I have come to the view that computers are not supposed to work. We all claim to want computers that do work but it's like raising taxes; what we say we believe in and what we actually vote for are two different things.
- Designers don't want computers to work because that means engineering only the safest, most limited set of features. This is boring and doesn't let you make exciting performance claims.
- Manufacturers don't want computers to work because they are competing on price so they need to hire cheaper designers and cut corners on testing and QA.
- Retailers don't want computers to work because you didn't buy the extended warranty.
- Developers don't want computers to work because then they would have to use standards compliant APIs instead of rolling their own (see designers).
- The media doesn't want computers to work because the back four pages of every magazine is Q&A and the lead story every month is "How to fix your computer".
- End users don't want computers to work because… well because we're idiots. How else do you explain Linux and overclocking and modding and www.hackint0sh.org?
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jalind
January 17th 2009
5. Bullet #2 hits the right stakeholders (manufacturers) for the wrong reasons. Companies like Dell, HP and Gateway buy the major parts and assemble them. I've torn into a good number of these machines. They're an odd mix of high reliability, robust components (cases, power supplies, fans, switches) with other commodity parts being the cheapest they could get (disk drives, RAM, etc.). The motherboards are fairly well made with OK reliability but the drive to minimize cost can be seen on them. Power supplies in them are only enough watts to run what the OEM built; heaven forbid you add anything later that sucks up much more power (shortens power supply life). The third bullet targeting the retailers hits their motive, but they've little control over whether a machine works or not. Yes . . . they want a short life . . . so you come back for another one sooner . . . it's all about revenue stream . . . but they don't design or build them, so they can't affect outcome.
I've built my own custom desktops for over 20 years and the only hardware failure . . . 13
years ago . . . was one 40 MB hard drive that had been running in a server 24/7 for over 5 years (that failure was not a surprise). Years ago I had to replace a cooling fan occasionally; now that's extremely rare. Want higher reliability? Stop shopping purely by price, buying a Belchfire Loss Leader 9000, and make what's under the hood part of the purchase decision. It's why I've been "rolling my own" for over 20 years. Total control over not only what's under the hood, but the hood and hood ornament as well!
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pete_l
January 14th 2009
4. one small point about this article - it's rubbish. Computers *do* work, and get better every year. The real problem is not that people don't want them to work, it's that they aren't prepared to put in the effort to learn how to use them properly.
Even worse is some support people who think they know what they're doing, but really haven't a clue: one course and a certificate doesn not make you experienced.
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chrono217
January 14th 2009
3. Different to what magazins and IT-papers would let you believe, most computers are now pretty reliable and work quite well. Alot of the problems you hear about you have personally never encountered, using updates and AV-programs you probably never will and the hardware lasts longer than you would like. Also imagine your bills in the supermarket being written by hand, would you really buy somethings?
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thinkx
January 13th 2009
2. I totally agree.. if computers actually worked... gasp.. we'd have to do real work, instead of waiting for the IT guy to show up and fix something..
(btw, I was really glad that when I registered to comment here, I was able to tell the system that I was born in 2008)
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duckie
January 13th 2009
1. You, my man should be *****slapped.
I'm a professional developer and i would *LOVE* to have some damn standard compliant API's in *all* browsers that are out there. Even it were just HTML 4.01 + CSS2 that gets rendered *exactly* according to the specs it'd make our lives (also these of the designers you target) a whole lot easier.
You Are Wrong.
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