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Watercooler Diaries::One-Trick-Pony Technologies

Admit it. We’ve all been there. Wading through what seems like hundreds of commands just to set Tivo so you can watch Dr. Phil’s “Man Camp 2” when you get home from work. Or, the ultimate humiliation: Trying to figure out how to get your blinged-out phone – that can play music and scan the Web – to actually make a phone call or store a number.

There’s now a term for this too-many-feature-induced burn out. It’s called “feature creep.” It basically means that as gadgets become progressively more complicated with more with more “bonus” features, consumers grow increasingly more agitated and confused! But here’s the catch. It’s self-induced! Most people THINK they want more features, which is why they HAVE TO buy THAT camera – the one with aperture priority mode, detachable rotatable lenses, SCSI ports, the works, instead of just a plain old vanilla point-and-shoot automatic. It’s not until they get home and actually use the device that they realize what have I done?

In the age of the iPhone gadgets with dozens of features and instruction manuals the size of a small phone book are the norm. However, a new trend is hitting the technology world, a line of electronic devices that offer less — and as a result are leaving customers more satisfied.

Makers are starting to respond to these feature-fatigued masses with user-friendly devices. These “one-trick pony” technologies are designed to handle just one task.

Philips, the Dutch consumer-electronics giant, sells a line of digital photo frames that play a slide show the minute you pop in a memory card — a less complicated version of looking at pictures on your laptop.

Best Buy sells handheld TVs with no satellite, no cable, no DVR, CD players that play only CDs and AM/FM radios.

Even Apple jumped on the bandwagon with the iPod Shuffle. It’s so featureless the user can’t even shuffle through the playlists, yet it’s sold an estimated 30 million since its January 2005 Launch.

Perhaps one of the first to cater to the subscribers of this anti-feature trend is a company called GreatCall, creators of the Jitterbug, the “supersimple” cell phone that only makes phone calls. It has no camera, no MP3 player, no Internet browser, just buttons to dial the phone number and a search your phone book.

But have people hit the wall? I decided to hit Mizner Park in Boca Raton Florida to ask a few folks if enough was enough when it came to the features of their latest and greatest gadgets!

My cameraman Barry decided to cut some of their remarks into a “reel” so to speak, so imagine my surprise when he came back with this!

posted by Jason Parsley @ 1:28 AM