phone home
Geek
I was setting an alarm on my phone for a few hours away to remind me to bid on a snowboard on EBay. For a change I actually read the list of suggested messages that the factory installed (I only ever use the first one, Wake up, but oddly this does not make it work any better), looking for something appropriate to accompany the piercing shriek of Dan's 1UP special tone. So I discovered that the last two on the list are:
- Phone home
- Early night
Honestly, what were the people who made these up thinking? Why would anyone need to phone home on such a regular basis that they need that as a preset message for their alarm? Who sets an alarm to go to bed early?! Someone's kid? Someone with spare time or a poor sense of applicability? Who are these people? And why are twelve year old kids that regularly forget to go to bed on time being kitted out with stupidly expensive phones that are marketed to overly-image-conscious executives and easily pursuadable geeks? So ridiculous!
Comments
Actually, I think it's not aimed at *anyone*. This is the problem with pretty much all phone software... nobody has actually thought about what it would be like to use the phone in the outside world. They just get a whole lot of money thrown at interface design, and it gets turned into pointless bells and whistles, because the programmers have to be doing /something/.
Instead they should throw that money at testers, living with the damn thing for a month and using it a lot.
Fewer programmers. More testers. More cycles. In fact this can be said of software in general.
(Yes, I have a shit phone.)
Posted by: Joel on June 28, 2006 06:55 PM
I haven't bought a new mobile phone since 2002. I can call people, people can call me, and it supports SMS. Why upgrade before it needs to be replaced?
Posted by: Dave Hill on June 28, 2006 10:24 PM
Hey, if I could find my old blue Ericsson T10S, I'd use that. Best phone I ever owned 8)
Posted by: Joel on June 29, 2006 06:18 PM
perhaps they should have alarms for:
1. organise speakeasy party
2. remember to go to east taste
3. pass exam
4. be nice to sesame
Posted by: matrine on June 29, 2006 08:10 PM
People get paid to design user interfaces? Come on, we all know that's a polite fiction.
Matrine: No no, that's the list for my PA.
Posted by: Mike on July 1, 2006 05:30 PM
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