Readers' Comments

Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 12 February 2003

Note: the comments below are the unabridged submissions of readers and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.

From: Don Mackie
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Solid Core concept

Tools that do one job and do it well. It's a great concept
and one that I fully endorse. I know Aardvark is cool on
Macs but I use Claris Emailer, unsupported since 1997
yet it does all I need, perfectly, every day. Eudora is
probably an analogue. Yet these aren't high end
programs, to use the audio analogy. Similarly, Nisus
Writer is a word processor with a great deal of power
for managing documents. Less of the feature bloat of
Word.
In the digital camera world, the cost of adding electronic
features is much less than a good lens and CCD. I
guess they throw in the features as it adds little to
manufacturing costs and may appeal to some users.




From: Trent Mankelow
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Totally agree

Don Norman talks about this idea of moving from technology
centered products to human-centred products. It's pretty
much the same idea as you've said here - moving away from
techonology for technologies sake, towards technology that
helps us perform some higher goal (eg. capturing memories).
You would think that the consumer electronics market would
be mature enough now to be heading in the right direction,
but it seems to be getting worse.

Confession: I have an honours degree in computer science,
and I can't work a VCR.




From: David Hallett
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: AV Receiver Simplicity

I concur -- in todays software market, and indeed, the
consumer electronics market it appears that bell & whistles
(read: fluff) outweigh the importance of usability.

At least NAD
(http://www.nadelectronics.com/Support/productInfo.html)
keep their AV Receivers
(http://207.228.230.217/info/NAD_T762.pdf) and CD/DVD
Players (http://207.228.230.217/info/NAD_T562.pdf)
minimalistic in appearance - but not ability, lending to a
sophisticated and comprehensible user interface.

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