I know why: Because Microsoft's product managers LOVE tablets, just like they LOVED the laptops with swiveling touchscreens that also failed to win America's heart. It isn't that they were stupid -- tablets were really useful in their jobs. They just forgot that the rest of the world didn't live the daily life of a product manager in Redmond, Washington. It's like designing magnetic license plate covers completely unaware that some cars might be made of plastic.
This is a deeper problem than just a few product managers at Microsoft, by the way. Ever wondered why those nerds in Silicon Valley can make constant high-speed Internet access a requirement for every device under the sun and not realize how goddamn inconvenient that is for millions of people with spotty connections? It's because every gadget you've ever bought was conceived of, designed, and tested in what amounts to a utopia of speedy Internet by a bunch of software geeks who, if you took away their Internet, would collapse into a seizure.
Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images
Minutes without Wi-Fi: 2.
But even when it's a subject developers do have personal experience with -- namely, Internet porn -- there's a disconnect with the users. How many of you are paranoid about storing naked photos on your computer because there don't seem to be any easy "I don't want anyone but me to see this" options for storage? Well, get this -- in the early stages of Windows Vista, I saw that there was a feature that would scan your hard drive for all image files, then shuffle them randomly as the logo for the picture folder.
974 Comments