend, I listen to the radio and occasionally hit Leo LePorte's show. Holy cow, the crap these people have to go through to get things to work. "Have you installed First-Aid?" "Have you completely re-installed yet?" "How about spyware?" "Your screwed." Of course I am exaggerating (slightly), but the PC industry really has put the onus on the consumer to make this stuff work together. No offense to Leo, but the break-fix portion of his radio show shouldn't exist (product reviews are cool). The industry seems to be moving at a glacial pace in improving the consumer experience. There is more concern about features than quality in the consumer space. And we, the consumers perpetuate the problem by not demanding higher quality products.

This integration problem in other industries isn't anywhere near the degree to we have this problem in the computing industry. I wish we could simply take a 5 year hiatus on features and work on nothing but quality and user experience. Make it work, then make something new.