Unnecessary Complexity

[T3sl4co1l]

Discuss: complexity of products.

I've seen, more and more, the trend towards higher complexity designs, no matter if it's warranted to do so, or not.

There are clear cases where it is: for example, the ever-onward-marching computing power of a typical computer.  That is complexity incarnate, intentionally so.  A powerful computer must be powerful at all levels, and so, too, you will (almost necessarily) encounter bugs at all levels.  Ffrom hardware errata to OS vulnerabilities to shitty user libraries, there's just too much state to manage, too many interactions, too many edge cases, for it to "simply work".

There are less clear cases.  For example, flashing an LED (or similarly mundane task) on a clearly overpowered Raspberry Pi.  This is a continuum.  The justification can span anywhere from the trivial (it's a familiar system?), to, say, poorly optimized code that pushes the design to a bigger CPU than should be necessary, but that CPU is otherwise more-or-less being fully utilized.

Other suboptimal examples: say, using an ARM when a PIC would do, or using an MCU at all when a few logic gates would do; using one MCU (that's more expensive) because it's familiar; etc.  These, too, are justifiable in low production quantities, where development labor is poorly amortized over the production run.  They're less justifiable over many runs, but cost reduction can come in many forms as products are pushed into the mass-market range.


What I don't get, is the trend towards baroque designs: those which are, not only needlessly complex for their functionality, but which are considerably more expensive than a more optimal solution would be, at all levels: from development to production to maintenance to disposal.

Is it the engineer, overambitiously creating a byzantine interface plagued with bugs?  Is it the manager, pushing for faster deadlines and telling the team to make it happen through whatever means they can -- if that means putting Python on an embedded system, so be it?  Or is it marketing, promising the newest, shiniest, most powerful and feature-rich kit, whether the customer will ever be able to make use of that functionality at all?


Marketing does seem to drive a lot of this; but that, too, is another justification.  Example: there fundamentally isn't much they can add to automobiles anymore, only having made incremental improvements to safety and comfort over the last few decades.  (Self-driving cars being the obvious -- and quite justified -- exception to this, now that computers, interfaces and code are powerful enough to make this problem finally tractable.)  But they must continue the tradition of rolling out a new model year, with some kind of improvement to show, whether it be subjective or objective.  To fail to do so, would be economic suicide.

What about products that truly do not add value to their customers, that do not make the manufacturer near as much profit as they could otherwise earn?

Juicero comes to mind.  The product was still created.  People still bought it.  It did flop as soon as everyone else expected.  Well, I guess it's unclear if it was only bought by fringe consumers, those who get value from doing the new and cool thing, or the green thing, or who believe the marketing wank, or whatever.  The product was extremely overbuilt from almost every angle; perhaps that is justifiable in terms of development (a hasty, but very-likely-to-work design), I don't know.  A more refined design could've saved the manufacturer a lot of production cost, though maybe not total (including amortized time-to-market + design labor), also unclear.

I should probably not read too much into transient examples; better to look at products with a strong market presence over multiple generations of product.

What examples come to your mind?  In particular: cases that probably can't be explained through any of these reasons.

Hmm, I can think of a few examples from the medical market.

Software is absolutely fair game.  A rich backend is understadable from a user and data management perspective, but there are so many examples, even just web pages say, let alone apps and so on, that are just so heavily bloated that they can't possibly be a net value to the provider or the user.  And again, not just transient one-offs, but among top-100 players too.

Tim

[Mr. Scram]

Complexity in one area may be optimisation in another. That complex processor performing a mundane task may be more flexible or more accessible to the user or tool chain or even just simplifying inventory management. The Juicero obviously optimised for a high end market and even though that didn't work out, it does for many other products. Even if the engineering doesn't make sense, the marketing very well could. Sometimes products are simply optimised to deliver a fat bill, without adding much added value to the customer.

[unitedatoms]

You are defending the Beauty. But it is in the Eye of Beholder.

For some, the is no Beholder. As they confuse themselves to Him

[rx8pilot]

I am guilty of using an MCU in place of a few logic gates.....but generally for space savings. A 4x4 QFN is smaller than 3 discreet logic chips and easier to assemble. On top of that, it provides some logic flexibility downstream that will not trigger a re-design.

It is using a tiny fraction of the MCU - but who cares, I am saving in other areas.

Another area that I have been accused of pursuing unnecessary complexity is with products that serve a quickly changing market. I have laid the groundwork for additional features that I can roll out easily over time. This, of course, comes with the expense of a delayed release but has given me product lifecycle extensions and the ability to respond to requests for custom configurations. It takes some consideration to decide if this is a good approach for a given product. In many cases, getting anything to the market first is better than being late. In my case, playing the long game seems to pay off.

[T3sl4co1l]

Complexity in one area may be optimisation in another. That complex processor performing a mundane task may be more flexible or more accessible to the user or tool chain or even just simplifying inventory management. The Juicero obviously optimised for a high end market and even though that didn't work out, it does for many other products. Even if the engineering doesn't make sense, the marketing very well could. Sometimes products are simply optimised to deliver a fat bill, without adding much added value to the customer.

Indeed, and I gave examples of this.

I am guilty of using an MCU in place of a few logic gates.....but generally for space savings. A 4x4 QFN is smaller than 3 discreet logic chips and easier to assemble. On top of that, it provides some logic flexibility downstream that will not trigger a re-design.

Another good example.

But what about cases where these justifications (and the various ones I gave, and others), simply don't seem to exist?

Tim

[SiliconWizard]

As unitedatoms hinted (even if maybe not completely sober), complexity is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.

Is a single, small MCU more complex than three discrete logic ICs? It all depends on your perspective. On a transistor level, it obviously is. Tremendously. But on an overall design level by current standards? Maybe not.

Complexity also has two faces (at least). That could be using parts that are overkill for the task at hand, but basically doing the same thing as would simpler parts (as in your example). You may have reasons for choosing this, and the advantages, short- as well as long-term, may well overweigh the intrinsic added complexity. And then there is the design that does too much for no useful reason, which can only hinder the robustness of the basic functionality.

[T3sl4co1l]

You are defending the Beauty. But it is in the Eye of Beholder.

For some, the is no Beholder. As they confuse themselves to Him

Perhaps.  Beauty works for the personal project, often needlessly ornate -- but I've seen several projects where the build is simply a mess, even the developers building it agreeing it isn't beautiful!

Tim

[T3sl4co1l]

And then there is the design that does too much for no useful reason, which can only hinder the robustness of the basic functionality.

Exactly.  It's the latter case that I don't get.  I've seen a few examples myself (which I can't really talk about here unfortunately), and I just have to wonder, whose idea was it, who signed off on this thing?  All aspects point to it being bad (long time-to-market; high development cost; riddled with bugs; etc.), even given the often perverse demands of marketing (a fragile product, that's probably confusing for the customer; bug fixes throughout the product lifetime; etc.).

Tim

[SiliconWizard]

Unfortunately, many companies do not have a clear sign-off process. Responsabilities are unclear, and ultimately given to people that don't have the necessary background.

[rx8pilot]

But what about cases where these justifications (and the various ones I gave, and others), simply don't seem to exist?

Tim

A long time ago, I was working with a rigging technician on a movie set. He was laughing at one of the younger guys trying to tie-down something with rope. The mess of knots he created was indeed pretty funny. His remark was simply "If you don't know a knot, tie a lot"

I have certainly over-complicated something purely because I did not understand it very well. A fairly natural reaction is to take the more is better approach when you want it to work. Also, it could be from the lack of time/interest in doing the engineering fundamentals to simplify the design.

[rstofer]

I think there has been quite a bit of incremental improvement of automobiles, notably in the electronics.  Linking to cell phone for hands free operation, navigation on digital dashboard, tire pressure monitoring, electric cars in general, self-driving as a side issue, user selectable dashboard layout, remaining mileage calculation, front and rear cameras, lane changing warning, lane following, automatic braking, traction control and so on.

I didn't include engine management because that is pretty old stuff.  Same for speed control - old news.

I think working for the instrumentation part of the automotive industry would be very interesting.

[ajb]

I'm having a hard time thinking of examples of unnecessarily complicated products, but perhaps that's because I'm not a gadget freak and my car is almost ten years old.  Maybe smart TVs?  But those have a marketable use case in not requiring a bunch of little boxes hanging off your TV taking up HDMI ports to access your preferred media sources.

Even thinking of some of the rental cars I've driven while travelling, the new features are usually (at least when they work properly) meaningful improvements to safety and/or convenience.  I think there's too much pressure for cost optimization in that domain for features that aren't marketable.  Whether or not they work as intended is another matter, and there are some pretty horrid user experiences in some of the instrument clusters/entertainment panels of cars out there.

Another area that I have been accused of pursuing unnecessary complexity is with products that serve a quickly changing market. I have laid the groundwork for additional features that I can roll out easily over time.

Same here.  I often design in hardware capabilities that I would like to take advantage of in the future, and sometimes they never get used.  Other times, the boss asks me what it would take to implement a capability, expecting an answer in weeks, and I can be like "oh that?  Yeah, I saw it coming, just give me a day to turn that on in the firmware.  " Sometimes it means we throw away a few bucks on the BOM we could have done without, but we're small enough in volume that it doesn't add up to much.

I designed a simple power/analog board recently that needed overtemp protection and to enforce some timing limits.  I could have used a 6-pin MCU for $0.50, but a 32-pin ARM with USB is $1, and then we can monitor and record a bunch of other internal parameters while the modules are tested and configured (95% of the firmware already exists for this, as does a test application that can talk to it, so added development cost is minimal).  The total cost is increased, but accountability, consistency, and therefore overall quality is improved.  We're trending this way for a lot of projects, where yes, we COULD use a bunch of trim pots and well-trained techs to calibrate various modules, that would be simple in terms of hardware and development time, but it comes with additional costs in time to do the calibration, possible lack of consistency from system to system, and more complicated service.  Throwing an MCU and some DACs onto the board probably looks like needless expense and complexity to an outsider, but it makes the initial setup and later service much simpler and more consistent and lowers the lifecycle cost of the system. 

[tggzzz]

I should probably not read too much into transient examples; better to look at products with a strong market presence over multiple generations of product.

What examples come to your mind?  In particular: cases that probably can't be explained through any of these reasons.

Absolutely anything in the "enterprise software" domain.

Start by considering asynchronous protocols on top of synchronous protocols on top of asynchronous protocols on top of.....

And very few people are aware of the entire protocol stack, let alone have a basic comprehension of the layers.

Telecom software is a little better.

[LapTop006]

Two common causes (at least in my experience at a giant software company).

1. Deliberately making things complex to get promoted. Not always done intentionally, but often obvious from outside. This also covers cases where something existing *should* be reused but isn't, usually with little to no justification.

2. Many incremental changes done to be as small a change as possible. Laudable on their own, but after a while they can end up building up into an utter mess that can take longer to untangle than it took to get into the state.

Both can come from environments that push for speed at all costs, often taking just as long (or often far longer) to achieve a solid product as a slow & careful process would have.

[Berni]

Modern TVs are a good example of feature bloat.

These days TVs are capable of playing back movies from USB or the internet, open web pages, run apps, even make skype calls. Yet every time i tried using these features i found out that while they work, they are not actually very usable. Sure it plays movies from a USB drive but has problems with some video formats, or drops frames if the video bit rate is too high. Then try to add subtitles and again has trouble reading them at times, subtitles embedded in MKV? Like they are not there, but it plays the MKV video fine. The internet browser also works but its slow as heck and navigating anything with a IR remote is like trying to do brain surgery with boxing gloves on. Yes the features are there but they are so poorly implemented that you don't even want to use them.

All of this made the need for a big linux OS behind it, but even that is quickly thrown together and un-optimized. The TV takes 30+ seconds to boot. Once it starts showing the TV channel there is an additional 5 seconds before it starts accepting button presses from the remote and going trough the menus every press has about 500ms of latency before the menu actually moves.

So to solve that problem i hooked up small PC running Kodi/XBMC and now it plays back any format under the sun and runs Firefox at full speed. But when i hooked up a new bigger Philips TV to it i found that first of all the mouse movement lagged a good half second, i eventually found game mode buried deep in the menus and that brought the latency down a lot (But i could still feel some slight lag, tho not enough to be distracting). However the image on the screen looked absolutely horrendous. It was like my PC was hooked up with 50m of VGA cable. To fix that i had to dig trough the menus to turn off any image enhancement crap i could, yet some of it still had sliders. On some sliders setting them to zero did not help. So i had to bring up various test patterns on the screen and tweak the sliders to find where on the slider that enhancement is neutral/off.

Just make a TV that's good at being a TV rather than pile on so many features that it actually ruins the core functionality of it being a TV.

[tggzzz]

Just make a TV that's good at being a TV rather than pile on so many features that it actually ruins the core functionality of it being a TV.

... and sell your viewing habits to anybody that will pay.
... and sell your speech to anybody that will pay. (Now, where's my tinfoil hat gone?)

[LapTop006]

Just make a TV that's good at being a TV rather than pile on so many features that it actually ruins the core functionality of it being a TV.

... and sell your viewing habits to anybody that will pay.
... and sell your speech to anybody that will pay. (Now, where's my tinfoil hat gone?)

The former at least isn't speculation, sadly.

[AntiProtonBoy]

The TV takes 30+ seconds to boot. Once it starts showing the TV channel there is an additional 5 seconds before it starts accepting button presses from the remote and going trough the menus every press has about 500ms of latency before the menu actually moves.

Holy shit, you pretty much hit the nail on the head re. unnecessary complexity. TVs are absolute shite these days. It's rather ironic that we have tech better than ever before, and yet we make TVs that perform worse in terms of latency than old analogues.

I remember a hilarious John Carmack tweet pretty much summing up how screwed up the situation is.

[Rick Law]

Taking the last two replies (quoted below) together, it actually shown the added complexity added a new source of revenue  - thus, it is not an unnecessary complexity.  It is a complexity there for a reason (even if we don't like the reason).


First  reply:

The TV takes 30+ seconds to boot. Once it starts showing the TV channel there is an additional 5 seconds before it starts accepting button presses from the remote and going trough the menus every press has about 500ms of latency before the menu actually moves.

Holy shit, you pretty much hit the nail on the head re. unnecessary complexity. TVs are absolute shite these days. It's rather ironic that we have tech better than ever before, and yet we make TVs that perform worse in terms of latency than old analogues.

I remember a hilarious John Carmack tweet pretty much summing up how screwed up the situation is.

Second Reply:

Just make a TV that's good at being a TV rather than pile on so many features that it actually ruins the core functionality of it being a TV.

... and sell your viewing habits to anybody that will pay.
... and sell your speech to anybody that will pay. (Now, where's my tinfoil hat gone?)

The former at least isn't speculation, sadly.

[tggzzz]

Taking the last two replies (quoted below) together, it actually shown the added complexity added a new source of revenue  - thus, it is not an unnecessary complexity.  It is a complexity there for a reason (even if we don't like the reason).

That's not a helpful argument, since it would mean that any complexity arising from lack of care/understanding/time is "necessary" because it increases profits by reducing upfront costs.

To put it another way, all "complexity is there for a reason (even if we don't like the reason)".

[Rick Law]

Taking the last two replies (quoted below) together, it actually shown the added complexity added a new source of revenue  - thus, it is not an unnecessary complexity.  It is a complexity there for a reason (even if we don't like the reason).

That's not a helpful argument, since it would mean that any complexity arising from lack of care/understanding/time is "necessary" because it increases profits by reducing upfront costs.

To put it another way, all "complexity is there for a reason (even if we don't like the reason)".

I don't mean to be argumentative, I too don't care for using my TV to browse the net...

But if additional revenue is not considered a good reason, what would be a reason for a business to add any feature?  It may end up being a bad revenue generator.  I rather they "keep it clean", but much as I hated it, I don't think it is wrong for them (marketers) to try and test the market appeal of potentially worthy/worthless features.

[ajb]

These days TVs are capable of playing back movies from USB or the internet, open web pages, run apps, even make skype calls. Yet every time i tried using these features i found out that while they work, they are not actually very usable. Sure it plays movies from a USB drive but has problems with some video formats, or drops frames if the video bit rate is too high. Then try to add subtitles and again has trouble reading them at times, subtitles embedded in MKV? Like they are not there, but it plays the MKV video fine. The internet browser also works but its slow as heck and navigating anything with a IR remote is like trying to do brain surgery with boxing gloves on. Yes the features are there but they are so poorly implemented that you don't even want to use them.

Poor implementation or a poor user experience is orthogonal to device complexity, though.  Sure, scope creep or requirements that otherwise outscale development resources can lead to poor implementation, but they're still two separate parameters.  Even if the complex feature set is a major cause of the poor implementation, that doesn't mean the complexity is unwarranted.  I was shocked when I glanced at TV prices in a big box store recently--huge, high resolution panels from major brands are stupid cheap now!  (Granted, my TV is a plasma, because at the time I purchased it they were still widely considered to be superior to LCDs, so I'm probably a bit out of touch!)  So if prices have dropped so sharply on the panels, then clearly there must be more pressure to compete on features, which is where all of the smart stuff comes in--it's also probably meant to help persuade people to upgrade from earlier flat panels, which are still perfectly good otherwise.

To put it another way, all "complexity is there for a reason (even if we don't like the reason)".

This is kind of the problem with the core question, I think.  Obviously there is a reason for every design decision, so we're just arguing over whether or not we like the reasons--or at least whether we find those reasons, erm, reasonable, in their context.

[tggzzz]

Taking the last two replies (quoted below) together, it actually shown the added complexity added a new source of revenue  - thus, it is not an unnecessary complexity.  It is a complexity there for a reason (even if we don't like the reason).

That's not a helpful argument, since it would mean that any complexity arising from lack of care/understanding/time is "necessary" because it increases profits by reducing upfront costs.

To put it another way, all "complexity is there for a reason (even if we don't like the reason)".

I don't mean to be argumentative, I too don't care for using my TV to browse the net...

But if additional revenue is not considered a good reason, what would be a reason for a business to add any feature?  It may end up being a bad revenue generator.  I rather they "keep it clean", but much as I hated it, I don't think it is wrong for them (marketers) to try and test the market appeal of potentially worthy/worthless features.

I didn't mean to imply you are being argumentative!

Using "to maximise profits" as a justification implies it is reasonable (in some sense) not to strip out surperfluous bloat from a system - since stripping out crap takes time and expertise. Consequently baroque bloat and complexity becomes regarded as "reasonable".

I don't think either of us regard that as a justifiable chain of reasoning.

[TerraHertz]

Any time you are confronted with something that seems inexplicably stupid, you should always give consideration to two potential explanations:
1. Yes, everyone in a position of authority was in fact, inexplicably stupid.
2. You're just not seeing the reasons for the stupidity. Perhaps because you are failing to consider subterfuge, lies, greed, and outright conspiracy.

Take the Intel architecture and MS Windows for example. Why is it so ridiculously over-complex and frequently churned?
The answer is that this situation has strong benefits for certain parties, who are in positions where they are able to direct development.
Microsoft benefits from the complexity because they make most of their income from running high cost 'professional qualifications' courses. The more complex the OS, and the more often the GUI and internal details churn, the better for MS.
Also they now want to impose their 'subscription model' and the only way they can do that is if the OS is complex and byzantine enough that they can hide enforcement features within it. Stuff that makes freeware alternatives 'mysteriously just not work', that prevents users opting out of auto-updates, or worst, installing some other OS on their hardware. (That's what UEFI and 'secure boot' is about.)

Intel benefits because they have to keep the US Deep State happy, which means there have to be universal State-accessible backdoors hidden in the hardware. And to even hope to achieve this and keep it secret, requires a lot of obfuscatory complexity.

Plus both MS and Intel management are ideologically aligned with those who wish for an all-powerful surveillance state. Thus corporate profit is not the only motive. They only pretend it is.

[james_s]

I was reading somewhere recently that the "smart" TVs are actually cheaper than they would be without the smarts because they're subsidized for their ability to gather marketing data if you use the "smart" features. Like a lot of people I just want a display with a great picture, lots of inputs and a usable remote. Huge bonus points if it has buttons on the front bezel where you can actually use them rather than hidden away on the back or top or something. It makes absolutely zero sense for the consumer to bake an underpowered poorly implemented streaming device with a 2 year live cycle into a product with a 10+ year life cycle. The *only* reason this is done is for data gathering and to deliberately drive the sales of new TVs.

As far as complexity in general, there is a trend of technology for the sake of technology. Some of this may be engineers wanting an excuse to play with new tech, more I suspect is pushed by marketing. Some may be desperate attempts to turn mundane mature products into something new.

[Berni]

Yes the problem is that these whizzbang new features are what sell a product.

Using TVs again as an example when a costumer walks into a store and compares two TVs of the same size and price but one has smart features, or apps or something the costumer will pick that one.

Seeing how cheep a RaspberryPi is means that it can't cost TV manufacturers more than 20$ to put a ARM Linux computer into the TV, the features are then just software. But software takes a lot of work to polish and perfect and this sinks money into the team of programmers and makes the boss unhappy about meeting the arbitrary deadline. So the software part is just quickly thrown together just enough to check all the needed feature boxes and that it doesn't crash too often, who cares if its slow, its gotta ship by the end of the month.

The same feature race has gotten smartphones quite desperate. Running out of new feature ideas they start making bezzelless/notchless screens with pop out selfie cameras, put 5 cameras on a phone, increasing screen resolutions to ridiculous levels (Like 1440p on a 4 inch screen)sticking in 8 core CPUs even tho very few things are actually multithreaded. Without any of this they are just like any other android phone on the market

[T3sl4co1l]

Two common causes (at least in my experience at a giant software company).

1. Deliberately making things complex to get promoted. Not always done intentionally, but often obvious from outside. This also covers cases where something existing *should* be reused but isn't, usually with little to no justification.

I've seen something like this, though it's arguable that it was the brainchild of one ornery old (past retirement, still working) firmware engineer, and therefore fits better into the one-off, personal-project sort of category.

(To add insult to injury, that project was -- oh gosh, in the 10s of kLOC, I'm not sure exactly how much, maybe 20-50? -- of C, running on a PIC24E, what a mess of a MCU it is!)

To some extent, some people like making things hard for themselves.  Masochists, perhaps?  Consider the history of the $0.03 micro among western practitioners.

Business should mostly rule out such gimmickry, but it always surprises me how much leeway there actually is in a lot of industries.  Some markets and businesses have amazingly elastic profit/cost margins.  A lot of them have low competition, or captive markets, which is probably hinting at some kind of deeper point to be made.

2. Many incremental changes done to be as small a change as possible. Laudable on their own, but after a while they can end up building up into an utter mess that can take longer to untangle than it took to get into the state.

Taking the example from another reply of Windows, this is quite justifiable -- all things considered, they've done an astonishing job of maintaining compatibility, only breaking things after multiple generations.  Win16 lasted from, what, late 80s, through NT (via NTVDM!), until Vista/7 finally dropped it!  Various compatibility settings (minor breaks motivated by various things, from improved security to, I'm sure, some plain old bit-rot of modules) have been added to improve compatibility with specific versions of the API.

So, it's absolutely no accident that their system is so much sausage.  Don't fool yourself, Linux has the same issues -- support of too many versions, on too many platforms, over too much history, with development by too many people.  No large project can possibly be coherent and, in the sense of parts versus the whole, optimized (like, I'm sure there's a lot of redundant code in there, sometimes for good reason, sometimes not).  That's simply the way it must be.  At least until we get compilers that are much smarter on much higher levels, to flag or fix these sorts of things, anyway.  But even that is risky, because who can possibly debug such a smart system?  Bugs in compilers, that's one of the most insidious places.

Tim

[T3sl4co1l]

I was reading somewhere recently that the "smart" TVs are actually cheaper than they would be without the smarts because they're subsidized for their ability to gather marketing data if you use the "smart" features. Like a lot of people I just want a display with a great picture, lots of inputs and a usable remote. Huge bonus points if it has buttons on the front bezel where you can actually use them rather than hidden away on the back or top or something. It makes absolutely zero sense for the consumer to bake an underpowered poorly implemented streaming device with a 2 year live cycle into a product with a 10+ year life cycle. The *only* reason this is done is for data gathering and to deliberately drive the sales of new TVs.

Yeah, on an individual level -- you only want a monitor that also receives TV channels -- it's a huge mess.  But taken in aggregate, it's a valid business decision, if an annoying one.

Businesses also tend to become, just annoying enough not to turn customers away.  That way they can maximize profit through those annoying means, like incessant banner ads, impossible-to-find buttons and so on.  (Personally, Amazon has lost almost all my potential business this way.  They're fucking impossible to navigate, just doesn't make sense to me.  Maybe if I bought more consumer crap I'd find it appealing, but geez.)

Tim

[Zero999]

I hate smart TVs, just buy an ordinary TV and connect a cheap Linux PC to it. Simple and probably cheaper.

I've never understood the MCU to flash an LED thing, other than as a coding exercise, or if it's doing something else such as a timer function. I'd use a single gate Schmitt trigger IC, plus RC circuit or better still, an LED with the astable+counter built-in: no code or PCB to worry about!

[bd139]

Back in the 80s I just bought a flashing LED if I wanted to flash one 

Maybe an LM3909 if I was feeling flush.

Totally agree with the unnecessary escalation of complexity. I am currently working for a company that drank some microservice kool-aid. I’m getting paid so I don’t give a shit and I know I’m going to be paid more when they realise it was a big mistake. Sorry for being part of this. Most of the last 15 years of my life has been building the same thing again with new tech for the sake of churn and not for any real improvement.

I strive for simplicity in my own personal work however. I recently minimised a 25W CW transmitter down to 3 BJTs and a MOSFET. No computer or IC in sight. I find elegance in such minimalistic designs. Less is more.

[IanMacdonald]

Think one of the reasons is that gimmicks drive sales. The product with the most 'features' seems more attractive on paper than the one with less.

The layperson doesn't really understand that most of the gimmicks do nothing useful, and some may actually be liabilities you'd rather not have.

A problem we're faced with here, is that under new EU rules ALL safety features originally fitted to a car most be operational at its annual test. This means that having more safety features than actually required by Law is a liability which could cost you a packet or even put your car off the road. As such these regulations cannot be conducive to safety, since once the effect is understood they will predispose buyers to opt for only the minimum of safety features. However, I suspect that safety is not their objective. 

[Gyro]

Think one of the reasons is that gimmicks drive sales. The product with the most 'features' seems more attractive on paper than the one with less.

True. Back when I was designing early digital and set-top-boxes and TVs, there was a sudden fuss over demand for products that could support PIP (picture in picture) and POP (picture on picture). This became a major issue in chipset choice and the big impact of h/w changes and s/w stacks. I've yet to meet anyone who has seriously used these functions! The same with 3D TV, a big hassle to support (HDMI specs etc.) but now dropped by all major TV manufacturers and broadcasters.

Too many cases of new technologies looking for an application rather than the other way round.

[AntiProtonBoy]

Take the Intel architecture and MS Windows for example. Why is it so ridiculously over-complex and frequently churned?
The answer is that this situation has strong benefits for certain parties, who are in positions where they are able to direct development.
Microsoft benefits from the complexity because they make most of their income from running high cost 'professional qualifications' courses. The more complex the OS, and the more often the GUI and internal details churn, the better for MS.

I think the actual reasons are more aligned with complexity arising from feature creep and technical debt. Both systems have origins dating back many decades, with features progressively layered and retrofitted atop. Most of the time, once a feature is part of the system, it's very hard to remove, because its introduction created a dependency in the client ecosystem. There is common pattern with x86 and Windows; and that is backwards compatibility as being their main selling points, which comes at a huge cost of technical debt. Intel tired to shift focus away from x86, but they failed (see Itanium). Microsoft tried to reinvent Windows APIs, or experimented with new OS kernel concepts (Singularity), and most of those projects got shelved. Easy to go down the conspiracy route "they make things complicated deliberately", but reality is a bit more complicated than that.

[Berni]

Take the Intel architecture and MS Windows for example. Why is it so ridiculously over-complex and frequently churned?
The answer is that this situation has strong benefits for certain parties, who are in positions where they are able to direct development.
Microsoft benefits from the complexity because they make most of their income from running high cost 'professional qualifications' courses. The more complex the OS, and the more often the GUI and internal details churn, the better for MS.

I think the actual reasons are more aligned with complexity arising from feature creep and technical debt. Both systems have origins dating back many decades, with features progressively layered and retrofitted atop. Most of the time, once a feature is part of the system, it's very hard to remove, because its introduction created a dependency in the client ecosystem. There is common pattern with x86 and Windows; and that is backwards compatibility as being their main selling points, which comes at a huge cost of technical debt. Intel tired to shift focus away from x86, but they failed (see Itanium). Microsoft tried to reinvent Windows APIs, or experimented with new OS kernel concepts (Singularity), and most of those projects got shelved. Easy to go down the conspiracy route "they make things complicated deliberately", but reality is a bit more complicated than that.

Yep PC has been a very focused on backwards compatibility and this carries a price.

For example a machine that runs Windows 7 today can read a boot disk containing a game of PacMan made for a IBM PC with a 8086 CPU. You do need a old motherboard with a floppy connector, or copy the boot disk to a modern media such as a USB drive, but the code itself will run just fine.

The whole system boots in a comparability mode from the start, its only when the special register sequence is executed does the CPU switch into being a 386 and then on to being a x64. Each one of these has to be emulated by the CPU. Video cards also by default start up in 80 column text mode as did the IBM PC, only once told so they switch into 32bit color bitmap mode. then once the manufacturers graphics drivers initialize them all the way then they become the hardware accelerated 3D graphics power house with full functionality.

But this is coming to an end. Some time ago i tried to install Windows 7 on a little home server running on Intel Kabby Lake (Just to test stuff, later on ran Unraid). There was issues after issue, first i couldn't even see the PCIe SSD boot drive, after manually adding drivers to my boot USB i manged to install it but then it would bluescreen when it was time to boot, couldn't fix it so i installed it on a SATA drive instead. Got to the desktop this time around but i had no network drivers and none of the USB ports worked. So i had no way to actually get files on it. To fix that i moved the SATA drive to a working PC so that i could copy the network card drivers on it. Moved the drive back and installed the network card and got the machine online so i could download all the other drivers. Upon downloading the graphics driver i found that it wont install on Win 7 as it required minimal Win 8 or 10. Intel simply does not support integrated graphics for Win 7 on Kabby Lake. I eventually found a shady hacked driver that has this OS check removed and it worked. So kiss goodbye backwards compatibility.

[T3sl4co1l]

Think one of the reasons is that gimmicks drive sales. The product with the most 'features' seems more attractive on paper than the one with less.

True. Back when I was designing early digital and set-top-boxes and TVs, there was a sudden fuss over demand for products that could support PIP (picture in picture) and POP (picture on picture). This became a major issue in chipset choice and the big impact of h/w changes and s/w stacks. I've yet to meet anyone who has seriously used these functions! The same with 3D TV, a big hassle to support (HDMI specs etc.) but now dropped by all major TV manufacturers and broadcasters.

Back in the 90s, I remember reading about fancy new TVs with PIP and stuff.  Advertised in the new products section of say Electronics Now.  Sounds really cool and fancy, and quite impressive when you know how video works (and how little RAM most things could afford in the 90s).  But when you think about it... it's just not very useful.

Tim

[madires]

My take on smart TVs is quite simple: if you're smart, don't connect the TV to the internet. Another example of unnecessary complexity is home automation. Why would I need a cloud based IoT switch for the lights and a smartphone to turn them on or off, if a simple wall-mounted switch does the job perfectly fine?

[coppercone2]

this is called progress and the problem is actually shitty documentation

given how well companies document things I want the fucking component fixable with a anvil and hammer. No one wants to pay for someone to write a comprehensive manual, so you get mystery circuits. If you got circuit documentation, code files, designers thoughts, you would just think its cool when you need to repair it.

scrubbing IC markings, encrypting/protecting code, not providing schematics or design documents (yeah. how many people actually open up word pad to write thoughts about their circuit...................................................)

its like living in a crazy world with too many burglars where every 50 feet is another gated community. and every single person you meet is like a vending machine, you need to pay for a specific conversation. 

[Zero999]

Back in the 80s I just bought a flashing LED if I wanted to flash one 

I did say that, but perhaps I described it in an unnecessarily complex manner?

I've never understood the MCU to flash an LED thing, other than as a coding exercise, or if it's doing something else such as a timer function. I'd use a single gate Schmitt trigger IC, plus RC circuit or better still, an LED with the astable+counter built-in: no code or PCB to worry about!

Maybe an LM3909 if I was feeling flush.

Yes, I remember those from the old Forrest Mims books, but I've never used one before. They're obsolete now, so getting one is difficult, although no doubt fake, used and new old stock devices are still available.

[bd139]

Good point - I didn't put two and two together there 

Actually mini flashback here. I got some stuff out of a skip back in the late 1980s and in it was a security camera. I was pissing myself with excitement but nope inside it was empty. There was a little board with a CD4001 and a 7805 in it flashing an LED. I think that was the pinnacle of complexity there. Genuinely don't think they knew what the hell they were doing. It was a commercial board as well. Silk screen and everything. That surely cost more than the £0.40 for a flashing LED!?!?!?

[SiliconWizard]

I was reading somewhere recently that the "smart" TVs are actually cheaper than they would be without the smarts because they're subsidized for their ability to gather marketing data if you use the "smart" features.

The biggest challenge - and trend - for a lot of businesses these days is to create recurring revenue, especially for the ones that sell products in saturated, or close to saturated markets. The saturation drives prices (and eventually the number of sold units) down, but then creates the need for extra revenue.

In your example, TV sets, in spite of including many more features, sell for much less than raw equivalent LCD monitors of the same size. That's all a market issue, and obviously neither a technical nor development cost issue.

Therefore I think one of the major causes of feature bloat is market saturation.

[james_s]

Think one of the reasons is that gimmicks drive sales. The product with the most 'features' seems more attractive on paper than the one with less.

True. Back when I was designing early digital and set-top-boxes and TVs, there was a sudden fuss over demand for products that could support PIP (picture in picture) and POP (picture on picture). This became a major issue in chipset choice and the big impact of h/w changes and s/w stacks. I've yet to meet anyone who has seriously used these functions! The same with 3D TV, a big hassle to support (HDMI specs etc.) but now dropped by all major TV manufacturers and broadcasters.

Back in the 90s, I remember reading about fancy new TVs with PIP and stuff.  Advertised in the new products section of say Electronics Now.  Sounds really cool and fancy, and quite impressive when you know how video works (and how little RAM most things could afford in the 90s).  But when you think about it... it's just not very useful.

Tim

PIP was a neat idea, if one was into sports for example they could keep an eye on the game while watching something else. It could be handy for seeing when a commercial break was over. In practice though it came out right around the time settop boxes came into common use and people largely stopped using the tuners built into TVs. This rendered PIP useless.

[Gyro]

You could/can still do PIP and POP on dual tuner digital STBs/PVRs... probably an indication of how little use it is that you didn't find it. 

P.S. I agree that it could maybe useful for keeping a eye on sport and commercial breaks (less of a problem here) but in practice, I found it as irritating as hell. Probably too much time spent testing the damned things, it tends to make you hyper critical of artifacts too!

[coppercone2]

You can also use pip if you want to watch a cam if you are trying to hunt down an illusive mailman so you dont need to drive to fedex 1 hour away to get 5 $ of goods

They must do job postings in fucking feudal tokyo to find real ninjas. Some how those guys move like ghosts despite driving the massive truck...

[coppercone2]

They think its a trap door activator!

[IDEngineer]

Sometimes what appears to be unnecessary complexity is driven by other real-world factors.

For example, one of my presently shipping products contains two MCU's, one of which is dedicated to a very simple function that could be accomplished with a lesser part. But when you run the numbers, using a common part drives up the volumes enough that you end up saving money in production over the more "optimized" choice. So I used an "overpowered", "overcomplicated" part where to a casual observer it may appear unnecessarily complex.

Another common reason for unnecessary complexity: Narrow-minded (or -educated) people. My favorite example was when an "Engineer" (I use the term loosely in this context) was working to add an A/D and D/A to an existing design. Seems there was an analog signal that needed to be amplified by a fixed amount. His plan was to digitize the signal, use the existing MCU to multiply in the digital domain, and then go back to analog with the D/A. Asked how much BOM cost he was going to add with his A/D + D/A "solution" the answer was "a few dollars". Seriously... this was literally a 25 cent problem. I can't remember if I read this in a "Pease Porridge" column, or was told it by a co-worker in the distant past, but I do remember when I heard it that if it had come from a less reliable source I would never have believed it.

Anyway, my point is that sometimes what appears to be complexity isn't for complexity's sake. Sometimes it can be economy. Or ignorance!

[Mr. Scram]

They think its a trap door activator!

Removing the trap door may help.

[ogden]

Anyway, my point is that sometimes what appears to be complexity isn't for complexity's sake. Sometimes it can be economy. Or ignorance!

Very well said. Usually it is economy unless we talk about failing product. Small batch, high added cost value manufacturers usually take "off the shelf" (chips & engineering) solutions and do not try to save 1$ on BOM for product that retails for 5000$. On the other hand 1$ excess BOM will be devastating for 4$ toy/whatever.

[hamster_nz]

Any time you are confronted with something that seems inexplicably stupid, you should always give consideration to two potential explanations:
1. Yes, everyone in a position of authority was in fact, inexplicably stupid.
2. You're just not seeing the reasons for the stupidity. Perhaps because you are failing to consider subterfuge, lies, greed, and outright conspiracy.

Take the Intel architecture and MS Windows for example. Why is it so ridiculously over-complex and frequently churned?
The answer is that this situation has strong benefits for certain parties, who are in positions where they are able to direct development.
Microsoft benefits from the complexity because they make most of their income from running high cost 'professional qualifications' courses. The more complex the OS, and the more often the GUI and internal details churn, the better for MS.
Also they now want to impose their 'subscription model' and the only way they can do that is if the OS is complex and byzantine enough that they can hide enforcement features within it. Stuff that makes freeware alternatives 'mysteriously just not work', that prevents users opting out of auto-updates, or worst, installing some other OS on their hardware. (That's what UEFI and 'secure boot' is about.)

Intel benefits because they have to keep the US Deep State happy, which means there have to be universal State-accessible backdoors hidden in the hardware. And to even hope to achieve this and keep it secret, requires a lot of obfuscatory complexity.

Plus both MS and Intel management are ideologically aligned with those who wish for an all-powerful surveillance state. Thus corporate profit is not the only motive. They only pretend it is.

Most things have "dual use" features. The nefarious ones are nearly always not always the original intention.

I am sure that the Management features that can be used to compromise security were originally put in there for actual valid reasons - e.g. Wake on LAN gives the ability to patch PCs at night without anybody touching them.

Not everything is "Hunting for [Russian subs and] the Titanic" or the "Mining polymetallic nodules from the sea floor [but actually lifting sunken Russian Subs]"

[CatalinaWOW]

Another reason for unnecessary complexity that I have encountered has elements of inertia, sunk cost and other related factors involved.

A problem has no known solutions until a complex answer is developed and fielded.  Technology moves along and suddenly the problem has a simple solution.  But the problem is only one part of the whole system and implementing the easy solution requires changes in several places.  It isn't just a module drop in.  So guess what stays on.  Befuddling both outsiders and new insiders that look into what is going on.

Answers that have already been given are much more common in my experience.  Someone knows one part or sw language well and finds it easier to implement that than to learn to a apply and easier solution (may not even be aware of the easy way).  Or it is used as a profit enhancer or market barrier. 

[Berni]

Ah yeah the usual when you see some confusing design choices, ask why its done that way only to get the answer of: "I dunno, it was always done like this even before i got here, but it still works"

Where i work i see a lot copypasting of old designs because that's they fastest way to design it and they are proven to work. Similar with MCU choice, often overpowered expensive MCUs are used just because the software department is familiar with that chip from the other project. They have there fancy custom build environment set up for it, have ported over some old libraries and have a bootloader made for it. Because apparently porting a NMEA2000 communication stack is not as simple as just pointing it to the new receive and transmit function of the CAN bus driver. Or sometimes we hear things like "But 64KB of RAM in that ARM chip is kinda tight for what we are doing" even tho the task is to just take some ADC readings and send them over CAN.

[Rerouter]

The most recent example I have come across was gas instant hot water heaters, There is more electronics in the things than metal,

All that it needs is a flow switch and a themostat, possibly a feedback temperature sensor, not 6 servo motors, 4 solenoid valves, 7 temperature sensors, a flow meter, and a circuit board that takes up half the enclosure.

And as the amount and complexity of the electronics increase, the quality and durability of the units go down. More recently I have been seeing a big batch of ~7 year old units turning up at the scrap metal place because there paper thin heat exchanges start leaking (was hoping to use them for a project)

[Zero999]

Good point - I didn't put two and two together there 

Actually mini flashback here. I got some stuff out of a skip back in the late 1980s and in it was a security camera. I was pissing myself with excitement but nope inside it was empty. There was a little board with a CD4001 and a 7805 in it flashing an LED. I think that was the pinnacle of complexity there. Genuinely don't think they knew what the hell they were doing. It was a commercial board as well. Silk screen and everything. That surely cost more than the £0.40 for a flashing LED!?!?!?

I wonder what's inside those ICs, which go into flashing LEDs. I know it's a counter and astable, but I wonder if they use a standard IC such as the CD4060B or CD4521B?

[coppercone2]

The most recent example I have come across was gas instant hot water heaters, There is more electronics in the things than metal,

All that it needs is a flow switch and a themostat, possibly a feedback temperature sensor, not 6 servo motors, 4 solenoid valves, 7 temperature sensors, a flow meter, and a circuit board that takes up half the enclosure.

And as the amount and complexity of the electronics increase, the quality and durability of the units go down. More recently I have been seeing a big batch of ~7 year old units turning up at the scrap metal place because there paper thin heat exchanges start leaking (was hoping to use them for a project)

why is it bad if it has a complicated hydraulic circuit? You just need good parts like stainless swagelok etc. you can make anything bad. their mechanical choices have nothing to do with electronics choice other then their cost decisions.

it seems like a extremely primitive assertion to make... good hydraulics design can be hard you know.. you need good engineers. cost per component is just higher. its like saying we should have never used more then two vacuum tubes??

[Rerouter]

I have been looking into them more and more, need a few to abuse for non standard use., Sadly all the easy to get ones are the more complicated modern ones,

I can make at least the beginning of my assertions because I've been scoping out which ones to try and get for the past few weeks, Downloading the installation manuals which luckily do tend to give the full electronic schematic, As well as the specifications,

The efficiency towards the upper 50% of what these devices are capable of haven't really changed, Its mostly down to the mechanics for how much energy you can recover from the flue gas,
The electronics seem more related to the "fancy" side of things, using in house controllers to customize the hot water temperature on the fly,

It may just be my obscure use case, But it seems odd to me when you have the option of phone apps for a water heater.

[bd139]

I wonder what's inside those ICs, which go into flashing LEDs. I know it's a counter and astable, but I wonder if they use a standard IC such as the CD4060B or CD4521B?

I doubt its a standard IC die as they're quite large, and you'd have to use a hybrid then to get the timing components external to the die plus that would increase the number of wire bonds required and cost. It'd have to use on die RC network for timing so I imagine it'd be a much faster oscillator to keep the timing components and die small and cost down, divided down with a counter and a driver. Probably a standard LED with a flasher die glued next to it and bonded in the package. Probably requires a lot of skill to get a good yield out of something like that as the capacitors and resistors aren't going to be laser trimmed for that money!

[IanMacdonald]

True. Back when I was designing early digital and set-top-boxes and TVs, there was a sudden fuss over demand for products that could support PIP (picture in picture) and POP (picture on picture). This became a major issue in chipset choice and the big impact of h/w changes and s/w stacks. I've yet to meet anyone who has seriously used these functions! The same with 3D TV, a big hassle to support (HDMI specs etc.) but now dropped by all major TV manufacturers and broadcasters.

Too many cases of new technologies looking for an application rather than the other way round.

I support small business IT, and one of the biggest problems here is that managers insist pointblank on having Outlook and Exchange Server for email. This in turn mandates the use of an Active Directory setup for the desktops. They then want things to be set up so that any user can log on to any computer and see the same files. The craziest example of such was a three user office (with one spare seat) in which, crammed in a tiny backroom which hardy had the space for them, were two heavy iron servers with RAID arrays to support this setup. When I took over the client it was costing £7,000 a year in service callouts alone. 

The thing that really worries me about this kind of setup is that it's not really meant to be used unless you have fallback hardware. If your only domain controller goes down you are basically dead in the water. Not a problem for corporates with server farms, but for a small site having to keep spare equipment is a lot of money tied up. Plus the spare equipment is no use unless it's kept patched and updated to the same level as the live box, and tested regularly. So, most of them just hope it never goes down.
 
When I tell them you don't actually NEED all this crap on three-user site, they will reply, "But it's what the Exxon office down the road uses.." 

-Er yes, but that has 1,000 users, and an onsite IT team to manage the stuff. Different ballpark, different methodology. 

[bd139]

TBF that's going out of the window now. Everyone uses Office 365 and Azure AD for that stuff.

If your DC goes down you're fine still usually. Kerberos tokens work offline for a while.

[coppercone2]

I think thats meant as a bootleg countermeasure to long runs of non insulated metal pipes where you crank it a few degrees on cold nights so you dont need to wait a long time to wash your hands at 3am when you go to the bathroom.

The proper solution would be insulation and a extra heater but this is probobly cheaper. Also its so small you dont wanna tune

[Berni]

Long runs of hot water do need circulating flow to keep warm. There is not a whole lot of water volume in a given section of pipe compared to the surface area. So insulating a pipe well enough to stay warm for hours would mean so much insulation that a little water pipe would end up as thick as beer keg.

So it ends up easier to simply run an extra pipe from the faucet back to the hot water tank to flush the cold water back to the tank to heat it up again. You do spend some extra energy heating the pipe run, but you also save water by not having to run the faucet for a long time to flush the cold water out of the pipe. A pipe going to the other end of the house can hold a lot of cold water.

[CatalinaWOW]

Another reason is legislative. Ceiling fans in the US have a mandated power limiter to control an apparently rampant problem of fires due to people plugging high wattage lamps into them.  A fuse would seem to be the answer, but not allowed, apparently because the same nitwits can install a higher value fuse.

[james_s]

Another reason is legislative. Ceiling fans in the US have a mandated power limiter to control an apparently rampant problem of fires due to people plugging high wattage lamps into them.  A fuse would seem to be the answer, but not allowed, apparently because the same nitwits can install a higher value fuse.

That's strange, I hadn't heard that but somehow I'm not surprised. The problem is that the more you try to idiot-proof something, the better the idiots it attracts. If a person can't follow the max wattage warning there's little saving them. The same issue results in modern versions of the classic bedroom and bathroom fixtures having long stems to move the bulbs out further from the wall or ceiling which makes the fixture look awkward. It would take an absurdly high wattage bulb to set sheetrock on fire and these days I wouldn't expect many people to use incandescent bulbs in the first place.

[james_s]

It's also entirely possible that a small OTP microcontroller will actually be cheaper than a 555 or more traditional logic IC. I try to avoid programmable parts when not needed for the inverse of the point above, I want a person to be able to duplicate my projects down the road, and I want to be able to work on them even if I lose the documentation I had made. I remember an article somewhere that was pushing the idea of using 8 pin microcontrollers in place of 555 timers and he had a valid point. The microcontroller he was using was about the same price as a 555, and needed very few if any external components to do the task. No need to keep a selection of timing capacitors and resistors around, just adjust the code accordingly.

[bd139]

Ths is true. If you look at the PIC10F320 for example there is an absolutely insane amount of possibility in a SOT-23 / DFN package. Plus you can buy them preprogrammed.

[Gyro]

Being doubtful of the claims that the same SOT-23 micros were used in greetings cards and flickering LED tealights, I took apart a number of different ones that my wife was throwing out. Attached to a small piezo sounder, most produced a very PWM sounding white noise but one did indeed play a sweet little Chinese tune.

As one of my old managers once told me, there's no credit in designing components in a project to be re-usable. The credit comes for actually re-using something!

[ogden]

As one of my old managers once told me, there's no credit in designing components in a project to be re-usable. The credit comes for actually re-using something!

Reuseability is chicken and egg problem. You may want to reuse something from old project but in case it is trash - you better don't even try. On the other hand if you do not plan reuseability - you will not get it. No wonder somebody is giving credits for actually re-using something

[james_s]

I've reused lots of parts, especially when I was younger and had more free time and less money. I have a small 12V bench power supply I built when I was about 12 that I've rebuilt 2 or 3 times using the same case, transformer and rectifier. I frequently pull interesting parts from old junk and build something around them. It does suck when it's a one-off part though and you manage to kill it after building something to use it.

[Mr. Scram]

TBF that's going out of the window now. Everyone uses Office 365 and Azure AD for that stuff.

If your DC goes down you're fine still usually. Kerberos tokens work offline for a while.

Office 365 and Azure would be another example of adding complexity to save it elsewhere. It looks good on the tin, but people are finding out about the real life drawbacks more and more.

[bd139]

Everything is a trade off. For a business it's about right. Although office 364 is more appropriate.

I don't use either myself for ref.

[Mr. Scram]

Everything is a trade off. For a business it's about right. Although office 364 is more appropriate.

I don't use either myself for ref.

I can be a suitable solution for certain businesses, but unfortunately it's crammed down people's throats as the only solution by Microsoft and friends. The buzzword hungry managerial type is all to keen to latch onto the latest fad for fear of missing out. As long as you go with the flow and occasionally present a shiny new trinket to the C-levels to prove you're doing something your position is safe. Making a well informed decision to not go with buzzword technology is posing a personal risk. Few periode are capable enough to make that assessment and even fewer actually dare to do so. Nobody gets fired for buying IBM, but that doesn't mean IBM is the suitable solution.

[David Hess]

I would include Window 7 and later which deliberately removed some functions to force consumer choice in other directions and have worse human factors engineering for no discernible reason other than poor design.

I see a lot of just dumb interface changes with the recent GMC shifters being a great example.  What did GMC gain by removing haptic feedback of the older simpler design other than lawsuits?  Modern laptop chiclet keyboards are another; do the younger generations even use touch typing or is that an obsolete skill?  Maybe products like this are designed to stifle productivity and encourage passive media consumption.

What I am getting at is that increased complexity should not compromise good human factors engineering.

[bd139]

Everything is a trade off. For a business it's about right. Although office 364 is more appropriate.

I don't use either myself for ref.

I can be a suitable solution for certain businesses, but unfortunately it's crammed down people's throats as the only solution by Microsoft and friends. The buzzword hungry managerial type is all to keen to latch onto the latest fad for fear of missing out. As long as you go with the flow and occasionally present a shiny new trinket to the C-levels to prove you're doing something your position is safe. Making a well informed decision to not go with buzzword technology is posing a personal risk. Few periode are capable enough to make that assessment and even fewer actually dare to do so. Nobody gets fired for buying IBM, but that doesn't mean IBM is the suitable solution.

That's not really how that sort of stuff works though. It's actually pretty much perfect for most businesses. It covers their comms requirements for the lowest TCO and is common enough that staff already know it or training is easy and cost effective to procure. It's not a fad either. Realistically for a 50 seat SME on-site is going to cost you £70k a year when you include human wall clock time, kit, hardware refresh, licenses, DR planning and equipment. O365 is around £20k for the same end game. A two man band it makes sense as wall as that's £20 a month for two users self-admin that a monkey could do.

No one got fired for buying the right tools for the job.

However this is not an argument against complexity. Some problem domains are complex because they need to be and some aren't. When you start looking at centralised or well managed IT infrastructure complexity is absolutely inevitable so subcontracting that complexity out is a good business decision if you know what the trade-offs are.

I would include Window 7 and later which deliberately removed some functions to force consumer choice in other directions and have worse human factors engineering for no discernible reason other than poor design.

I see a lot of just dumb interface changes with the recent GMC shifters being a great example.  What did GMC gain by removing haptic feedback of the older simpler design other than lawsuits?  Modern laptop chiclet keyboards are another; do the younger generations even use touch typing or is that an obsolete skill?  Maybe products like this are designed to stifle productivity and encourage passive media consumption.

What I am getting at is that increased complexity should not compromise good human factors engineering.

To be fair with windows 10 they are sort of going in reverse again now. It's just a window manager for yout applications really. No one gives a shit about the crap they attached to it even if they blog about it ten times a day. It doesn't even get in the way any more.

[tooki]

Another reason is legislative. Ceiling fans in the US have a mandated power limiter to control an apparently rampant problem of fires due to people plugging high wattage lamps into them.  A fuse would seem to be the answer, but not allowed, apparently because the same nitwits can install a higher value fuse.

Not because of fires, simply for energy savings: https://www.modernfanoutlet.com/blog/the-energy-protection-act-and-its-effect-on-todays-ceiling-fans.html

[David Hess]

To be fair with windows 10 they are sort of going in reverse again now. It's just a window manager for yout applications really. No one gives a shit about the crap they attached to it even if they blog about it ten times a day. It doesn't even get in the way any more.

The interface functions they removed are still removed and Microsoft doubled down by giving stupid reasons.

We cannot have a free disk space display because users were suffering from free space anxiety?  Really?

Computers and networks and storage systems gets faster yet APIs are removed to prevent excessive disk thrashing with SSDs and network traffic?  What?

I don't believe it.  I think Microsoft deliberately crippled Windows 7 through 10 to drive users to an alternative Microsoft OS and hardware environment over which they could extract greater rents.  I also think it will fail miserably and ultimately result in the dissolution of Microsoft and likely Intel who should dump them.

[Berni]

In my opinion Windows 7 is the best OS that Microsoft has made so far. Its the OS that made the modernized features of Vista actually work. There have been massive under the hood changes from the aging Win XP that was sitting on a mountain of legacy functionaly. Sure there are a few missteps along the way but most of the new changes are actually good.

However Windows 8 and Windows 10...those are the train wreck. Microsoft was ridding high on the success of Win 7 and decided on the bold move to overhaul the entire UI to be optimized for touch since tablets just became a thing and Microsoft wanted a piece of that pie (And they tried really hard...and failed just as hard). Then Windows 10 was a big backpedal on the UI change but they clearly still haven't fired the graphics designers from 8 so it still looks like oversimplified shit. The UI once again had a major overhaul to make it more win 7 like but simpler and sleek to pick up some of that Apple swag... and telemetry... lots of it(guess they had to make up the financial loss of win 8 by selling your data). The new simplified user interface means all the useful 'power user buttons' are hidden away because the average user can't be trusted with them and could mess up the computer.

The last part is probably the biggest issue with the new versions of windows. Its made for the average PC user, the one that uses a PC to browse facebook and occasionally write a word document and print it, the one that fills up the hard drive and then calls you with "My PC is saying its out space when i try to do X, can you fix it?" only to find a full C drive and a D drive that doesn't even have a single file. Just imagine how stupid an average PC user is....now realize that 50% of PC users are even stupider than that. These are the people Microsoft is making a OS for.

[Mr. Scram]

That's not really how that sort of stuff works though. It's actually pretty much perfect for most businesses. It covers their comms requirements for the lowest TCO and is common enough that staff already know it or training is easy and cost effective to procure. It's not a fad either. Realistically for a 50 seat SME on-site is going to cost you £70k a year when you include human wall clock time, kit, hardware refresh, licenses, DR planning and equipment. O365 is around £20k for the same end game. A two man band it makes sense as wall as that's £20 a month for two users self-admin that a monkey could do.

No one got fired for buying the right tools for the job.

However this is not an argument against complexity. Some problem domains are complex because they need to be and some aren't. When you start looking at centralised or well managed IT infrastructure complexity is absolutely inevitable so subcontracting that complexity out is a good business decision if you know what the trade-offs are.


To be fair with windows 10 they are sort of going in reverse again now. It's just a window manager for yout applications really. No one gives a shit about the crap they attached to it even if they blog about it ten times a day. It doesn't even get in the way any more.

Sure, that's the sales pitch. Then you see real life scenarios where before the move to the cloud two administrators were required and after the move three turn out to be needed to keeps things afloat. Or things continuously breaking in more customized environments due to Microsoft running continuous updates, forcing companies either into more standard environments not always ideal for their purposes or into a more intensive and costly development cycle to continually unbreak things. That's TCO not always taken into account up front. Cloud infrastructure is a wonderful tool to have in the toolbox, but as soon as you start throwing other tools out things start going wrong.

[Buriedcode]

Apologies if this isn't quite what the OP was referring to.

I'm unsure if the OP was referring to how we - the forum members - design stuff, or commenting on existing products?  It also depends on where you're looking, I regularly browse hackaday, which is often full of projects that use raspberry pi's to do something a 555 can do - but then add a webserver because, well, they can.  But those are one-off personal pet projects and it seems this thread is about consumer products.

I too have noticed an increase in complexity but... only in the higher-end (= more expensive) products.  I suspect this is mostly marketing influencing engineering decisions rather than any utilitarian approach where costs are to be kept at a minimum to achieve the job and nothing more.  Products are rarely designed for a specific purpose, but often for a price point.  To justify the higher cost, there has to be more (or "better") functionality, and this is where features are bolted on just so they can be printed on the box, or mentioned ad-nauseam in the ads.  Dyson I'm looking at you - they can charge so much for their products they can afford to grossly over engineer the electronics and that means they can make laughable claims in their ads which... plays towards their customer base who "loves gadgets".

So these days we have a much broader range of products, with a broader price range.  The absolute top-end being somewhat laughable - like Juicero - that do have a market, albeit a small one.  The low-end being what many members here complain about "chinese crap" where it is unclear just how they manage to achieve the functionality with such low cost parts/manufacturing.  These are the extreme's with the middle ground being the most common, and products must navigate this - often adding/removing features purely to set the price point, because its the price that determines what people buy, not the functionality - because there are so many products that "do the job".

For personal projects, or even small runs, the "over kill" thing, does bug me, but I think I go too far the other way - often I will try and make something as efficient as possible, using logic gates for simple timers, and moving up in complexity if I need it, sometimes trying to squeeze out functionality from an 8-bit micro when a cortex m0 could do it without breaking a sweat. This generally means I spend way longer designing something that I should, honestly, throwing an Arduino at something that needs a pulse train isn't such a bad thing. 

But that might be cause I'm an electronics guy. I started with electronics, so I started simple and throughout my career learned more complex systems.  Others may have started being software guys - where a PC's resources aren't really that much of a restriction so one doesn't have to worry about a kilobyte array, or computational speed.  These folks started off unrestricted, with huge hardware resources at their disposal, so perhaps it is further in the back of their mind when designing electronics.  I'm not suggesting they poorly implement things, just that, they might start off using a very complicated system, and stripping it down/streamlining it to reduce costs, where-as hardware guys might start the other way, with simple systems, and adding on or upgrading as-and-when it is required.   

If there isn't sufficient pressure to reduce complexity, like power consumption for longer battery life, reduction in size for wearables/portability, some personal projects, and even products, might remain more or less on the hardware they were prototyped on.  That could be a beaglebone, raspberry pi, SBC, some poor 32-bit micro running python.  And if one uses hardware that is hardly taxed at all, well.... we have plenty of room for extra features.  Again, this can be a good thing, and sometimes means one finds a feature incredibly useful that was only added for shits'n'giggles.  But sometimes it gets in the way of the original intended purpose.

Lastly, there is the very simple idea that more features/more complex = "better".  Adding more bells and whistles to a product invariably makes it look more expensive, which again drives us consumers more than we would like to admit.  Few people are truely utilitarian, as much as we would like to thing as much, although engineers more than most!

Examples?  Hmm I think many internet-of-things have been mentioned.  I'll forgo ranting about marketing wank (I do it too often in this forum).

[bd139]

To be fair with windows 10 they are sort of going in reverse again now. It's just a window manager for yout applications really. No one gives a shit about the crap they attached to it even if they blog about it ten times a day. It doesn't even get in the way any more.

The interface functions they removed are still removed and Microsoft doubled down by giving stupid reasons.

We cannot have a free disk space display because users were suffering from free space anxiety?  Really?

Computers and networks and storage systems gets faster yet APIs are removed to prevent excessive disk thrashing with SSDs and network traffic?  What?

I don't believe it.  I think Microsoft deliberately crippled Windows 7 through 10 to drive users to an alternative Microsoft OS and hardware environment over which they could extract greater rents.  I also think it will fail miserably and ultimately result in the dissolution of Microsoft and likely Intel who should dump them.

Free disk space display? Same as vista.



Which APIs have been removed? I know of none. Deprecated yes but removed, no. I'm running stuff compiled for 32-bit NT4 on my windows 10 build. I've got a client running VB6 COM and ASP stuff on Windows Server 2016...

Microsoft don't want windows any more. That's what you're seeing. Windows is mindshare only so the surface area is decreasing. The money is in Azure, Office 365, enterprise stuff.

Sure, that's the sales pitch. Then you see real life scenarios where before the move to the cloud two administrators were required and after the move three turn out to be needed to keeps things afloat. Or things continuously breaking in more customized environments due to Microsoft running continuous updates, forcing companies either into more standard environments not always ideal for their purposes or into a more intensive and costly development cycle to continually unbreak things. That's TCO not always taken into account up front. Cloud infrastructure is a wonderful tool to have in the toolbox, but as soon as you start throwing other tools out things start going wrong.

These things continually happen in any IT deployment. Less so in the cloud. Believe me I have spent the last decade unfucking exactly those problems. I watched a whole site go down because someone super clever pushed new desktop images out to 200 workstations with the wrong graphics card driver.

The real problem is idiots and cretins and there are a hell of a lot of them in the IT industry. The cloud providers normalise them away to nothing.

[james_s]

IMHO Windows 7 is the pinnacle of Microsoft OS development. In later versions each step forward comes with even more steps back. They stripped the UI down to a wireframe and then came up with stupid reasons to spin it. It is so much less flexible, less configurable and just downright ugly. It has taken on the feel of 20 year old open source stuff, that same sort of half baked half assed crustiness. Linux looks much nicer now, less due to Linux improving as due to windows regressing.

[bd139]

Gnome 3 is ironically half assed crustiness personified. Someone tried to copy Apple but they had a head injury while on the bong at the same time and just lost it half way through.

It’s all shit basically.

[jmelson]

Gnome 3 is ironically half assed crustiness personified. Someone tried to copy Apple but they had a head injury while on the bong at the same time and just lost it half way through.

It’s all shit basically.

You should still be able to revert to Gnome Classic, which isn't too bad.  You then have to manually edit the XML to make the borders more than one pixel wide so they are grabbable, but I know how to do that.

Jon

[bd139]

Yeah gnome 2 was ok. That was the peak there.  I use windows 10 now and PuTTY though.

[tggzzz]

Yeah gnome 2 was ok. That was the peak there.  I use windows 10 now and PuTTY though.

The last two times I tried to put a Windows on a machine, Microsoft wouldn't let me.

So it is linux, with a decently small fast simple usable old-fashioned GUI: Xfce. Like the WinXP era GUIs

[bd139]

I found xfce too buggy. One of the problems was the WM borders weren't large enough on the one theme which didn't grate on me. They required ridiculous pixel level precision. This is a massive problem when you're running a high HiDPI panel and mostly a nipple mouse on a thinkpad. No matter what futzing I did with GTK settings or xfce settings would it behave sensibly. Windows - ugh it's too small, scale up to 125%. Done! Edit: also the window manager in windows 10 is pretty good. Does virtual desktops and everything: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2014/10/03/keyboard-shortcuts-in-the-windows-10-technical-preview/

I've never had windows not take to a PC. Apart from one old Compaq pro 5000 that refused to boot NT 3.51 and that turned out to be because I was using the wrong NT HAL and SCSI drivers.

[IDEngineer]

IMHO Windows 7 is the pinnacle of Microsoft OS development.

1000% agree with this statement on multiple levels. Win7 is the latest version of Windows that I run on any machine that I personally use. To the point that when I needed to replace my laptop last year, I took the time to research the most optimized business laptop that has native Win7 drivers available from the vendor's website. I simply would not settle for a Win10 or (OMFG) Win8 environment, period.

In case anyone cares, I ended up with a brand new Lenovo X260. Nice fast i7 quad-core CPU, 16GB RAM, huge M.2 SSD, native Win7 Professional, all the actual dongle-free ports that Engineers need (GB Ethernet, multiple charging USB3, HDMI, audio in/out, etc.), about three pounds, HD screen as bright as the sun for outdoor use. The two best features (besides Win7) are its docking station and - wait for it - DUAL batteries. One internal, one external. With the native battery I get 16+ hours of normal use; with the hi-cap battery I also bought, I get 24+ hours. Not a typo. I've actually gone on multi-day business trips where I've used it on the flights there and back, and all day in business meetings, and never charged it. The internal battery means you can swap batteries while the machine is running even without AC power. Genius! My son makes fun of its square, clunky appearance but I'm getting real work done, not trying to win an award for "personal style".

By the way, while researching laptops I found there is a RAGING market for pre-Win8 machines. Win7 machines actually command a premium, and there are vendors out there who specialize in them and round up as much new-in-box stock as they can, knowing there is demand for them. So I am definitely not alone.

The day will come when I have to abandon Win7, and I'm hoping that by then Microsoft will have repented of its sins and offer a reasonable desktop OS again. Yeah, I know.

[bd139]

Got dual batteries in my T440. Totally agree with that. I get 12 hours solid which means I don't have to carry a charger but this thing is a clunker compared to that X260.

This is highly recommended for people stuck on windows 7 (which is incidentally a turkey now as MSFT can't and won't patch all the holes in it): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0091816971/

[james_s]

My Lenovo x250 has dual batteries too, it's a nice feature, almost 12 hours of real world use if I need it.

I would argue that Win8 awful as it is out of the box, is arguably superior to Win10. You can add third party tools to get a proper start menu and unlike 10 it doesn't have forced updates that constantly revert things I have customized, uninstall programs without asking, set defaults back to the garbage bundled "apps" or trying SO pathetically hard to push me toward using other Microsoft services. I occasionally have to deal with Win10 and it feels so incredibly user-hostile that I don't know how some people manage to deal with it. Every time I go to use a computer with it I have to wait a while for a bunch of updates I didn't ask for to install. The interface is so hideous with acres of useless white space and gigantic childish widgets and so much bland harsh whiteness while offering less ability than ever to customize this. Bugs everywhere and instead of fixing those they continue to add features nobody asked for while pretending to listen and steadfastly refusing to add features people are asking for.

My work pc is a Mac now. I was never a Mac guy but they asked me if I wanted a Win10 laptop or a MacBook and I thought the mac couldn't possibly be worse. It has its own set of flaws but overall I have been very happy. The UI is easy on the eyes and my uptime is currently 161 days without having to reboot for a stupid update, it's a wonderful thing having an operating system that just does what it's supposed to do, lets me run the software I need and stays out of my way.

[tggzzz]

I found xfce too buggy. One of the problems was the WM borders weren't large enough on the one theme which didn't grate on me. They required ridiculous pixel level precision. This is a massive problem when you're running a high HiDPI panel and mostly a nipple mouse on a thinkpad. No matter what futzing I did with GTK settings or xfce settings would it behave sensibly. Windows - ugh it's too small, scale up to 125%. Done! Edit: also the window manager in windows 10 is pretty good. Does virtual desktops and everything: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2014/10/03/keyboard-shortcuts-in-the-windows-10-technical-preview/

I've never had windows not take to a PC. Apart from one old Compaq pro 5000 that refused to boot NT 3.51 and that turned out to be because I was using the wrong NT HAL and SCSI drivers.

Without a mouse, all GUis are subpoptimal. Xfce is no worse than others in that respect.

MS (how apt) refused to allow me to reinstall WinXP on a laptop after a disk crash. I replaced the disc, used a CD-ROM and the magic number on the base of the laptop. It installed OK then on first reboot I was dumped into a DOS level screen stating that MS wasn't going to allow the boot to continue. MS said it was Samsung's responsibility, Samsung said it was an MS problem. Only solution would be to buy another disk with WinXP already installed.

So i tried to buyWin7 but MS wouldn't let me do that either. No, I wasn't going to buy Win8!

[Mr. Scram]

Got dual batteries in my T440. Totally agree with that. I get 12 hours solid which means I don't have to carry a charger but this thing is a clunker compared to that X260.

This is highly recommended for people stuck on windows 7 (which is incidentally a turkey now as MSFT can't and won't patch all the holes in it): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0091816971/

You don't need dual batteries, you need big ones! "I like big batts and I cannot lie.."

[james_s]

Dual batteries has one very significant advantage, even if the second battery is a small built in one. You can hot swap the other battery without shutting down, not a feature that everyone needs but if you do need to do a lot of work away from power it's really nice to have.

[Mr. Scram]

Dual batteries has one very significant advantage, even if the second battery is a small built in one. You can hot swap the other battery without shutting down, not a feature that everyone needs but if you do need to do a lot of work away from power it's really nice to have.

You can hook the laptop up to power for that. There are situations imaginable where that's not possible, but those seem to be increasingly rare.

[james_s]

Quite a few people work on airplanes, that was the reason I wanted dual batteries, my previous laptops wouldn't last through a full flight. Only very recently have seatback power sockets started to become common and they are still far from universal. I've been in plenty of other situations where plugging into power was not convenient or not an option. It's not a feature everyone needs but it's one I find very convenient to have.

[Berni]

I sadly have to deal with Windows 10 on my work machine.

They ran out of Win7 licenses but they got some Win 8 licenses with some new PCs. Back then i had used some friends laptops with Win8 and i hated it so i used the free Win10 upgrade offer. Surely Microsoft has learned something by now from there Win8 flop. I'm now counting 3 years of use on this Win 10 installation and have learned to cope with it but id still rather have Win 7 like all my personal machines.

I guess you do get used to the ugly UI. I had to do a bunch of registry hacks and command line messing about in order to nuke a lot of the annoying features. Updates i have force disabled trough various methods because they are horrible. Not only do updates every so often break something, introduce bugs or reset your settings but they also force restart your machine randomly. If it sees the machine is idle or sitting in sleep overnight it will go and do the update and reboot. If any program refuses to close gracefully it just terminates it and continues on. At one point this caused me a major loss of 1 days worth of work because i forgot to save and it updated overnight. Then i hear news that some updates have deleted entire Document folders for some users, or locked them out of there own machines, started bluecsreening on boot etc.

And on top of that the search functionality that works so well in Win7 is still broken in Win10 after 3 years. Sometimes it simply says no results, but then i go look for thing i typed in and its right there in the start menu. Any * ? characters are simply discarded rather than to do what they should in search.

In my 3 years of using Win 10 i have found just 2 features i like. Ability to have start menu on multiple monitors and that there is a built in app for opening 3D models and editing them. That's it, all else was a step backwards.

[bd139]

Dual batteries has one very significant advantage, even if the second battery is a small built in one. You can hot swap the other battery without shutting down, not a feature that everyone needs but if you do need to do a lot of work away from power it's really nice to have.

Exactly that. I take two 76Wh batteries out with me. That means I can hammer the shit out of the CPU all day if I need to. I do a lot of work on client sites and it’s a PITA finding a socket sometimes.

[David Hess]

Free disk space display? Same as vista.

Yes, you have to use extra effort to find the free space where before it was continuous displayed in the status line hence the unnecessary complexity.  Why allow the user to immediately see what they need with no effort when multiple interactions can be required?

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/c98ecee9-9d9a-463d-928d-30804c1f2d40/drive-quotfree-spacequot-is-missing-in-windows-explorer-why?forum=w7itproui

Which APIs have been removed? I know of none. Deprecated yes but removed, no. I'm running stuff compiled for 32-bit NT4 on my windows 10 build. I've got a client running VB6 COM and ASP stuff on Windows Server 2016...

The IColumnProvider shell extension API was removed.  At one point I found a comment from Microsoft which stated that they removed it to prevent network congestion (!) but I suspect it was removed to cripple third party utilities which were providing functionality that Microsoft wanted to extract rents on by forcing users to other systems.

[jackthomson41]

Nothing's better than Putty when it comes to Windows or Embedded Systems 

[IDEngineer]

Quite a few people work on airplanes, that was the reason I wanted dual batteries, my previous laptops wouldn't last through a full flight.

Indeed - I design a lot of sensors for the marine industry. AC outlets are exceedingly rare on most watercraft too. And in a more general sense, anyone who works "in the field", even if it's only for testing or data capture, has an interest in both longevity and the ability to swap batteries. Again, not critical for everyone but very helpful in many situations. Lenovo seems to recognize that market and builds products for it.

[bd139]

Free disk space display? Same as vista.

Yes, you have to use extra effort to find the free space where before it was continuous displayed in the status line hence the unnecessary complexity.  Why allow the user to immediately see what they need with no effort when multiple interactions can be required?

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/c98ecee9-9d9a-463d-928d-30804c1f2d40/drive-quotfree-spacequot-is-missing-in-windows-explorer-why?forum=w7itproui

Which APIs have been removed? I know of none. Deprecated yes but removed, no. I'm running stuff compiled for 32-bit NT4 on my windows 10 build. I've got a client running VB6 COM and ASP stuff on Windows Server 2016...

The IColumnProvider shell extension API was removed.  At one point I found a comment from Microsoft which stated that they removed it to prevent network congestion (!) but I suspect it was removed to cripple third party utilities which were providing functionality that Microsoft wanted to extract rents on by forcing users to other systems.

Ah yes. IColumnProvider. That was likely removed for exactly the reason they said it was. A lot of terrible third party utilities were doing a call on the disk for each row including horrid stuff like parsing files by seeking. I saw a corporate deployment for a DMS cause an outage due to that POS. Basically O(wtf) scalability. Hitting PgDn in explorer a few times could hammer SMB pretty hard.

This was 100% legitimate.

Edit: I’ve never run out of disk space also.

[james_s]

Ah, search, I knew there was another gripe I was forgetting. The search in Win10 is absolutely hopeless, it will refuse to find files that are right there on that PC and then insist on searching the web! WTF? That has been useful to me exactly zero times, if I want to search the web I know how to open a browser! The Win7 search is much better but even that is crap compared to the search that XP, Win2k and even Win9x had. I have a really hard time understanding how they managed to screw up Search, such a basic and fundamental feature that had been perfected decades ago. I generally use the third party program "Everything" but it's a pain to have to use 3rd party stuff just to perform a basic function that has long been a built in feature of the OS.

[bd139]

I don’t use search. I am from the old days where you had to put stuff in sensible places.

[Berni]

Ah, search, I knew there was another gripe I was forgetting. The search in Win10 is absolutely hopeless, it will refuse to find files that are right there on that PC and then insist on searching the web! WTF? That has been useful to me exactly zero times, if I want to search the web I know how to open a browser! The Win7 search is much better but even that is crap compared to the search that XP, Win2k and even Win9x had. I have a really hard time understanding how they managed to screw up Search, such a basic and fundamental feature that had been perfected decades ago. I generally use the third party program "Everything" but it's a pain to have to use 3rd party stuff just to perform a basic function that has long been a built in feature of the OS.

Yep that's still one of my biggest gripes about Win 10. How the hell do you screw up a simple search feature that badly when it worked perfectly in Win 7.

Its become my main way of launching apps just because of how fast it is. For example if i want notepad then during the use of any other app i just hit the flowing keys:
[Win key] N O T [Enter key]
Want MS Word instead? Sure, just hit:
[Win key] W O [Enter key]
Or maybe Altium designer? Alright just do:
[Win key] A L T [Enter key]

No need to even touch the mouse, just hit <5 keyboard keys to launch almost any installed program in 1 second. If the search term doesn't get any matches within any start menu items it goes on to search trough things like control panel items if still not then it searched trough recently open files.

For example i want to create a new partition with the built in partition manager in the control panel. I could go open the control panel and look for it, but instead i can do this:
[Win key] P A R T
And suddenly Win7 offers me the number 1 search result as being "Create and format disk partitions", hit enter and you are in. Need device manager? Just start typing "device man" and hit enter. Gets you to any app or any built in OS feature faster than any point and click GUI could.

[ogden]

Its become my main way of launching apps just because of how fast it is. For example if i want notepad then during the use of any other app i just hit the flowing keys:
[Win key] N O T [Enter key]

In win10 I hit [ctrl+esc] n o t [enter]. The same with word - it works. Windows key is worst thing MS introduced, not Win10

[Berni]

Well yes it still works in Win 10, but so many times it simply would not find stuff.

For example i wanted a program called "BalenaEtcher" its a nice little image to SD card burning utility that i use a lot for RaspberryPi stuff. I kept typing in "etcher" and it never found anything while on a coworkers Win 7 machine it shows right up.

Then there are cases where typing in too much makes it loose results. I forgot the actual search term where i discovered it went something like this:
s = Skype
sp = Speech recognition
spe = SpeedFan
spee = SpeedFan
speed = SpeedFan
speedc = No results
speedca = SpeedCalc
speedcal = SpeedCalc
speedcalc = No results

Someone please explain how that makes any sense. This never happens on Win 7 but it seams to happen a lot with Win 10

[Buriedcode]

Re: windows 10 searches. Maybe indexing the drives you wish to search will help. I noticed it would do a bing search, when normally I would just hit the windows key, type the first say, five characters of a filename, enter and it would open it.  Turns out an update turned off indexing.  Now it works rather well. 

Granted, seems to be slower for actual files than programs (I have to wait about a second) but it works. It does seem to be significantly faster for files in "documents" and user folders, which is understandable.

[David Hess]

Ah yes. IColumnProvider. That was likely removed for exactly the reason they said it was. A lot of terrible third party utilities were doing a call on the disk for each row including horrid stuff like parsing files by seeking. I saw a corporate deployment for a DMS cause an outage due to that POS. Basically O(wtf) scalability. Hitting PgDn in explorer a few times could hammer SMB pretty hard.

This was 100% legitimate.

So the solution was to remove it for everybody instead of making it enterprise configurable while coincidentally developing a database file system which provides the same functionality?  I don't believe them for an instant.  Microsoft had motive, means, and opportunity.

The database file system of course was a failure and never released.

[IDEngineer]

crap compared to the search that XP, Win2k and even Win9x had. I have a really hard time understanding how they managed to screw up Search, such a basic and fundamental feature that had been perfected decades ago.

While we're pointing out stupidity in user interfaces... the changes in the Windows UI were probably approved by the same morons that completely changed the user interface of Office a few revs back. Microsoft had what, 95% of the office suite market? A worldwide installed base of users trained and familiar with the the UI on Word, Excel, etc. Why take a chance on that? When you completely change a successful, well accepted user interface it's just as easy to take a look at competitors as the "new" version of an old program... they're both completely new and foreign. Whereas minor tweaks to an existing, well known interface keeps those users happy and keeps those roving eyes from straying.

At least with Win8's radical UI change they can blame their (failed) theory of standardizing the UI across desktop and mobile platforms. With Office, there was no such rationale. Just change for change's sake. I understand the concept of periodic upgrades to extract more revenue from existing customers, but this is tantamount to the automobile industry rearranging the pedals so the gas is on the far left, the clutch is on the far right, the brakes are operated with your left hand, and the turn signals are controlled by your knee. In the end they're all the same functions, but you've abandoned all existing familiarity and training... for what?!?

[ogden]

Granted, seems to be slower for actual files than programs (I have to wait about a second) but it works.

That's why I always split system/data volumes, run indexing only on system volume. As @bd139 said - I come from old days when you had to organize stuff to be able to find it later.

[james_s]

I don’t use search. I am from the old days where you had to put stuff in sensible places.

Either your memory is much better than mine, or you have a lot less stuff on your PC. I have >300,000 files on my PC, programs, documents, datasheets, sourcecode, photos, music, videos, etc. I try to keep it reasonably organized but there's no way I can locate something faster than a decent search. I use search extensively.

That doesn't change the fact that whether you personally use it or not, it is absolutely inexcusible for a modern operating system to not have a robust and effective Search function, it is a feature that was perfected decades ago.

[Rick Law]

Dual batteries has one very significant advantage, even if the second battery is a small built in one. You can hot swap the other battery without shutting down, not a feature that everyone needs but if you do need to do a lot of work away from power it's really nice to have.

You can hook the laptop up to power for that. There are situations imaginable where that's not possible, but those seem to be increasingly rare.

Not when you don't have an outlet near by such as on a flight or on a train.  (I know this point has been raised already, but just want to add this as a "vote of agreement.")

My old Fujitsu (P7010) has a DVD bay that can take a second battery.  Long after it aged and reduced to less than 1 hour run time, I still took it with on long trips (along with a two or three regular batteries) just so main batteries can be changed without too much interruption to my work.

[Mr. Scram]

Not when you don't have an outlet near by such as on a flight or on a train.  (I know this point has been raised already, but just want to add this as a "vote of agreement.")

My old Fujitsu (P7010) has a DVD bay that can take a second battery.  Long after it aged and reduced to less than 1 hour run time, I still took it with on long trips (along with a two or three regular batteries) just so main batteries can be changed without too much interruption to my work.

Still, the difference becomes fairly inconsequential when it's carrying a large battery versus carrying many. I can see how there could be a difference, though.

[Rick Law]

crap compared to the search that XP, Win2k and even Win9x had. I have a really hard time understanding how they managed to screw up Search, such a basic and fundamental feature that had been perfected decades ago.

While we're pointing out stupidity in user interfaces... the changes in the Windows UI were probably approved by the same morons that completely changed the user interface of Office a few revs back. Microsoft had what, 95% of the office suite market? A worldwide installed base of users trained and familiar with the the UI on Word, Excel, etc. Why take a chance on that? When you completely change a successful, well accepted user interface it's just as easy to take a look at competitors as the "new" version of an old program... they're both completely new and foreign. Whereas minor tweaks to an existing, well known interface keeps those users happy and keeps those roving eyes from straying.

At least with Win8's radical UI change they can blame their (failed) theory of standardizing the UI across desktop and mobile platforms. With Office, there was no such rationale. Just change for change's sake. I understand the concept of periodic upgrades to extract more revenue from existing customers, but this is tantamount to the automobile industry rearranging the pedals so the gas is on the far left, the clutch is on the far right, the brakes are operated with your left hand, and the turn signals are controlled by your knee. In the end they're all the same functions, but you've abandoned all existing familiarity and training... for what?!?

I think the path of Windows and other software/hardware from these similar industries are very much similar to movies, sequels, and remakes from an entirely different industry.  They are similar because they are facing the same problem: how do you keep the money coming in and (hopefully) at an increasing profit margin.  Predictable result occurred: trying milk it to death inevitably results in not giving creativity and quality adequate consideration.

Taking a random movie series such as Alien/Aliens...  Alien was good, Aliens was better, but then they lost their creativity and start to just redo the same thing but only worst.  It is worst because what was done was not done because it needed doing, it was done merely to make the end product look new/different.  So, the aggressiveness and/or the size of the monster (dinosaur) is always getting bigger but the movie is not getting any better.

And then there are the non-sequel retelling of the same tired old story - a reimplementation of the same idea/product without any real reason to do so (other than just so to have a new product/version).   Avatar, The Last Samurai, and Dances With Wolves are really same story.  Last Samurai was pretty good, and in my opinion, better than Dances With Wolves.  Avatar on the other hand is a retelling that show-cased what the phrase "lack of originality" means.

[IDEngineer]

Alien was good, Aliens was better, but then they lost their creativity and start to just redo the same thing but only worst.

Interesting analogy, and I agree to a point. But IMHO Alien was more of a suspense movie, while Aliens was an action movie. Slightly different genres based on the same basic premise. And I agree both were good, and that everything since has been rewarmed spittle.

Relating that back to software: If a later version is different enough (like Aliens was different from Alien), then maybe futzing with the user interface is warranted. But when it's just a remake of a remake (every other movie in the franchise, or Windows, or Office), why ALSO make it hard for users by forcing them to relearn the entire UI? You're already stealing their money for something that probably isn't a true "upgrade", isn't that enough pain to inflict?

[Tomorokoshi]

Another view regarding operating systems: Is it a tool, or is it the product?

MS seems to regard Windows as the product, not the tool one uses to get other things done. UNIX is a tool. Linux seems to be a product. Windows now has too much of its own personality that it imposes upon the process of using it as the tool to enable other work. The distinction between OS and application, OS and game, OS and browser is blurred.

The proclaimed benefit of interoperability results in a lack of orthogonality, as defined by Brooks in his discussions on computer design.

I don't know what the answer is. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Linux... all have their heavy imposition of a walled patch of weeds on the computer environment.

[madires]

Linux != linux distribution!

[Rick Law]

Alien was good, Aliens was better, but then they lost their creativity and start to just redo the same thing but only worst.

Interesting analogy, and I agree to a point. But IMHO Alien was more of a suspense movie, while Aliens was an action movie. Slightly different genres based on the same basic premise. And I agree both were good, and that everything since has been rewarmed spittle.

Relating that back to software: If a later version is different enough (like Aliens was different from Alien), then maybe futzing with the user interface is warranted. But when it's just a remake of a remake (every other movie in the franchise, or Windows, or Office), why ALSO make it hard for users by forcing them to relearn the entire UI? You're already stealing their money for something that probably isn't a true "upgrade", isn't that enough pain to inflict?

I agree with your points about alien v aliens.  That would be kind of like the difference between WinXP and Server 2003.  Basic same core but with the mix of focus shifted from on aspect to an other - action vs suspense for Alien/Aliens and for WinXP/Server2003 single-user focused vs multi-user non-gui operations focused.

I am also in agreement with you points regarding the forced change of UI as negative change for the users.  Microsoft may have a reason behind it such as  "unifying" tablet, smartphone, PC interactions.  That I think is hopelessly stupid.  For system equipped with mouse, keyboard, and a larger screen.  In my opinion, Windows 7 and earlier with all its faults, is a far better UI than Andriod in my opinion.  Andiod is so deeply crippled by its focus on touch-screen as main/only input device that makes certain operation madnessly convoluted when using a mouse and keyboard.

[james_s]

The entire use case of a desktop or laptop PC is completely different than that of a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet. About the only overlap is a web browser. What works well on a mobile device is horrible for a desktop and vice versa. Trying to unify the experience means you get the worst of both worlds, a platform crippled by all the compromises. It works much better if you have two distinctly separate platforms, each optimized for the the sort of use they're intended for. It's good to have a bit of consistency between the two but they should not be the same. This is one thing that Apple did right. iOS and MacOS look related, but iOS doesn't try to be a desktop PC and the desktop OS doesn't try to be a smartphone.

[Mr. Scram]

The entire use case of a desktop or laptop PC is completely different than that of a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet. About the only overlap is a web browser. What works well on a mobile device is horrible for a desktop and vice versa. Trying to unify the experience means you get the worst of both worlds, a platform crippled by all the compromises. It works much better if you have two distinctly separate platforms, each optimized for the the sort of use they're intended for. It's good to have a bit of consistency between the two but they should not be the same. This is one thing that Apple did right. iOS and MacOS look related, but iOS doesn't try to be a desktop PC and the desktop OS doesn't try to be a smartphone.

Currently they've made it work fairly well, though. People love shitting on things that aren't great right away, but Microsoft does play the long game well provided they stick to it. They keep polishing their turd until it's actually good. That's exactly what they did with the Surface Pro line, which is at this point both a really nice device and still getting better with each release.

[bd139]

The pile of broken BER units in the office says otherwise. Gone back to thinkpads after about a year...

Good idea. Low quality implementation. Microsoft all over.

I suspect Microsoft would be doing much better if they hadn’t chased all the decent people off to work at google and Apple.

[David Hess]

The search in Win10 is absolutely hopeless, it will refuse to find files that are right there on that PC and then insist on searching the web! WTF? That has been useful to me exactly zero times, if I want to search the web I know how to open a browser! The Win7 search is much better but even that is crap compared to the search that XP, Win2k and even Win9x had. I have a really hard time understanding how they managed to screw up Search, such a basic and fundamental feature that had been perfected decades ago. I generally use the third party program "Everything" but it's a pain to have to use 3rd party stuff just to perform a basic function that has long been a built in feature of the OS.

I have noticed this also.  Besides missing results, it is just less capable than search on 2000 and XP.

I suspect the poor design and lack of features is driven by wanting to drive users to using cloud storage.

[IDEngineer]

The entire use case of a desktop or laptop PC is completely different than that of a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet.

Extremely well said, thank you. Perfect summation of the situation.

[IDEngineer]

Thinkpads may be good for business, but from a consumer's perspective, it's really not that good. Quality control is too bad.

Weighing in here... this is my first ThinkPad. I pretty much avoided them (and Toshiba) in the past because of the mind-numbingly stupid "eraserhead" pointing stick. Yeah, I know some people love them but it adds an unnecessary degree of abstraction to the cursor motion. A mouse or touchpad is directly correlated to the cursor position, whereas the eraserhead just sets a vector [direction + speed] and you have to time it right to land where you want. Generally this involves successively smaller iterations as you "walk it in" to the target. Why make it more complicated? Keep the user input as closely and directly associated to the output as possible.

However, when evaluating products, I try really hard to be objective. So when I made a list of requirements and started filtering through what was available that met that list, the ThinkPad X200 series shot straight to the top. I had a built-in bias against ThinkPads, and I'll admit the sexy profile of the hyper-thin offerings from HP, Dell, and others was emotionally attractive, but in an honest objective analysis the X200 series was simply the correct choice. Then it was simply a matter of determining how late in the series I could go and still have Win7 drivers downloadable from the Lenovo website: The X260. And here I am.

In ThinkPad's defense, I haven't had a single QC problem. I don't think the feel of the ThinkPad keyboard is the object of worship that so many seem to, I dislike where the discrete touchpad buttons are located (again due to that idiotic eraserhead), and the inverted locations of the Ctrl and Fn keys would be unforgivable if the BIOS didn't have the option to flip them (the fact that they have to even offer such an option should tell them something!). But even with its flaws, the X260 really delivers if what you want is an Engineer's rugged super-portable with lots of CPU power, lots of ports, lots of battery life, and sane screen resolution. YMMV.

[james_s]

Currently they've made it work fairly well, though. People love shitting on things that aren't great right away, but Microsoft does play the long game well provided they stick to it. They keep polishing their turd until it's actually good. That's exactly what they did with the Surface Pro line, which is at this point both a really nice device and still getting better with each release.

Bullshit. Not great right away? Windows 8 came out 6 years ago, they've had 6 years which is an eternity to polish that turd and the result is still crap that causes my blood pressure to rise out of frustration every time I have to work with it, and that's after 2 years of being forced to deal with Win10 daily on a laptop at a former job. The surface works ok as a niche system but the guys I know who have them use them almost exclusively as laptops. Laptops and smartphones are fundamentally different devices that are typically used in very different ways. Bolting them together will never result in an uncompromised experience because there are fundamental differences in the way the two should work. After 6 years of pushing this new touch-everywhere paradigm it is still only a niche, the Surface and similar devices are still quite rare, even living in a wealthy tech hub about 10 miles from Microsoft and working in the same industry I know exactly two people who have Surface machines, a handful with laptops that incorporate a tourchscreen of which most never use the touch part, and precisely zero desktop PCs with touch screens.

Also I'll add that I'm not shitting on the surface so much as I'm upset that as a long time Windows user with a large investment in the Windows ecosystem, the platform has been destroyed by compromise in order to fit into this new paradigm they are pushing. If they wanted to make a touch version of Windows that's fine, but they've ruined the desktop Windows experience in order to shoehorn it into touch-centric devices. Ugly UI, gigantic widgets with acres of useless whitespace, silly mobile apps, useless voice activated search toy, it's the worst and most user hostile operating system I've ever used and Windows used to be the best on the market IMO.

[bd139]

Gone back to thinkpads after about a year...

I suspect Microsoft would be doing much better if they hadn’t chased all the decent people off to work at google and Apple.

1. Thinkpads may be good for business, but from a consumer's perspective, it's really not that good. Quality control is too bad. My X1C6 had 3 screen swaps to get a perfect screen, and even this one has light bleeding strips on the edges, but I decided not to bother with a 4th return & repair.

2. Apple also has a lot of annoying things. Having an option to use ctrl as cmd would be appreciated (not remapping -- I have VMs running that depend on real ctrl key and cmd key). Also, having an option to get rid of GateKeeper once for all is appreciated. Apple releases semi-finished features too. Try to boot with eGPU attached on computers with FileVault enabled and see what happens. Try to connect to a samba share that's not available, and Finder may get stuck in retrying forever. Video games run with stuttering while both CPU and GPU are on low utilization. My significantly inferior PC runs the same game butter smooth. Trackpad gestures fail to work in OpenGL full screen mode, while shortcuts of the same commands work.

The mentioned bugs were discovered from my 3 days of use on my brand new 2018 Mac Mini w/Parallels Win 10. I'm sure there're more to be discovered.

Trick with thinkpads is to buy a 2 year old unit. You’re out of the failure bathtub curve and they usually work.

I just had to return a new MacBook Air in December because it didn’t fucking work properly.

[ogden]

Trick with thinkpads is to buy a 2 year old unit. You’re out of the failure bathtub curve and they usually work.

Right. IBM Thinkpads worked out of the box. Now all that's left - name and rumors of glory.

[bd139]

No they didn't. Had plenty of early failures from IBM! That included AS400 and RS6K and most of their software products...

[Rick Law]

...
Currently they've made it work fairly well, though. People love shitting on things that aren't great right away, but Microsoft does play the long game well provided they stick to it. They keep polishing their turd until it's actually good. That's exactly what they did with the Surface Pro line, which is at this point both a really nice device and still getting better with each release.

They don't "stick to it" except for just a small number of their products: OS, Office, Xbox, and a few others.

Bing is on the way out, Internet Explorer is on the way out, so on.  If you have a Zune equipped Ford, you have a zombie MP3 player in your car.  A lone-MP3 player you can throw out easy, a car is rather more expensive to just dispose when Microsoft gives up.

Microsoft was once the leader in Smart Phone.  Before iPhone was introduced, Microsoft smart phones was the number 1 by market share.  Where are they now?  Practically non-existing.  I am sure Microsoft will try again with this market space.  For the majority of users, PC no longer has a place at home.  It has been replaced by a Smart Phone in the pocket.  So unless MS redo their phone products, they will be reduced to an App seller with very limited influence in the consumer market.

That said, UI-wise, I would still prefer the UI on my 10+ year old Microsoft's smartphone over Andriod of today.  But, both got beat out by the convenience of a dumb flip-phone.   (That it is void of most spying/snooping was the deciding factor.)

[james_s]

They don't "stick to it" except for just a small number of their products: OS, Office, Xbox, and a few others.

Bing is on the way out, Internet Explorer is on the way out, so on.  If you have a Zune equipped Ford, you have a zombie MP3 player in your car.  A lone-MP3 player you can throw out easy, a car is rather more expensive to just dispose when Microsoft gives up.

Microsoft was once the leader in Smart Phone.  Before iPhone was introduced, Microsoft smart phones was the number 1 by market share.  Where are they now?  Practically non-existing.  I am sure Microsoft will try again with this market space.  For the majority of users, PC no longer has a place at home.  It has been replaced by a Smart Phone in the pocket.  So unless MS redo their phone products, they will be reduced to an App seller with very limited influence in the consumer market.

That said, UI-wise, I would still prefer the UI on my 10+ year old Microsoft's smartphone over Andriod of today.  But, both got beat out by the convenience of a dumb flip-phone.   (That it is void of most spying/snooping was the deciding factor.)

Before the Zune they were pushing the PlaysForSure standard for personal media players, I was working there at the time so I saw it first hand. They got a bunch of manufactures on board to make players that would all work with Windows Media Player and the associated DRM. Then after a while they decided to drop the whole thing and instead build their own system which was the Zune and its infrastructure leaving all the PlaysForSure stuff high and dry. If you bought music through that your only option was either burn it to CDs or lose the music you paid for when the servers get shut down. Then the Zune, it was a nice series of devices but the most innovative feature, being able to wirelessly share songs with other Zune users was crippled to the point of being useless. Then they dumped the Zune and the whole ecosystem. For a while they made rather nice broadband routers but they dumped that whole product line. Then Windows CE, that was pushed hard for a while then abandoned, then Windows Phone that you mention, it was really quite good but I was so upset by what they did with Windows 8 that I wasn't about to buy into that ecosystem. Turned out to be a good choice since Windows Phone is dead. Beats me why they keep forging ahead with the "modern" apps since their mobile platform was the only reason for those to exist and it's dead and gone.

[SilverSolder]

For the majority of users, PC no longer has a place at home.  It has been replaced by a Smart Phone in the pocket.

If you are primarily an information consumer (watching movies,  poking around with a finger on a phone to chat to friends etc) then a phone + a big TV is for you.

If you do anything creative, you soon find that you want a PC with a nice big screen or two.

Most people probably fall in the first category, but there are enough of us out there that need better facilities than a phone or a pad to keep the computer industry rolling for a while yet!

[Berni]

Microsoft had a good deal of success with its Windows CE based PDAs/phones. And it was a pretty nice OS too.

I got on to the platform at version Windows Mobile 2002 by getting a Motorola MPX200. It was a flip phone that the non touchscreen "smartphone edition" of windows mobile was developed on at Microsoft. It had a 133MHz TI OMAP ARM processor with 32MB of ram. Did take forever to boot but once it was running it ran pretty darn speedy and got plenty of app support in the form of ported over PDA apps(Essentially same OS). Not only capable of playing back MP3 but also all common video formats, ran a fully featured browser at perfectly good performance. Apps ran in native machine code (Unlike Java on other phones) and had graphics acceleration available making them run fast enough to make retro game console emulators run at usable speeds even.

The OS is sort of like a mobile form of Windows XP cut down to essentials, nothing is locked down and you can mess with everything. Change registry entries, overwrite system dlls in the Windows folder? Go ahead, no rooting needed. Start menu is still just a folder that you can change at your will, you can just copy a exe file on it and run it. The home screen is customizable much like Win7 widgets. Not happy with the contacts app, phone app, or the SMS app? Just replace its exe with a different one. Want a serial port for some reason? Sure establish one over bluetooth or get a converter cable that turns the connector somewhere on the device into a Dsub9 and you got a COM1 COM2 etc like on windows that any app can talk to if it wants. The OS was not trying to protect the user from themselves, if you screw it up its your own fault, but there is always a bootloader that can restore a known good image of windows to flash memory from a write protected area.

App support was ever expanding too. Game studios making official ports of PC games to it like AgeOfEmpires, Worms, SimCity, TombRaider that are a 100% functional port of the real thing. And other game studios creating titles exclusive to the Windows CE platform (big proper games too, not little things found on the google store these days) as well as all sorts of software. Fully featured browsers that could open any page a PC browser could or even 3rd party apps for things like YouTube.

All of this before the first iPhone was ever announced and boasted about being the first to do many of these things even tho Windows CE has been doing those and more for 5 years before. But the market was not there before the iPhone. My WindowsMobile phone was found to be "comically large" with its 3.6ˇ touchscreen in school yet had to lend it to friends a lot because i had the only phone with wifi and a fully features browser or the ability to open/edit MS Office documents, they also cost as much as flagship phones cost these days (So i bought mine used for cheap). It was all there before, but the iPhone then made it the norm for phones to do this stuff while being big and expensive.

Then Microsoft did the stupidest move ever and threw the whole platform into the bin and started fresh with WindowsPhone 7, this dropped app compatibility to the existing huge library of software and redesigned the UI to be less like Windows XP and more like the iPhone and Android while locking the OS down like they do. We all know how well this ended up going for Microsoft.

[dzseki]

I am surprised to see that no one brought up smartphones as unnecessary complexity. Can anyone explain me why on earth do one need a phone with 4+Mpixel display on 6” a 8 core CPU, 5 cameras and 1TB storage?

[bd139]

So I can play Fortnite while I’m having a shit of course 

Edit: more seriously I’ve got an XR and the thing is a pretty hardcore workhorse of a device. Very decent camera, email, scheduling, video camera, mapping and navigation, entertainment, books, payments, phone, messaging, web browser, data tether, the lot. Plus it takes 3d scans of my head every time I want to use it just to check its me. Plus toilet fortnite. That requires some grunt.

1 TiB is ridiculous in a phone though. You’re almost using it wrong if you have that online.

[JVR]

Our office water dispenser has a colour touch interface and plays a movie of water pouring, while it pours water. It takes 45 seconds to boot, and it has to boot often, as it crashes often. It has a USB port for firmware upgrades.

Its a fucking water dispenser. I can do Cold, Ambient and Sparkling. It needs three tactile buttons, not an OS capable of showing me a movie.

[eugenenine]

I liked Windows CE 2.0.  It looked just like the standard windows 2000 desktop of the time and I could hand it to anyone who had never used a smartphone/pda before and they could instantly use it. They messed up when they went to v3 and moved the start menu to the top so your hand covered the menus when you were using it. 

[NiHaoMike]

1 TiB is ridiculous in a phone though. You’re almost using it wrong if you have that online.

Quite useful for 4K video recording and downloading stuff on Wifi in order to conserve data caps. Maybe it seems excessive for someone with unlimited data...

[IDEngineer]

Speaking of unnecessary complexity: Long ago I had a subscription to a print magazine that covered EMI issues. One issue focused on "fly by wire" and "drive by wire" systems. The cover was an illustration of a winding mountain road with a family sedan crashing through the guardrail and plummeting to certain death and destruction below. The caption read: "Another EMI incident?"

That's always stayed with me as a stark reminder that sometimes a simpler approach is the best. Not everything needs to be the most advanced tech... sometimes a steering shaft with a rack and pinion is just fine.

EDIT: Another vehicle-related example is the key fobs that come with basically every new car these days. My latest new vehicle doesn't even have a keyhole in the driver's door. My ability to get into, or start, or drive, that car is 100% dependent upon a button cell battery in my pocket. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[james_s]

For the majority of users, PC no longer has a place at home.  It has been replaced by a Smart Phone in the pocket.

If you are primarily an information consumer (watching movies,  poking around with a finger on a phone to chat to friends etc) then a phone + a big TV is for you.

If you do anything creative, you soon find that you want a PC with a nice big screen or two.

Most people probably fall in the first category, but there are enough of us out there that need better facilities than a phone or a pad to keep the computer industry rolling for a while yet!

The people who don't need a PC now are the same people who didn't need a PC before the modern internet was a thing. Unfortunately a lot of people have interpreted this shift as the PC being dead, while in fact there are tens of millions of people who will be using PCs for the foreseeable future. Those who get by with mobile devices instead now are people who only ever used their PC for things like email and content consumption. They never really needed a fullblown PC in the first place, it was just the only way to use email and browse the web.

[SilverSolder]

Another vehicle-related example is the key fobs that come with basically every new car these days. My latest new vehicle doesn't even have a keyhole in the driver's door. My ability to get into, or start, or drive, that car is 100% dependent upon a button cell battery in my pocket. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The fact that the key is no longer in a constant, predictable place has unforeseen consequences.  E.g. a colleague got dropped off at work by his wife in their new BMW.  Sadly, my colleague had the magic remote keyfob in his pocket...  the car kept running no problem, as the wife drives 50 miles away to see family...  only to find she can't drive home again!   Resulting in a wasted 100 mile round trip for the new BMW owner driving his old Ford, swearing all the way about whatever twit dreamt up this "unnecessarily complicated" and "spectacularly dumb" design....

[tggzzz]

Another vehicle-related example is the key fobs that come with basically every new car these days. My latest new vehicle doesn't even have a keyhole in the driver's door. My ability to get into, or start, or drive, that car is 100% dependent upon a button cell battery in my pocket. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The fact that the key is no longer in a constant, predictable place has unforeseen consequences.  E.g. a colleague got dropped off at work by his wife in their new BMW.  Sadly, my colleague had the magic remote keyfob in his pocket...  the car kept running no problem, as the wife drives 50 miles away to see family...  only to find she can't drive home again!   Resulting in a wasted 100 mile round trip for the new BMW owner driving his old Ford, swearing all the way about whatever twit dreamt up this "unnecessarily complicated" and "spectacularly dumb" design....

There have been worse examples with cars.

There was something along the lines of... Smartphone unlocks car ... Via cellular radio ... Bloke drives car into desert ... Gets out to stretch legs ... Can't get back in since no cellphone reception and he has left keys at home.

See comp.risks for pointers to reports and comments. Everyone should read comp.risks; very high SNR!

[IDEngineer]

Automotive keyfobs might win the award for "highest negative impact", based on the sheer number of potential victims multiplied by the magnitude of the negative impact when it does occur.

I wonder what the advantage is to the manufacturer. Most cars have been shipping with remotes for a while now, so the incremental cost to incorporate ignition probably isn't huge. Thus they save the cost of the boring old (and likely cheap) ignition switch, but have to spend on the fancy ignition pushbuttons (which are often illuminated with PWM LED's). Not sure that's a net savings.

I would actually pay EXTRA for a traditional keylock system, if only to eliminate rendering the vehicle completely useless due to a dead coin cell, forgotten fob, lost fob, fob dropped in water, etc. A clear-cut case of excessive complexity actually making things WORSE.

[IDEngineer]

There was something along the lines of... Smartphone unlocks car ... Via cellular radio ... Bloke drives car into desert ... Gets out to stretch legs ... Can't get back in since no cellphone reception and he has left keys at home.

That's unforgivably stupid. That system must have been "designed" by someone who has lived their entire life in the middle of large metropolitan/urban environments. Heck, I don't exactly live out in the sticks and yet there are places with spotty cell strength between my house and the grocery store five miles away. WhyTF wouldn't they have based it on (or used as a backup) Bluetooth? And that's not even allowing for the possibility that that the cellphone battery dies.

I can hear the "Engineering" discussion:

"No problem, if his phone dies he can just charge the phone from the car."

"Not if he's locked out."

"Ummmmm....."

[Berni]

Yes i also don't get the "start button" thing.

In the example of my dads volvo you have to stick the keyfob into a slot and then push the start button to start the car. Same process but in reverse to stop the car. You have to stick the keyfob in the "keyfob receptacle" anyway so pushing the button is simply a extra unnecessary step. As opposed to sticking a regular key in, you simply turn your hand at the same time, starting the car before you even let go of the key.

This also created the need to move the "Accessory power" onto yet another button somewhere on the dash (in a different location on every car model) that powers the radio/infotainment system on and off without actually stating the car, as you would want to do if you are waiting in your car when parked.

Additionally this added yet another need for a solenoid operated steering wheel lock, something that was previously operated by the user physically moving the lock when turning the key.

All of this just to make starting your car a less convenient two step process of also pushing a button after you stick the key in.

[Mr. Scram]

Not to mention the added security risk of using wireless technology. By now it's well documented how common crooks use equipment to relay the car's and key's signals as the key is in your pocket or in your house, allowing them to open and start the car. Theft of items in the car is also common, and for a long time owners of these keyless entry cars have been suffering from break-ins without any actual damage to the car. This has led to insurers systematically denying insurance claims, because their terms were conveniently written for older technology and burglary practices.

We're not even talking about security researchers accessing car systems and overriding brake and throttle commands through media interfaces.

[tggzzz]

There was something along the lines of... Smartphone unlocks car ... Via cellular radio ... Bloke drives car into desert ... Gets out to stretch legs ... Can't get back in since no cellphone reception and he has left keys at home.

That's unforgivably stupid. That system must have been "designed" by someone who has lived their entire life in the middle of large metropolitan/urban environments. Heck, I don't exactly live out in the sticks and yet there are places with spotty cell strength between my house and the grocery store five miles away. WhyTF wouldn't they have based it on (or used as a backup) Bluetooth? And that's not even allowing for the possibility that that the cellphone battery dies.

I can hear the "Engineering" discussion:

"No problem, if his phone dies he can just charge the phone from the car."

"Not if he's locked out."

"Ummmmm....."

The comp.risks report is at https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/30/09#subj1
With the original report in that <cough>reliable</cough> rag, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4128220/Tesla-driver-stranded-desert-forgot-keys.html
Naturally Tesla included the obligatory victim blaming "The company advises owners to always bring their keys with them in case of failure".

Tesla features many times https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/search?query=tesla

[bd139]

Wireless anything isn’t particularly less secure by nature than anything else. It’s just magical and this attracts the worst kind of people. People with ideas but no sense. MBAs and VCs.

Really the metric for failure on all of these isn’t complexity but where the compromise is made. If you compromise the machine too much then you end up with logic and security problems. If you make the user compromise too much you get mistakes or people don’t use it.

The keyfob is a great example because the logic is compromised by allowing people to be stupid.

Complex things do work as long as they don’t compromise the logic of the system or make the user compromise too much. That’s really damn hard to get right.

As tggzzz pointed out, the risks digest is the manifestation of the above and where it goes wrong. I bet every single failure can be laid upon the compromise argument above.

[Mr. Scram]

Wireless anything isn’t particularly less secure by nature than anything else. It’s just magical and this attracts the worst kind of people. People with ideas but no sense. MBAs and VCs.

Really the metric for failure on all of these isn’t complexity but where the compromise is made. If you compromise the machine too much then you end up with logic and security problems. If you make the user compromise too much you get mistakes or people don’t use it.

The keyfob is a great example because the logic is compromised by allowing people to be stupid.

Complex things do work as long as they don’t compromise the logic of the system or make the user compromise too much. That’s really damn hard to get right.

As tggzzz pointed out, the risks digest is the manifestation of the above and where it goes wrong. I bet every single failure can be laid upon the compromise argument above.

The problem with wireless often is that the barrier of needing physical access to something is taken out. That's the case with these car fobs too. Instead of needing to break open a front door and steal the physical keys which was a popular attack before the wireless entry fad, two transmitters is now all that's needed. Conversely you could argue that one is a very low tech attack and the other isn't, I can't deny that.

[bd139]

The only reason those attacks work is the protocol is poorly implemented. Typical "not invented here" crypto.

[tggzzz]

Complex things do work as long as they don’t compromise the logic of the system or make the user compromise too much. That’s really damn hard to get right.

My personal favourite was https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/18/01#subj5.1

They went to some trouble to make it simpler than possible (cf Einsten).

[Mr. Scram]

The only reason those attacks work is the protocol is poorly implemented. Typical "not invented here" crypto.

You say that as if homebrew crypto is generally a good idea.

[james_s]

Speaking of unnecessary complexity: Long ago I had a subscription to a print magazine that covered EMI issues. One issue focused on "fly by wire" and "drive by wire" systems. The cover was an illustration of a winding mountain road with a family sedan crashing through the guardrail and plummeting to certain death and destruction below. The caption read: "Another EMI incident?"

That's always stayed with me as a stark reminder that sometimes a simpler approach is the best. Not everything needs to be the most advanced tech... sometimes a steering shaft with a rack and pinion is just fine.

EDIT: Another vehicle-related example is the key fobs that come with basically every new car these days. My latest new vehicle doesn't even have a keyhole in the driver's door. My ability to get into, or start, or drive, that car is 100% dependent upon a button cell battery in my pocket. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

We're clearly on the same page here. That is one of my biggest gripes about modern cars other than being hideously ugly, they're so bloated with useless complex gadgets that I view as just more expensive stuff to break. Drive by wire systems have shown to be quite reliable so far but even so give me a mechanical steering column and cable operated throttle any day. Those expensive key fobs and keyless ignition are the dumbest thing ever, a classic example of a solution in search of a problem. Who ever complained that using a key was too much work? My friend got  stranded once by that system, he went somewhere with his wife, she got out and he hopped in the driver's seat to drive to the next destination, shut the car off and got out then when he went to leave and go pick her up he realized she had the key and he had driven a good distance away without it. My partner's car thankfully doesn't have keyless ignition but it does have an expensive key fob to unlock the doors and we have had a few of those fail. Maybe it's just part of getting old(er), I don't know.

Now get off my lawn!! 

[james_s]

Another vehicle-related example is the key fobs that come with basically every new car these days. My latest new vehicle doesn't even have a keyhole in the driver's door. My ability to get into, or start, or drive, that car is 100% dependent upon a button cell battery in my pocket. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The fact that the key is no longer in a constant, predictable place has unforeseen consequences.  E.g. a colleague got dropped off at work by his wife in their new BMW.  Sadly, my colleague had the magic remote keyfob in his pocket...  the car kept running no problem, as the wife drives 50 miles away to see family...  only to find she can't drive home again!   Resulting in a wasted 100 mile round trip for the new BMW owner driving his old Ford, swearing all the way about whatever twit dreamt up this "unnecessarily complicated" and "spectacularly dumb" design....

Hah! That's precisely what happened to my friend. I wonder how many other people have done that?

[Mr. Scram]

My personal favourite was https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/18/01#subj5.1

They went to some trouble to make it simpler than possible (cf Einsten).

It's fine to attempt a more human centric interface, but their mistake was not to implement a proper fail-safe. Assume your technology is going to go down in flames, especially when it's anything other than technology proven and ridden hard in real life for years.

[bd139]

The only reason those attacks work is the protocol is poorly implemented. Typical "not invented here" crypto.

You say that as if homebrew crypto is generally a good idea.

No entirely the opposite actually. Homebrew crypto is a disaster!

[bd139]

Complex things do work as long as they don’t compromise the logic of the system or make the user compromise too much. That’s really damn hard to get right.

My personal favourite was https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/18/01#subj5.1

They went to some trouble to make it simpler than possible (cf Einsten).

This is like the persistent Siri problem I have ... "hey Siri call Frank". Next thing I know it's dialling HSBC. Every single time.

[dzseki]

1 TiB is ridiculous in a phone though. You’re almost using it wrong if you have that online.

Quite useful for 4K video recording and downloading stuff on Wifi in order to conserve data caps. Maybe it seems excessive for someone with unlimited data...

Capturing 4K video... just let me know when the first movie hits the cinema which was shot on a phone...

FYI even just a few years ago the vast majority of the movies were processed in 2K DI format, and yes these were sold in 4K BluRay too !

[james_s]

I could see it being useful if you want to take lots of videos and photos and never delete them. When I got my 8GB phone years ago it seemed like a crazy huge amount of space, but after a couple years I was constantly battling full memory and having to delete or otherwise remove stuff. Now I have a 64GB phone which so far has been spacious but I'm sure I'll eventually run out. 1TB seems huge but it's getting to where space is so cheap that you might as well have a lot of it.

[jmelson]

EDIT: Another vehicle-related example is the key fobs that come with basically every new car these days. My latest new vehicle doesn't even have a keyhole in the driver's door. My ability to get into, or start, or drive, that car is 100% dependent upon a button cell battery in my pocket. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Not just the fob battery, what if the CAR'S battery is dead?  You have to break a window to get in to unlatch the hood so you can jump the battery?
YIKES!

Jon

[SilverSolder]

Another awesome car lock design screw-up: an acquaintance left his Honda idling in the driveway for a few minutes, with all the doors shut, while he was unexpectedly delayed doing something in the garage.  After about 2-3 minutes:  CLICK!  all the doors locked automatically!  He was locked out of the car!

His wife had to come home from work with the second set of keys, which were on her key ring...

The power and low cost of electronics and embedded microcomputers has allowed bad designers to do things that would have been too expensive in the past, thereby preventing a lot of bad ideas from getting to market in the first place.

[NiHaoMike]

Capturing 4K video... just let me know when the first movie hits the cinema which was shot on a phone...

FYI even just a few years ago the vast majority of the movies were processed in 2K DI format, and yes these were sold in 4K BluRay too !

Several of the TV shows I watch film in 4K, and one even sometimes films in 5K!

Just 15 years ago, the idea of a phone that can record 1080p would have been considered overkill and pointless.

[David Hess]

Another awesome car lock design screw-up: an acquaintance left his Honda idling in the driveway for a few minutes, with all the doors shut, while he was unexpectedly delayed doing something in the garage.  After about 2-3 minutes:  CLICK!  all the doors locked automatically!  He was locked out of the car!

I have had that happen.  Now I make it a deliberate habit to leave one window down far enough that I can unlock the door from the outside under those conditions.

[vaser888]

Capturing 4K video... just let me know when the first movie hits the cinema which was shot on a phone...

FYI even just a few years ago the vast majority of the movies were processed in 2K DI format, and yes these were sold in 4K BluRay too !

It has already happened...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsane_(film)

[IDEngineer]

Found this:

Data came back from customers visiting the dealership that sometimes their car would not start. The quality team did an analysis and discovered that there is a whole spectrum of customers who hold the key for different periods of time in the crank position. Some hold a long time, and others only a burst.

It turns out there was a design change on the hardware, mid cycle, and the new starters needed the key to be held about 0.5 seconds longer. The problem was that some folks who renewed leases were “key bursters” who would hold the key for just a short burst of time. Before the hardware change, that quick burst was long enough to get a good steady crank and fire. After the design change, that same burst wasn’t long enough, and the engine would sometimes stall.

And, based on physics, its even harder to get a good second start (engine flooded/weaker battery), making the problem even worse.

So to fix this, the client implemented new code that was more digital in nature. It looked for the key bump, and software took control from there. The customer/driver had indicated a desire to start the engine, the software would then figure out how long to crank to get you a good start.

The key, at this point, was reduced to a formality; it was the request to crank that mattered, not how long it was held cranking by the customer.

The next logical step was just to delete the key altogether and use a button to request the crank.

And thus Push Button Start arrived.

I can confirm the keyed version of the above. On my EFI-engined wakeboat (which means there's an ECU, Engine Control Unit, running the engine) you turn the key to "Start" and instantly let go. The ECU understands this as a request to start the engine and handles the cranking duration automatically even if you've entirely let go of the key. In my opinion, this is the least objectionable "automated" way to handle this. Frankly, I prefer to directly control the engagement of the starter and I promise I can learn how long to hold the key in "Start". But if you MUST nanny-state me, go with my boat's solution. Don't condemn me to a keyless fob where the failure of either of two batteries renders the car totally inoperative.

I also remember reading some articles in car magazines, when pushbutton ignitions first started appearing in "normal" cars, where they were drooling about how cool it was to have this "race car like" starting button. They were clearly implying that if you wanted to be cool, you had to have a button and not be stuck in yesteryear with a key. They didn't fool me then, and they don't fool me now.

[ANTALIFE]

I'm a bit late to the party but from my experience it's just prototypes never leaving the prototype stage.

These days people like to iterate products as quickly as possible and this results in them using all sorts of dev/eval kits, something where you don't have to think as much as there is heaps of example schematics/code provided by the community/company. So they build this product and then find there is pressure to close it all up and go onto the next thing, rather than making another version or two to make the product a more manufacturable beast (which requires just as much if not more effort)

Now there is nothing wrong with using dev/eval kits, it's just that people that drive the overall project direction need to realise that things go though a number of iterations before the product becomes mature

[dzseki]

Capturing 4K video... just let me know when the first movie hits the cinema which was shot on a phone...

FYI even just a few years ago the vast majority of the movies were processed in 2K DI format, and yes these were sold in 4K BluRay too !

Several of the TV shows I watch film in 4K, and one even sometimes films in 5K!

Just 15 years ago, the idea of a phone that can record 1080p would have been considered overkill and pointless.

Because something is given in 4K that does not mean it has the resolution...
Just as you can attach a 24 bit AD after a ua741 opamp, but there is not much point in that...

[RoGeorge]

The power and low cost of electronics and embedded microcomputers has allowed bad designers to do things that would have been too expensive in the past, thereby preventing a lot of bad ideas from getting to market in the first place.

This perfectly summarize it. ^

[ogden]

The power and low cost of electronics and embedded microcomputers has allowed bad designers to do things that would have been too expensive in the past, thereby preventing a lot of bad ideas from getting to market in the first place.

This perfectly summarize it. ^

There is always another way to look at it Low cost of electronics and "software everything" approach resulted in devices that are so complex that it is nearly impossible to account for, not to mention test every "what if" scenario. Chances that oversight or even bug may slip into end product are increasing every day. Companies are rushing to introduce new products fast, they most likely cut corners on verification and testing of product subsystems that are not safety-critical.

[IDEngineer]

Low cost of electronics and "software everything" approach resulted in devices that are so complex that it is nearly impossible to account for, not to mention test every "what if" scenario.

Which relates straight back to the title of this thread. To use my steer-by-wire example, the operation of a steering shaft with rack and pinion gearing is immediately obvious, and many (most?) dodgy compromises are apparent even to an untrained eye. But a steer-by-wire system is complex almost to the point of opacity... as you point out, even the DESIGNERS may not know all of the edge cases, and it's almost certain those edge cases haven't been tested.

[eugenenine]

That's always stayed with me as a stark reminder that sometimes a simpler approach is the best. Not everything needs to be the most advanced tech... sometimes a steering shaft with a rack and pinion is just fine.

My cousin worked as a mechanic in a garage where a bunch of import tuners lives. He told me about the at least monthly call where they had to tow a Mitsubishi out of the ditch because their drive by wire steering would fail right.

EDIT: Another vehicle-related example is the key fobs that come with basically every new car these days. My latest new vehicle doesn't even have a keyhole in the driver's door. My ability to get into, or start, or drive, that car is 100% dependent upon a button cell battery in my pocket. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Chances are it does have a keyhole, its probably just hidden.  Check the user manual or google/youtube for how to find it.  typically it involves prying a cover off the handle.

[eugenenine]

Automotive keyfobs might win the award for "highest negative impact", based on the sheer number of potential victims multiplied by the magnitude of the negative impact when it does occur.

I wonder what the advantage is to the manufacturer. Most cars have been shipping with remotes for a while now, so the incremental cost to incorporate ignition probably isn't huge. Thus they save the cost of the boring old (and likely cheap) ignition switch, but have to spend on the fancy ignition pushbuttons (which are often illuminated with PWM LED's). Not sure that's a net savings.

I would actually pay EXTRA for a traditional keylock system, if only to eliminate rendering the vehicle completely useless due to a dead coin cell, forgotten fob, lost fob, fob dropped in water, etc. A clear-cut case of excessive complexity actually making things WORSE.

Traditional keylocks are actually quite expensive.  They have to be built heavy to withstand attempts at hammering in a screwdriver to break them.  They typically are a complex multi-pole switch, one of more poles for the ignition, the rest of the car electrical, the stuff thats on only for accy and the start position.  Also they have to be keys individually and then kept track of individually.  Search for the GM ignition switch recall/lawsuits for the most recent example of issues surrounding them which adds to cost.  A single pushbutton going to one of the computer modules is cheap, the LED PWM is already there for all of the other dash lights.

[eugenenine]

We're clearly on the same page here. That is one of my biggest gripes about modern cars other than being hideously ugly, they're so bloated with useless complex gadgets that I view as just more expensive stuff to break. Drive by wire systems have shown to be quite reliable so far but even so give me a mechanical steering column and cable operated throttle any day.

Drive by wire is actually less complex than traditional.  Take the throttle for example.  A traditional cable operated has the cable from the pedal to the throttle body, then a throttle position sensor,  an idle control motor, then another cable to a cruise control system.
Throttle by wire still has the motor but it can simply control the whole range instead of just idle.  The throttle position sensor moves inside and becomes a pedal position sensor.  The throttle cable goes away and the whole cruise control and cable goes away.  So four main parts becomes two.
I forgot the throttle cable from the auto transmission so 5 parts reduces to two.

[eugenenine]

EDIT: Another vehicle-related example is the key fobs that come with basically every new car these days. My latest new vehicle doesn't even have a keyhole in the driver's door. My ability to get into, or start, or drive, that car is 100% dependent upon a button cell battery in my pocket. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Not just the fob battery, what if the CAR'S battery is dead?  You have to break a window to get in to unlatch the hood so you can jump the battery?
YIKES!

There is usually a hidden backup somewhere.  You can open most hoods without even opening the door if you know how, hood locks(latches) only keep honest people honest.
Jon

[eugenenine]

I can confirm the keyed version of the above. On my EFI-engined wakeboat (which means there's an ECU, Engine Control Unit, running the engine) you turn the key to "Start" and instantly let go. The ECU understands this as a request to start the engine and handles the cranking duration automatically even if you've entirely let go of the key. In my opinion, this is the least objectionable "automated" way to handle this. Frankly, I prefer to directly control the engagement of the starter and I promise I can learn how long to hold the key in "Start". But if you MUST nanny-state me, go with my boat's solution. Don't condemn me to a keyless fob where the failure of either of two batteries renders the car totally inoperative.

  My 2004 chevy truck does this, so its been around long before push button start.  That and the throttle by wire allow newer years to shut off the engine instead of letting it idle.  So perfecting those two 'features' was needed for the auto start/stop you have on a lot of modern vehicles.

[IDEngineer]

Chances are it does have a keyhole, its probably just hidden.  Check the user manual or google/youtube for how to find it.  typically it involves prying a cover off the handle.

Our 2011 Toyota minivan has an emergency key within the fob, and the driver's door has a keyhole, so yes - that was available in the past. But current model cars have abandoned the physical key altogether. Example: Our new 2018 Honda Pilot has no external keyholes at all, and no emergency ignition keyhole either. The fob does have an emergency key but according to Honda its sole function is to lock the glovebox. If you're outside the locked car, you are SOL if EITHER the fob or car battery is dead because there is no mechanical backup. At least that I know of, can find in the manual, or that Google can find on my behalf.

Utter insanity.

[SilverSolder]

Drive by wire is actually less complex than traditional.  Take the throttle for example.  A traditional cable operated has the cable from the pedal to the throttle body...

I have had that cable get stuck at wide open throttle, on 4 different vehicles, so far in my life...   good thing there was a simple manual ignition switch in all of them!   I have never had a problem with a drive-by-wire electrically operated throttle (knock on wood).

[IDEngineer]

Drive by wire is actually less complex than traditional.

STEER-by-wire, however, adds complexity. And the short-term risk of a failure is much greater in your steering than in your throttle... even if you can't turn off the engine you can at least take it out of gear and let it redline itself into oblivion. Power assisted steering adds complexity but it's a backup system the way it's implemented, which means you can still steer even if the power system stops working.

Things should be designed to "fail gracefully" where possible, not catastrophically. Losing your car's remote control means you can still unlock, start, and drive the car in the traditional manner - IF it has traditional keylocks. Otherwise you are standing outside your car with very few options. Losing power steering means you can still steer the car. Losing steer-by-wire... well, who knows?

I have a related story that happened to my wife and son a year ago. Background: Toyota makes the only minivan in the USA that offers optional AWD, and we live in snow country so AWD/4WD is an absolute requirement. Trouble is, to make room for the rear differential Toyota jettisoned the spare tire (!!!) and deliver the vehicle with runflats (!!!). Those are about 2X as expensive, drive horribly, and only last about 30K miles, so we had the local tire shop replace them with four top-end traditional radials and bought a spare wheel with a spare tire mounted on it, which we carry in the back end. Returning to the story, some object in the road took out a tire in the minivan. This was very late at night (of course) during an intense snowstorm (of course) while I was out of town (of course). But my family is self-reliant so they broke out the jack and got the bad wheel off. When they went to mount the spare, the wheel had some sort of decorative cover over the lug holes - which was held on by a special screw requiring a special tool! They called me from the side of the road, across the country, and I seriously could not understand WTF they were saying because how can it possibly be that they can't "get to" the lug holes on a car wheel? They finally hung up in frustration. The story is long, but the short version is that they ended up having AAA trailer the car to the tire shop at midnight. The next morning the tire shop's response was "Oops". It also turned out that the lug holes were so deep and narrow that the factory lug nuts wouldn't even fit. Needless to say, when I got home that wheel cover had a serious and permanent accident... I confirmed the wheel actually fit (something I should have done earlier)... and I required the shop to provide a dedicated set of lug nuts free that now stay with that spare. All of this was a result of "unnecessary complexity", just exactly like a keyless fob with no mechanical backup key.

[IanMacdonald]

Drive by wire is actually less complex than traditional.  Take the throttle for example.  A traditional cable operated has the cable from the pedal to the throttle body...

I have had that cable get stuck at wide open throttle, on 4 different vehicles, so far in my life...   good thing there was a simple manual ignition switch in all of them!   I have never had a problem with a drive-by-wire electrically operated throttle (knock on wood).

Difference is that a routine inspection of the bowden cable end would probably reveal fraying long before it jammed. The electronic throttle is not amenable to inspection, and the failure could happen at any time.

[SilverSolder]

...the wheel had some sort of decorative cover over the lug holes - which was held on by a special screw requiring a special tool!

OMG what a crazy idea.  How do some of these ideas pass their design reviews?

I guess we have to be really careful when shopping for cars, and insist on locks, keys, etc., (and hubcaps that can be removed without special tools now added to the list!), and tell the salesperson the reason for not buying a particular car.  If enough of us do that, the manufacturers will change their ways.

[Mr. Scram]

STEER-by-wire, however, adds complexity. And the short-term risk of a failure is much greater in your steering than in your throttle... even if you can't turn off the engine you can at least take it out of gear and let it redline itself into oblivion. Power assisted steering adds complexity but it's a backup system the way it's implemented, which means you can still steer even if the power system stops working.

Things should be designed to "fail gracefully" where possible, not catastrophically. Losing your car's remote control means you can still unlock, start, and drive the car in the traditional manner - IF it has traditional keylocks. Otherwise you are standing outside your car with very few options. Losing power steering means you can still steer the car. Losing steer-by-wire... well, who knows?

I have a related story that happened to my wife and son a year ago. Background: Toyota makes the only minivan in the USA that offers optional AWD, and we live in snow country so AWD/4WD is an absolute requirement. Trouble is, to make room for the rear differential Toyota jettisoned the spare tire (!!!) and deliver the vehicle with runflats (!!!). Those are about 2X as expensive, drive horribly, and only last about 30K miles, so we had the local tire shop replace them with four top-end traditional radials and bought a spare wheel with a spare tire mounted on it, which we carry in the back end. Returning to the story, some object in the road took out a tire in the minivan. This was very late at night (of course) during an intense snowstorm (of course) while I was out of town (of course). But my family is self-reliant so they broke out the jack and got the bad wheel off. When they went to mount the spare, the wheel had some sort of decorative cover over the lug holes - which was held on by a special screw requiring a special tool! They called me from the side of the road, across the country, and I seriously could not understand WTF they were saying because how can it possibly be that they can't "get to" the lug holes on a car wheel? They finally hung up in frustration. The story is long, but the short version is that they ended up having AAA trailer the car to the tire shop at midnight. The next morning the tire shop's response was "Oops". It also turned out that the lug holes were so deep and narrow that the factory lug nuts wouldn't even fit. Needless to say, when I got home that wheel cover had a serious and permanent accident... I confirmed the wheel actually fit (something I should have done earlier)... and I required the shop to provide a dedicated set of lug nuts free that now stay with that spare. All of this was a result of "unnecessary complexity", just exactly like a keyless fob with no mechanical backup key.

Security nuts are fairly common and tend to catch a lot of people out. That's not someone obsessed with security, by the way.

[SilverSolder]

Drive by wire is actually less complex than traditional.  Take the throttle for example.  A traditional cable operated has the cable from the pedal to the throttle body...

I have had that cable get stuck at wide open throttle, on 4 different vehicles, so far in my life...   good thing there was a simple manual ignition switch in all of them!   I have never had a problem with a drive-by-wire electrically operated throttle (knock on wood).

Difference is that a routine inspection of the bowden cable end would probably reveal fraying long before it jammed. The electronic throttle is not amenable to inspection, and the failure could happen at any time.

On the other hand the electronic throttles provide feedback to the computer about throttle position in real time - i.e., it is a closed loop system - using dual track, independent pots in many cases.  The accelerator pedal also contains redundant sensors.  If the sensors give conflicting data, the system goes to limp-home mode or total shutdown.  So in some ways, an electric throttles can be made safer than a cable, without needing constant manual inspections [that may or may not happen!]. 

[CatalinaWOW]

All of these comments on automotive complexity are valid, BUT they illustrate that reliability and complexity are in the eye of the beholder.

These electronic engine control systems are far more complex and have many, many more potential points of failure than the systems that preceded them.  But they also have many more performance checks and responses to the changes in performance that are observed.  It is really common now to find an ICE engine still performing reasonably well with no maintenance and well over 100k miles of service (160 km for the metric guys who don't routinely go back and forth).  Unheard of for systems that depended on points and open loop carburetors.  Complexity for the designer and manufacturer has resulted in simplicity for the operator.

Those security nuts on wheels make no sense at all where I live and where many others live.  And are absolutely the difference between being able to go out and drive your car or find it up on blocks with no wheels for those in other locations.  Same thing applies to locking gas caps.  At several places I have lived a locking gas cap doubled my fuel economy, although it would have no effect now.  So whether it is necessary complexity is location dependent.

Same kind of things apply to to the electronic key fobs.  To the woman (or man, this is the twenty first century) with one arm full of groceries and the other full of toddlers that key fob is absolutely necessary and a reasonable trade for the rare lock out situation.  Battery life isn't much of an issue for those who turn the vehicle in after the three year lease is over.  For the crusty old retired engineer driving a decade old car the answer is different.

[IDEngineer]

Security nuts are fairly common and tend to catch a lot of people out. That's not someone obsessed with security, by the way.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about security lug nuts (the kind that require a special interface socket so your wheels can't be stolen). I'm very familiar with those and you're correct, they're fairly common.

I'm saying there was a sort of plate installed over the entire lug nut area on the wheel, such that all of the lug nuts were inaccessible unless you first removed the plate. Removing that plate involved removing a single special screw, which in turn required a special tool. I have a full set of security bits for pretty much any hardware out there, but I was 2000 miles away and the bits were at the house, not at the car. And honestly, by the time I got home I didn't care what bit it required, it was coming off and staying off forever!

[IDEngineer]

Same kind of things apply to to the electronic key fobs.  To the woman (or man, this is the twenty first century) with one arm full of groceries and the other full of toddlers that key fob is absolutely necessary and a reasonable trade for the rare lock out situation.

If depending upon the fob is optional, I'm right there with you. That's why I thought Toyota's 2011 solution was perfect: A fob that contained a backup key that can be used to unlock, start, and drive the car if anything happens to either end of the RF link for the fob. "Graceful degradation" as mentioned earlier. Where I find fault is making the fob mandatory such that its failure renders the car unusable with no backup plan.

[tooki]

[Example: Our new 2018 Honda Pilot has no external keyholes at all, and no emergency ignition keyhole either. The fob does have an emergency key but according to Honda its sole function is to lock the glovebox. If you're outside the locked car, you are SOL if EITHER the fob or car battery is dead because there is no mechanical backup. At least that I know of, can find in the manual, or that Google can find on my behalf.

Utter insanity.

Curious, I downloaded the PDF manual (the one called Owner’s Manual; the Owner’s Guide is just a quick start guide), and on page 130 it describes and depicts using the key to unlock the door when either the “remote battery or vehicle battery is dead”.

The slow Honda file server notwithstanding (took like 15 mins to download a 51MB PDF on WiFi that just tested at ~200Mbps!) it took me like 3 mins to find this in the manual, since searching in the PDF for the word “key” worked perfectly on my iPad.

[David Hess]

Our 2011 Toyota minivan has an emergency key within the fob, and the driver's door has a keyhole, so yes - that was available in the past. But current model cars have abandoned the physical key altogether. Example: Our new 2018 Honda Pilot has no external keyholes at all, and no emergency ignition keyhole either. The fob does have an emergency key but according to Honda its sole function is to lock the glovebox. If you're outside the locked car, you are SOL if EITHER the fob or car battery is dead because there is no mechanical backup. At least that I know of, can find in the manual, or that Google can find on my behalf.

GMC has them beat by a couple decades.  How about having an electric hood and emergency break releases?  So when the battery dies, you cannot push the car back to gain access to the hood and if you did have access, you cannot unlock the hood anyway.

My current gripe about GMC going back at least 2 decades is that their built in security system which is an optional feature but always present prevents push starting any of their manual transmission cars.  If you have a battery or starter failure, then it is game over where on an older vehicle, you could at least push or hill start.

[james_s]

I have had that cable get stuck at wide open throttle, on 4 different vehicles, so far in my life...   good thing there was a simple manual ignition switch in all of them!   I have never had a problem with a drive-by-wire electrically operated throttle (knock on wood).

Difference is that a routine inspection of the bowden cable end would probably reveal fraying long before it jammed. The electronic throttle is not amenable to inspection, and the failure could happen at any time.
[/quote]

On the other hand the electronic throttles provide feedback to the computer about throttle position in real time - i.e., it is a closed loop system - using dual track, independent pots in many cases.  The accelerator pedal also contains redundant sensors.  If the sensors give conflicting data, the system goes to limp-home mode or total shutdown.  So in some ways, an electric throttles can be made safer than a cable, without needing constant manual inspections [that may or may not happen!].
[/quote]

I've never had a single problem with a throttle cable, I squirt a bit of lubricant in it about once every 3-5 years, I've had one of my cars now for 20 years. If the cable ever jammed wide open I could depress the clutch. If the clutch actuator failed I could pull the mechanical shift lever into neutral. I can turn off the ignition, I can firmly step on the brakes which in every car I've driven are more than adequate to stop the car against the full power output of the engine, provided you step on it and stop rather than ride the brakes until they overheat.

Simple to diagnose, simple to repair, I don't want to limp home, I want to be able to fix it on the side of the road and drive home normally.

[David Hess]

On the other hand the electronic throttles provide feedback to the computer about throttle position in real time - i.e., it is a closed loop system - using dual track, independent pots in many cases.  The accelerator pedal also contains redundant sensors.  If the sensors give conflicting data, the system goes to limp-home mode or total shutdown.  So in some ways, an electric throttles can be made safer than a cable, without needing constant manual inspections [that may or may not happen!].

Unfortunately the ones I have seen the details for (Toyota) are not fault tolerant.  They use two identically wired sensors so if the cable hardness shorts, they both return the same bad throttle position.

[SparkyFX]

Unfortunately the ones I have seen the details for (Toyota) are not fault tolerant.  They use two identically wired sensors so if the cable hardness shorts, they both return the same bad throttle position.

There are accelerator pedals with pots working in opposite directions (electrically), there are variants that give half the signal value of the other. Both will limit the use of faulty signals as they do not get past the check in the engine controller which will e.g. disable cruise control, rely on one pot only or stop working with a malfunction indicator light and store a trouble code. Typical error checking includes out of boundary checks to find open and short circuits and the mentioned relation of both signals to each other.

Where two redundant sensors are not feasible, a simple resistor in parallel or in series can add a lot of safety to the signal supervision capabilities as an error would need to be of a very specific value.

Harder to detect are stray pulses that are short enough to not trigger error detection but raise the average value during sampling, should they not be filtered by the differential signaling.

[Siwastaja]

These electronic engine control systems are far more complex and have many, many more potential points of failure than the systems that preceded them.  But they also have many more performance checks and responses to the changes in performance that are observed.  It is really common now to find an ICE engine still performing reasonably well with no maintenance and well over 100k miles of service (160 km for the metric guys who don't routinely go back and forth).  Unheard of for systems that depended on points and open loop carburetors.

Nice to hear that marketing has reached you.

I drive a 1988 Toyota, 1.6 liter engine, with a carburetor, no sensors, no computers, no electronics, and have 410000 km (250k miles) on it. Rust has eaten most of the car already, and my tailpipe just broke in half (sorry, neighbors!). I'm waiting for the car to convert itself into a cloud of rust, like poof. Meanwhile, I'm driving it. It passes the inspection, anyway...

I bought it four years ago, for 400EUR, driven 360000km, after which I have driven 50000km. I have had to replace wiper blades.

But the engine is working perfectly. At 370000km was the first time in its history it needed any adjustment. This was a 5-second job of turning one screw to adjust the mixture, during the mandatory exhaust analysis, without extra cost. This was 3 years ago, and it still passes the exhaust tests with a large margin, and runs just fine. No problems whatsoever with the engine.

Normal oil changes only - no special maintenance ever done. I stopped doing oil changes after 380000km as well.

160000km "unheard of".

Yeah, we hear that a lot. That carburetors were unreliable and you need a complex computerised system. These ECUs tend to be extremely reliable, indeed. It's the multitude of sensors and the ECU's dependence on them producing right data, that causes issues in reality. But I well understand this is all needed to slightly increase fuel efficiency, increase the weight-power ratio of the engine, and decrease pollution; all good, especially the last one. But let's be honest about it, it being "more reliable" is just pure marketing bullshit, and that's understandable because people (me included) are selfish idiots who are not concerned about the environment, but want a reliable car. Thus this is what the marketing needs to tell us ("carburetors were unreliable, now we have a more reliable system!"), even if it is an outright lie. In reality, they have different failure modes. And the modern one has many, many more, some of which are fairly common (lambda sensor being one typical failure point).

[CatalinaWOW]

I am happy for you good experience with your Toyota.  Wasn't my experience on a variety of vehicles, nor was it most people's experience.  Of course it is hard to compare apples and apples.  The whole quality revolution in cars happened about the same time as computerized engine controls.  Your Toyota is after the start of the quality changes, and must also be among the last non computer engines.   I certainly have worked on and owned many computer controlled vehicles that preceded it.

[SilverSolder]

Simple to diagnose, simple to repair, I don't want to limp home, I want to be able to fix it on the side of the road and drive home normally.

That's a good description of the Ford Model T.

I guess we all favour "useful complication" but are against "unnecessary complication"...   may God grant us the wisdom to tell the difference!

[T3sl4co1l]

I have a '95 Toyota with over 320k miles -- that's almost 500k km for you euros.   Manual transmission shifts perfectly fine; engine slowly burns oil and is leaking coolant somewhere; underbody is long gone, exhaust is now third generation, and it's just a matter of time before the wheel wells, nearby body panels, and pretty much anything in the rear, fully succumbs to rust.

The 90s were probably the best generation, in terms of reliable, simple, single-purpose computers (there's a few in this one actually: engine, cruise and ABS apparently, I think), and maintainability (if you have a problem, it's almost guaranteed mechanical, replace the component and you're set*).  Give or take a decade, as more expensive cars began introducing these systems in the 70s and 80s (emissions controls, fuel injection, air and fuel metering, and controls systems -- they were analog at first! -- Audi I think?), and whichever designs of this style survived into the 2000s before networked-computers-everywhere fully engulfed the market.

*One could make note of some Unnecessary Complexity in the mechanical design of various automotive lineages over the years, like the GM favorite of hiding the oil filter behind a wheel, or there was a VW I think that you basically had to lift the engine to do much of anything?

Tim

[T3sl4co1l]

Simple to diagnose, simple to repair, I don't want to limp home, I want to be able to fix it on the side of the road and drive home normally.

That's a good description of the Ford Model T.

I guess we all favour "useful complication" but are against "unnecessary complication"...   may God grant us the wisdom to tell the difference!

Bingo. It's easy to rant about something that's complicated and buggy, but mostly useful -- see most of the responses in this thread.  It's a rarer sight, to find something that just makes you think, on all levels, in all aspects: "Why?"

Tim

[SilverSolder]

I drive a 1988 Toyota, 1.6 liter engine, with a carburetor

Nothing wrong with that,  I have a lawnmower and a snow blower here, both with carburetors and both work reliably...  as long as you remember to put preservative chemicals in the fuel, to avoid the carburetors getting gummed up when the machines stand unused for long periods out of season!

I also have an old Mazda MX-5 with 180K miles, a 1990, with electronic fuel injection.  It doesn't get driven in winter, but it always starts on the first crank despite having stood unused for up to half a year...   nothing ever goes wrong with that car apart from normal maintenance items, millions of people love these little cars and they just go on, and on, and on!

Let's not forget that even a modern carburetor is far more complex than the original designs that you find in e.g. the Ford Model T.   If simple and effective solutions was all anyone ever wanted, we would all be driving Model T's still. 

I'd actually love to own a Model T for fun.  From what I see on Youtube videos they would actually function adequately as transportation even today, 100 years later,  if you are willing to put up with a few quirks and inconveniences!

[SilverSolder]

[80's] ...fuel injection, air and fuel metering, and controls systems -- they were analog at first! -- Audi I think?)

One of the first successful automotive fuel injection systems was the Bosch K-Jetronic CIS (Continuous Injection System) which, despite its name, was a completely mechanical system based on a flap in the airstream into the engine opening a precise valve that let fuel into the engine through one injector per inlet port.  It was a good and reliable system, as well as a true masterpiece of precision mechanical engineering and production.  It was used on many "specialty" cars at the time including the early Golf GTIs, sporty Audis and many other cars including some sporty European Fords (Capri 2.8i, Sierra XR4i, etc).  Too expensive to put on mainstream cars, though.

Not many complained that it was an "unnecessary complication" because it just worked, and delivered on the performance front!

[IDEngineer]

Curious, I downloaded the PDF manual (the one called Owner’s Manual; the Owner’s Guide is just a quick start guide), and on page 130 it describes and depicts using the key to unlock the door when either the “remote battery or vehicle battery is dead”.

Must be a different year or model. Here's page 130 from my manual. Also, the "bigger" manual is now called the "Owner's Guide" (~180 pages) which is separate from the much shorter intro manual. Maybe they flip the names on odd/even years. 

I did find information about starting the engine "when the battery in the remote transmitter is weak". But dead? Damaged? Dropped in water? I still have found nothing.

[IDEngineer]

One of the first successful automotive fuel injection systems was the Bosch K-Jetronic CIS (Continuous Injection System) which, despite its name, was a completely mechanical system....

The fuel injection on the Cummins diesel engine in my Case 580SK loader/backhoe is 100% mechanical too. The most complicated electrical thing on that machine is the horn relay! (Well, OK, the Hall effect sensor for return-to-dig is OK too.)

[IDEngineer]

Bingo. It's easy to rant about something that's complicated and buggy, but mostly useful -- see most of the responses in this thread.  It's a rarer sight, to find something that just makes you think, on all levels, in all aspects: "Why?"

Speaking for myself, I don't have any problem with including things like ignition fobs. They are useful and convenient. My complaint is the removal of the traditional components that should serve as the reliable backup against the more complex conveniences. As an Engineer, I think about ways things can fail and try to plan for graceful degradation instead of catastrophic failure. We're not talking about a lot of money here. I just replaced the ignition switch on my loader/backhoe and the part, purchased from my local NAPA, was under $20.

[IDEngineer]

Nothing wrong with that,  I have a lawnmower and a snow blower here, both with carburetors and both work reliably...  as long as you remember to put preservative chemicals in the fuel, to avoid the carburetors getting gummed up when the machines stand unused for long periods out of season!

That's interesting. Gasoline doesn't "know" that it's in a carbed vs. injected engine. It will degrade and varnish/gum just the same. For that reason, I use fuel treatment in all of my occasional use engines no matter their fuel handling technology. Ever had to have a fuel injector serviced? Their ports are really small, like carb jets, and just as prone to contamination. Last one I had serviced was over a hundred bucks - which I considered a bargain since replacing the injector would have been something like $250. 

EDIT: It's for that reason that I use diesel-specific treatment in all of my diesel fuel. Ever since the EPA required diesel fuel to have most of its sulphur content removed, the fuel has drastically lower lubricity. The injectors and other components of the fuel system depend upon the fuel itself for lubrication, so it's wise to replace that lost lubricity with aftermarket treatments that address that specific issue. The stuff isn't terribly expensive and I consider it cheap insurance against shortened component life and expensive fuel system repairs.

[eugenenine]

[80's] ...fuel injection, air and fuel metering, and controls systems -- they were analog at first! -- Audi I think?)

One of the first successful automotive fuel injection systems was the Bosch K-Jetronic CIS (Continuous Injection System) which, despite its name, was a completely mechanical system based on a flap in the airstream into the engine opening a precise valve that let fuel into the engine through one injector per inlet port.  It was a good and reliable system, as well as a true masterpiece of precision mechanical engineering and production.  It was used on many "specialty" cars at the time including the early Golf GTIs, sporty Audis and many other cars including some sporty European Fords (Capri 2.8i, Sierra XR4i, etc).  Too expensive to put on mainstream cars, though.

Not many complained that it was an "unnecessary complication" because it just worked, and delivered on the performance front!

Also the 70's straight 6 Ford, I saw it using in the econoline vans used by FedEx and UPS before they started using big box trucks.  It had a mechanical fuel pump in 6 hard lines going to the injectors much like a diesel engine.   Very simple fuel injection in an old gas engine that would run forever.

[eugenenine]

GMC has them beat by a couple decades.  How about having an electric hood and emergency break releases?  So when the battery dies, you cannot push the car back to gain access to the hood and if you did have access, you cannot unlock the hood anyway.

Tesla does that today.  There is a small access hole that you open and connect jumper cables.  Of course any crook can do that too.

[David Hess]

GMC has them beat by a couple decades.  How about having an electric hood and emergency break releases?  So when the battery dies, you cannot push the car back to gain access to the hood and if you did have access, you cannot unlock the hood anyway.

Tesla does that today.  There is a small access hole that you open and connect jumper cables.  Of course any crook can do that too.

I ended up charging the battery through the cigarette lighter when I discovered this feature from GMC.

Discussing starter battery failure reminds me of another "improvement" modern cars have.  The battery terminals which now accept a threaded bolt have been moved to the side of the battery for a lower profile which should not be required.  Unfortunately this means that when the battery case leaks sulfuric acid at the terminal, it gets into the threads of the bolt and seizes it.  The bolt of course has a tiny 10mm hex head which immediately strips off under these conditions so the only way to remove the battery is to cut the cables.  That is progress.

The geniuses who approved this and SATA connectors without positive retention should be fed to a sarlacc to be digested together over a 1000 years.

[eugenenine]

Those side terminals have been standard for decades on gm vehicles, they rarely have issues but you can easily replace them with an aftermakret top post.

[IDEngineer]

The geniuses who approved this and SATA connectors without positive retention should be fed to a sarlacc to be digested together over a 1000 years.

I always thought that was a particularly hideous bit of creativity. I remember seeing that for the first time in the theater - it stayed with me!

A shorter version was the Alien chestburster. There were a couple of people who got "implanted" after the humans had learned how the organism gestated. One scene in Aliens has a guy glued to a wall, awake, fully knowing and feeling what was happening inside him yet powerless to stop it, or even commit suicide (until he got some outside help). Brutal.

And I agree that is a suitable punishment for egregiously bad design decisions. As I often say, "No one is completely worthless. You can always serve as a bad example." To which we might now add, "...in the stomach of a sarlacc".

[David Hess]

Those side terminals have been standard for decades on gm vehicles, they rarely have issues but you can easily replace them with an aftermakret top post.

Yes, but I did not realize the significance before inheriting my first and last GMC vehicle.  Oh, and how did GMC find a plastic which shatters in weather only cold enough for snow?  Maybe it never snows where GMC is.

They are not so easy to replace when the cables are too short to reach the top of the battery and must be spliced.

[eugenenine]

Those side terminals have been standard for decades on gm vehicles, they rarely have issues but you can easily replace them with an aftermakret top post.

Yes, but I did not realize the significance before inheriting my first and last GMC vehicle.  Oh, and how did GMC find a plastic which shatters in weather only cold enough for snow?  Maybe it never snows where GMC is.

They are not so easy to replace when the cables are too short to reach the top of the battery and must be spliced.

Huh?  You just buy the little side to top adapters.

[SilverSolder]

Gasoline doesn't "know" that it's in a carbed vs. injected engine.

What might be happening is that gasoline is constantly evaporating out of the carb, leaving thick goo behind.  Another possibility is that the air reacts with the fuel somehow.  When totally enclosed in an air tight system, it might take longer to "go bad".  We'll have to run a controlled experiment at some point!

[tooki]

Curious, I downloaded the PDF manual (the one called Owner’s Manual; the Owner’s Guide is just a quick start guide), and on page 130 it describes and depicts using the key to unlock the door when either the “remote battery or vehicle battery is dead”.

Must be a different year or model. Here's page 130 from my manual. Also, the "bigger" manual is now called the "Owner's Guide" (~180 pages) which is separate from the much shorter intro manual. Maybe they flip the names on odd/even years. 

I did find information about starting the engine "when the battery in the remote transmitter is weak". But dead? Damaged? Dropped in water? I still have found nothing.

Nope, I literally was looking at this info when I wrote my comment. See https://owners.honda.com/vehicles/information/2018/Pilot/manuals

It says “The Owner's Guide provides a quick how-to on basic functions and features” and “The Owner's Manual explains the various features and functions of your Honda, offers operation tips and suggestions for vehicle care and maintenance, provides specific details on safety systems, and includes comprehensive technical specifications.”

The owner’s manual is a 695 page PDF. The scanned page you showed is from the ~180 page owner’s guide, the shorter of the two and expressly not the one I said to look in. If you look at p.130 of the manual you will find the info.

[james_s]

Gasoline doesn't "know" that it's in a carbed vs. injected engine.

What might be happening is that gasoline is constantly evaporating out of the carb, leaving thick goo behind.  Another possibility is that the air reacts with the fuel somehow.  When totally enclosed in an air tight system, it might take longer to "go bad".  We'll have to run a controlled experiment at some point!

I suspect both play a part. I have cleaned out a lot of small engine carburetors but I've had very few instances of gummed up fuel injection components. Typically the fuel rail and lines remain pressurized when the engine is at rest, the system is airtight so the more volatile components of the gasoline don't evaporate out. The high pressure in the fuel rail is likely also able to blast out any gunk that does accumulate in the injector nozzles while a carburetor relies on atmospheric pressure so it doesn't take much to gum up the system.

Someone else mentioned K-Jetronic, one of my Volvos originally had that. It was a very impressive system in its day and generally quite reliable. Unfortunately as of about 10 years ago parts had become very hard to find, the control pressure regulators fail and a rebuilt one would have cost around $500 so I replaced the whole setup with a more modern EFI system.

[CatalinaWOW]

Those side terminals have been standard for decades on gm vehicles, they rarely have issues but you can easily replace them with an aftermakret top post.

I have never decided whether I dislike the top terminals or side terminals more.  The clamps on top terminals frequently corrode the posts or have their tightening bolts corrode until they are nearly impossible to remove.  I have had frequent problems with the side terminals coming loose.  If you try to apply enough torque to keep them from loosening they strip the threads in the battery. 

After nearly one hundred years of using these batteries you would think that something really robust, and easy to use would be developed.  I guess if I did what the makers want and buy a vehicle every 3-5 years I wouldn't have these problems, but my average retention for vehicles is measured in decades.

[james_s]

I haven't really had much trouble with the top post terminals. The only issue I recall is having the clamping bolts rust out and break, I replace them with stainless which holds up better. I also squirt a little anti-corrosion grease on them any time I mess with the battery.

[SilverSolder]

I have cleaned out a lot of small engine carburetors but I've had very few instances of gummed up fuel injection components.

Of course, we can't get away from the interaction with air at the tip of the injectors - where gummy deposits can and do interfere with the spray patterns, which are important for proper atomization / vaporisation.   Many rough running fuel injected engines run noticeably smoother after a sip of injector cleaner clears its nostrils.

On the carb front, I have found that fuel stabilizer really works well too.  I use the marine grade stuff, pre-mix it in a 5 gallon can and always use it all year round.  Haven't had to clean out a carb for about 5 years now (knock on wood!).

To remain on topic about unnecessary complexity,  I guess adding chemicals to the fuel is an example of increasing complexity in exchange for a defined benefit!

[T3sl4co1l]

When you're shipping millions of gallons of the stuff annually, for decades upon decades, you figure out a few neat tricks.  Fuel is very tightly formulated, from the obvious octane rating, to oxygen content, to lubricators and antioxidants.  Not so tightly that it's expensive, mind -- to a certain extent, it's to make do with a cheaper feedstock.  It's an industrial scale compromise, and the result is an incredibly consistent, competitively priced* product across time and space.  You can drive your vehicle to any country on Earth (within reach) and put the same grade of fuel in it without problems.  That's amazing.  It's a highly complex system, and necessarily so.

*Not withstanding local/state/fed sales taxes on the product, which are very common the world around, to greater or lesser degree depending.

Tim

[IDEngineer]

The owner’s manual is a 695 page PDF. The scanned page you showed is from the ~180 page owner’s guide, the shorter of the two and expressly not the one I said to look in. If you look at p.130 of the manual you will find the info.

So the LARGER of the manuals they included with the car isn't even the actual owner's manual?!? Un-freaking-believable.

Shame on me for presuming that a new buyer gets a printed copy of the actual owner's manual. Service manuals aren't for everyone, sure, but owner's manuals? Wow. Just wow.

Seriously, thanks for pointing this out. It would not have occurred to me that A) they wouldn't have included the owner's manual, and B) that a 180+ page perfect-bound BOOK in the bundle of documentation they DID bother to provide wasn't, in fact, the owner's manual.

[IDEngineer]

You can drive your vehicle to any country on Earth (within reach) and put the same grade of fuel in it without problems.  That's amazing.

Note that's even better than mains voltage/frequency, which I would argue is easier to "control" than the complex chemical process necessary to create gasoline or diesel fuel. With the advent of SMPS's you have a better shot at a "universal" power supply, but that's just the consumer accommodating the source - nowhere near the standardization that you point out regarding fuels.

[eugenenine]

Of course, we can't get away from the interaction with air at the tip of the injectors - where gummy deposits can and do interfere with the spray patterns, which are important for proper atomization / vaporisation.   Many rough running fuel injected engines run noticeably smoother after a sip of injector cleaner clears its nostrils.

No a days everything is direct injected into the combustion chamber so if anything were to gum up it would quickly get burnt off.  Back when the injectors were in the air intake or throttle body they could get a little gummy/dirty.

[james_s]

I would bet that a majority of the cars on the road today still have the "old fashioned" port injection with the injectors mounted to the intake manifold. I've seen GDI engines but I've never had or worked on a car that had one.

Now certainly allowing fuel to go stale is not a good idea, and fuel stabilizer is probably a good idea for rarely used engines (does it have any downsides other than cost?) but injected engines are certainly more tolerant of stale fuel.

[SilverSolder]

Now certainly allowing fuel to go stale is not a good idea, and fuel stabilizer is probably a good idea for rarely used engines (does it have any downsides other than cost?) but injected engines are certainly more tolerant of stale fuel.

The main downside is probably breathing whatever the chemical is...  small engines often don't have catalytic converters so you end up standing in a cloud of unmitigated exhaust fumes when the engine is running...

[IanMacdonald]

Now certainly allowing fuel to go stale is not a good idea, and fuel stabilizer is probably a good idea for rarely used engines (does it have any downsides other than cost?) but injected engines are certainly more tolerant of stale fuel.

The main downside is probably breathing whatever the chemical is...  small engines often don't have catalytic converters so you end up standing in a cloud of unmitigated exhaust fumes when the engine is running...

Carbon monoxide is likely to be more of a health concern, and is more of a problem with carburettors because they have a tendency to run rich.

[tooki]

The owner’s manual is a 695 page PDF. The scanned page you showed is from the ~180 page owner’s guide, the shorter of the two and expressly not the one I said to look in. If you look at p.130 of the manual you will find the info.

So the LARGER of the manuals they included with the car isn't even the actual owner's manual?!? Un-freaking-believable.

Shame on me for presuming that a new buyer gets a printed copy of the actual owner's manual. Service manuals aren't for everyone, sure, but owner's manuals? Wow. Just wow.

Seriously, thanks for pointing this out. It would not have occurred to me that A) they wouldn't have included the owner's manual, and B) that a 180+ page perfect-bound BOOK in the bundle of documentation they DID bother to provide wasn't, in fact, the owner's manual.

Hey, at least they bothered to write a full manual at all. With so many products, they've simply stopped creating them to begin with. Remember when software came with 3-ring binders with hundreds of pages of detailed documentation?

As someone who has worked as a professional technical writer, writing a full manual, quick start guide, FAQ, etc., as well as doing technical support, it's a sad truth that almost nobody actually reads the manuals. If you're really lucky, a user will do a keyword search in the manual or read the relevant section, but mostly people just ignore them and call instead…


Out of curiosity, were you able to try key entry into the car?