July 19th, 2007
by Michael Swanberg
Over the course of my geek life, I have collected and used many gadgets. Some have been good and some have been bad. To shed light on what makes a gadget good in the eyes of a geek, I give you “The 10 Commandments of Geek Gadgetry.”
| ||||||||||
I. Thou shalt use a standard plug (preferably USB). I cannot tell you how convenient it is to have gadgets that use standard plugs for power and to interface with a PC or other piece of hardware. It just makes life so much better when something fails or if you have to, God forbid, go somewhere. For instance, my former cellphone and my GPS both use a standard USB mini plug for power and data transfer. That eliminates one plug I have to carry on trips. My Archos, on the other hand, has a proprietary plug on the Archos end. If that cable breaks, then the Archos is one battery life away from total uselessness. It’s not as if I can drop by the local Archos store to pick one up. But at least it’s USB on the other end. That helps some. There is one almost-exception to this rule: the iPod. Whereas it is completely proprietary on the iPod end, at least the gadget has become so ubiquitous that cords for it can be found at any tech store (CompUSA, Fry’s, Best Buy, etc.).
II. Thou shalt have good battery life. I believe the bare minimum should be 3 hours at maximum settings and usage, whatever those may be. A media player should be able to play a 3-hour movie with the sound turned up and the brightness maxed. MP3 players should be able to get a minimum of 3 hours with max volume too (this doesn’t seem to be much of a problem). The same goes for cellphones (minimum 3 hours talk time), laptops, and other gadgets that really should be able to last the length of a decent flight. I realize that 3 hours is low for some things today (cellphones, MP3 players), but try playing a DVD on your laptop for 3 straight hours on one battery. And even if your flight is longer, there are portable power units on the market, but you have to have a standard plug (see Commandment I).
III. Thou shalt give nothing unneeded in the box, but always give necessary items. I’m all for extra stuff, but do you really think the stuff is free? Cables are a big example of this. Say you just got a good high-def media player; there’s all sorts of cables in the box. Half of them you won’t use, and half of the other half you already had, and probably a better quality one. And you just know the player’s price was jacked up a few dozen dollars for the cheap cables. On the other hand, why would a cellphone come without a case? Ever? I’m talking to you, Apple!
IV. Thou shalt offer accessories, or at least help partners to. This is a big thing for me. No gadget should exist in a vacuum. MP3 players should have speakers. PMPs should have PVRs and car kits. Cellphones should have headsets. ‘Nuff said.
V. Thine gadgetry shall make sense. This one comes about from the camera I recently bought, a Canon Powershot SD800is. Great little camera for amateur photogs like me. But to charge the battery, it must be removed and placed in a cradle that has a hideaway plug. Why? I understand that it takes the charging hardware out of the camera itself, and I also realize that having the charging cradle allows one battery to be charged while another is used. But come on. How many people will really have 2 batteries? (Well, come to think of it, this camera doesn’t have a battery meter, so maybe a second battery is a necessity.) And why couldn’t the charging cradle be an accessory, or perhaps come with the purchase of the spare battery? And I would wager that adding charging electronics to the camera would take up less space in my carry-on luggage than the charger does. And it already has a USB jack, so that’s half the battle. All in all, the decision to force the use of the cradle to recharge the battery makes no sense.
VI. Thou shalt have a reasonable price for the life of thine gadget. The stated reason why Apple doesn’t put removable batteries in their gadgets is that they consider those gadgets disposable. Their idea is that you will replace the whole unit before you need to replace the battery. Well, I look at it this way. If the average person is going to buy a new iPod every 2 years, and let’s say they paid $300 for it, that’s $12.50 per month they spent for that iPod. And if a $50 battery will extend the use of that iPod for another 2 years, that’s only about $7.30 per month. What’s reasonable to Steve Jobs may not be reasonable to the rest of us, and I believe these factors should be weighed.
VII. Thou shalt not package crap software. If I read one more review about a PMP that says the unit is great but the software that came with it is bad, I am going to scream! It seems like this is the norm. If a gadget is going to get penetration into the non-geek set, it needs to have usable, workable software. Hardcore geeks will find alternatives online, usually free, to re-encode video or add ID3 tags to MP3 songs, or whatever. Why not just partner with the producer of a good program that complements your gadget instead of licensing and distributing software that’s pitifully underpowered or woefully buggy?
VIII. Thou shalt allow thine gadgetry to be hacked. Nothing gives a gadget staying power in the industry like the ability to hack it. Once my Archos no longer has any viable use to me (like, say, I get a new one, that’s better), I would love to be able to hack it. Turn it into a NAS, or a router. Put Linux on it or make it a tiny MythTV box. Pretty much the only reason that people still buy PSPs is to hack them. But the point is: people are still buying them!
IX. Thou shalt make thine gadgetry easy to interface. I am looking dead at Apple here. iTunes isn’t horrible, but it is far worse (especially on a Windows PC) than being able to just place files on a player in whatever way I like to. MP3 players and PMPs should definitely show up as an external hard drive when plugged into a computer. Ditto cameras and cellphones.
X. Thou shalt allow thine gadgetry to be acted upon by standard OS means. This goes along with Commandment IX. One could make the case that using iTunes or Windows Media Player is an easy interface to many gadgets. I say nay nay! Every such gadget should be able to be acted upon by scripts, drag-n-drop operations, and whatever other means we like to use. For instance, I use a great backup/sync program called SyncBackSE to manage my Archos videos. I just set up a folder on one of my PCs where I drop all my videos into, arranged by folders how I like it to be, and then I sync it with my Archos. That way, when I delete a video on my Archos, after the next sync, it will be deleted from the PC as well. And if there is a video that I want to keep but I no longer want it taking up space on my Archos, I just move that file wherever I want on the PC, out of that folder, and then the next sync will delete it from the Archos. Very easy. And I could use any program or script I wanted to that can copy, delete, and move files. Again, I’m looking square at Apple with this one. But in the end, using standardized OS methods of loading content would end forever the “doesn’t work with Linux” woe.
And two more for good measure:
XI. Thou shalt not cripple thine feature set! This one goes out to Apple, Verizon, and all the other makers of gadgets that add features and then cripple them. For instance, if you’re going to have WiFi, it better be able to connect to WEP and WPA protected LANs. If you’re going to have Bluetooth, it had better be able to make all of the pertinent Bluetooth connections (why no support for Bluetooth headsets for the iPhone… er, the best iPod ever?!?!?). Also, don’t add Safari but leave out Flash and Java. Don’t say you have support for GMail when it’s really just a feature-poor POP connection. Don’t have a camera in your phone without MMS! I really could go on and on here, but I think you get the point.
XII. Thou shalt allow thine gadget to do whatever it needs to on its own. This goes along with Commandment X. And it is also squared at Apple, but they’re not the only transgressors. What this means is that a gadget should have the ability to do all normal functions without having to be hooked up to another piece of hardware to do it. For instance, say you want to remove songs from your MP3 player; you should be able to without having to delete them from, say, iTunes and then syncing. Ditto videos on a PMP. Pretty much all cameras will allow you to delete pictures stored on its flash card, but could you imagine if you couldn’t? And a good MP3 player, in my opinion, should allow you to edit complete ID3 data right on the device itself.
Related Posts on This Topic:
Hello, World
Geek Car
Summer Movies: Iron Man
Battlestar Galactica - Why Aren’t You Watching?
Sometimes Popular is Better
