Today was a bad day. Unrelated, gadgets were misbehaving. Someone had to pay for it.

I was rushing off to meet with Owen from Valleywag, and I was late. I forgot that a surfboard on my roof was not tied down on my roof rack and as I stopped for a stop sign at the bottom of a steep hill, it just slid off and jammed itself under a car. Thank god no one was hurt. As I strapped it back on, carefully, some guy in a teal benz rolled down his window and said "nice pahking jaab!", to which I shook my fist and made a giant "errrrrrr" sound. I was a little annoyed, since the board belonged to a friend and is now scratched up.

Through this angry, angry lens, every gadget's flaw is amplified 1000 fold. It has nothing to do with how much they deserves the scorn. Sharp edges and obtuse design bother me more when in a wicked state because I've become more sensitive to their design hiccups and less patient.

I got back in my car and drove a block, now really late for my meeting. I tried to call to say I would be late, but the call dropped. And I was angry, so I did that thing where you try redialing 20 times in a row, pushing the buttons really hard. Then I noticed that I couldn't get my car's GPS to simply route to an intersection without clicking through two dozen buttons presses. And later on, every moment my phone hung while going through apps felt like an eternity. My rage built upon itself, one red wave after another, driving my ability to see clearly down deeper and deeper.*

Once, I crossed a line with my gadget-rage. I was trying to install a music player on a new notebook, and, as many of you know, sometimes wireless settings do not stick. It doesn't matter who makes the operating system here, that's not the point. What happened was that I was having a pretty frustrating day for various reasons, and after an hour of setting it repeatedly and having it reset repeatedly, I ended up discus throwing it onto a couch and punching in the keyboard. Ridiculous, I know. I am guilty of ridiculous things, often. But I never would have been this incensed on a machine that worked flawlessly.

The point is, I wonder how many gadget companies test user experiences when users are rushing, focusing on other things, stressed out about work, or plain pissed off. Maybe they should, because I bet they'd find such a test—a super user experience test—to be most useful for their designs for gadgets to be used in the real world.

Just like phones that can withstand drops from table height without shattering, and militarized solid state drive laptops that are dust and moisture proof, I would bet that testing gadgets to be smooth and invisible during user experiences where the users are in less than ideal states of mind would probably go a long ways towards making them better for all users. Angry or calm as monks.

*To feel better, I spend time with my dogs or hang out in the water.

This year marks the 20th Anniversary of the B-2 Stealth Bomber's first flight. To celebrate, Northrop Grumman's has unveiled the B-2 Stealth Bike, which unfortunately doesn't fly and it's not invisible. It looks... hmmm, stealthy?

[Flight Global]

I fantasize about replacing all my windows with flat aquariums, filling them with coral and reef life (rays, lobster, clownfish), lighting them with full-spectrum bulbs and calling myself Namor. [Aquawall via BornRich]

The tanks are roughly 6 inches deep, cost well over a thousand dollars, have an LCD readout for temperature and claim to be "self cleaning". (I will bet the throne of Atlantis that it is not self cleaning.)

Sure, Apple just posted a record quarter of earnings, but it's been taking a beating lately on the price issue -- not only have cheap netbooks become the hottest category in the market, Microsoft's Laptop Hunters commercials have reignited the Apple tax debate. That appears to have the wheels in motion in Cupertino: AppleInsider says the MacBook and iMac lines are soon to be bolstered with lower-cost options that should take some of the bite out of Redmond's marketing. That's certainly interesting, but here's the real noise: according to AI, the low-cost machines are just an interim solution while Apple preps a new tablet line to take on netbooks directly without making any of the design sacrifices Steve Jobs has repeatedly pooh-poohed. Wild -- but it jibes with those recent whispers about a Verizon / Apple meetup and those reports that Quanta's busy building something with a 10-inch display. So -- cheaper Macs in the short term, crazy-insane iPhone tablet / MID thing riding a unicorn sometime later. You believe any of that?

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Apple mulling price cuts, developing netbook competitor? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We're not sure if Microsoft is winding down its Laptop Hunter campaign, or just decided to step off the class warfare a bit, but this latest ad is pretty hate free. Shelia, a filmmaker with a $2,000 budget, asks the hard questions like "is this graphics card going to be powerful?" and walks out with an HP HDX 16t (an upgraded version of Giampaulo's kit of choice). The MacBook Pro's mere 2GB of RAM at that pricepoint just didn't fly, though we have to wonder which self-professed video editor hasn't already picked a side in the age-old Avid vs. Final Cut Pro debate -- which could've helped cut down on the soul searching. Video is after the break.

Continue reading Sheila the Laptop Hunter picks a PC, keeps it civil

Filed under: Laptops

Sheila the Laptop Hunter picks a PC, keeps it civil originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The big yellow Gourmet cookbook is one of my go-tos for weekend dinner planning. Now the entire contents of Ruth Reichl's culinary bible are on a free iPhone app—one that makes shopping lists for you.

It's great—you either search for recipes you already know (from the pages of Gourmet, Bon Appetit and a bunch of other Conde Nast-y pubs), or you browse the featured dishes—25,000 in all, including cocktails too. Once you've settled on a recipe, click the plus button to add it to your favorites, or better yet to your shopping list. Add all kinds of recipes to the shopping list, and it organizes all of their ingredients for you in a logical way for shopping: Produce, Meat & Poultry, Condiments, Canned Items, and so on. Already have salt? Just clear that bastard off the list and move on.

There are two things I don't particularly like: For one, you can't adjust the size of your recipe. You can't even add it twice, as if to double it. You can add as many recipes, but you can't double one.

The other thing I don't like is that it's hard to browse subcategories. I select "Side" from the Meal/Course browse menu, fine. I get 4364 results. I type in "rice" and it's whittled down to 490. Are these going to be the same basic set every time, in the same order? Maybe searching "rice" and "cashews" or something might whittle it down more, but there should be some middle ground, a randomizer, or like one of those other iPhone apps, a place to list all that you have in the fridge, so that it can suggest a dish. Maybe it's there, or coming soon. I'll keep looking, because it's free, and I already love it. [iTunes link via Wired]

The NYT DealBook Blog says that AIG's $1 interim CEO is living pretty well, despite the whole "being hated for something you didn't do" thing.

The American International Group disclosed Thursday that it paid its dollar-a-year chief executive, Edward M. Liddy, compensation worth about $460,000 in 2008 to cover costs he incurred after taking over the company during its emergency rescue by the Federal Reserve.

The company said in a regulatory filing that the payments covered $38,368 for a New York apartment for Mr. Liddy, who lived in Chicago before coming out of retirement to lead A.I.G. through its restructuring. An additional $162,686 was paid for legal counseling, $47,578 to cover commercial airfare between New York and Chicago, and $31,348 for car services.

The company also said it paid $180,431 to reimburse Mr. Liddy for the taxes he owed on those amounts.

Interim CEOs are pricey, but Liddy's actually a bargain compared to his predecessor — a guy who held the position for 3 months and was eligible for compensation valued at $37.6 million for 2008. Before you get too upset about that, the NYT points out that $24 million of that value was in AIG stock that the guy didn't even accept. Whoops! Always get cash, buddy.

A.I.G. Discloses Payments to Its $1-a-Year Chief [NYT]

Filed under: Handhelds, Tablet PCs

Drool-worthy MID concept stops us in our tracks originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Attempting to erase the line between art and technology—and also make the laptop less "cold and impersonal"—Dell has added 120 new designs to their Laptop Art Studio.

The new skins bring the total to over 200 different designs from a collection of artists. Here are a few of my favorites from the new batch:

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[Dell via geeksugar]

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