Nickname: Volvo user

Review: Hello, I had similar problems with my CD which didn't want to eject. Thus, the CD player ignored all of my wishes or commands. Suddenly I became desperate because of the noise the CD player was making all the time. It even became worse if I was calling. The noise was terrible. Desperately I took a paperclip and bended it into a long piece, on the end bended to curve. I took it into the player and lifted the CD. All at once the player told me the CD was unreadable and came out! What a wonderfull piece of equipment can do, still unharming my CD player or the CD!

Date reviewed: Aug 25, 2006 8:52 PM

Nickname: Patrick

Review: Well, "if consumers are able to solve their problems themselves" it is indeed true that they won't pay for service contracts but in general that is not something consumers can do in the modern world - who could fix a trip computer? When something breaks, and you don't want to fix it yourself, you're going to need a service contract or to buy a replacement, but from whom? I actually see software and computing as a bad example from a consumer point of view precisely because companies will always use the extreme extensibility and openness of a system as way to avoid responsibility... "It's your ISP", "It's your modem", "It's the OS". Do we want this with cars? When an 'open' dashboard went wrong the romance would be gone just as quickly. p.s. The all in one dashboard stereo is a good trade-off, where I live you're much less likely to have your window smashed in than in 1995 because a car thief quickly learns you can't remove the whole dashboard!

Date reviewed: Oct 21, 2005 3:52 PM

Nickname: Anna

Review: This artcle by John Maeda has an excellent content and a superb writing style. Thank you for reminding us that "simplicity" should always appear on both sides of the equation.

Date reviewed: Oct 20, 2005 12:50 PM

Nickname: Jay

Review: Blindness to usability is a failure of design, as clearly evidenced by your Volvo. Car makers are notorious for this sort of thing. In the CE space, Sony is the same way - they could support the PSP hacking community and create a huge following of talented people who modify their product and become intensely loyal as a result. But instead they choose to be the hammer, smashing any attempt to enhance their product. They were the same way with their Aibo product. Contrast that to Google, who seems to encourage the types of creativity that result in sites like HouseingMaps.com. Today's consumers will not stay loyal to a brand without good reason. Companies need to learn that.

Date reviewed: Oct 19, 2005 1:18 PM