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User-hostile battery strength indicators
Nov 9, 2007
I thought I had heard most of the user-hostile schemes out there in consumer technology, but this one was new to me.
David Pogue's readers answered some nagging technology questions, including this one:
[David Pogue] How come cellphone signal-strength bars are so often wrong?
[Reader response] "Like the battery indicator, the signal strength on a cell phone is deliberately weighted toward the high end. I worked on a phone development project several years ago. When the first units went to the carrier for approval, their first request was to toss the perfectly calibrated battery indicator in favor of one that sat at 4 bars for around 75 percent of the charge."
Let me get this straight. Cell phone manufacturers fib about battery strength, to make it look (initially) like the phone holds charge better??
Should auto makers design a car's fuel gauge so that it stays on "full" until a gallon or so away from empty? After all, customers will think - initially - that the car is getting great mileage.
Why not just tell the truth?
There was a study about this a while ago. Sorry, can't remember on which blog this came up. It seems the users used their cellphone a lot less (especially to initiate calls) when their battery indicator showed below 50%.
Of course this isn't what the carriers wanted and so this was changed. Carrier happy, but screw the customer.
This doesn't match my experience. I spent years doing software for a cellphone company, and our group spent MONTHS making sure that the battery meters were perfectly calibrated. There were exact numbers (% of coloumbs left) for each number of bars shown. BTW, this is a very hard problem to do right, so it may just be that most makers don't bother.
You've got my attention. What are some of the other "user-hostile schemes" that you have heard of?
I've had three Fords, and the fuel gauge always seemed to hover at the high end for a long time before budging. After that, as it got closer to empty, the indicator seemed to accelerate more and more like it was trying to catch up to the real reading.
angusf - how about this - "you... have... one... new... message........... now... playing... first... message..." - voice mail, intentionally slowed down, in order to increase the amount of minutes you spend to check new messages.
Interesting. What really boggles my mind, however, is the billions and billions, maybe trillions and trillions, of minutes, airtime, dollars, and time that could be better spent doing other things that result from waiting for someone's voice mail greeting to complete, and then have the computer voice give us ten more options, before we can actually leave a messsage. How much better life and the world would be if there were a universal cut-to-beep button and a universal not-here-tone that everyone from age two would know means leave a message.
hamachi,
Sometimes it's also the design of the fuel tank, not taking into consideration the fuel gauge itself. Unless someone knows first-hand if there's a better system out there that really "tells it like it is"?
One design that does work is the gas light. That appears when you have about a range of 50 to 100 miles left doing about 50 to 55mph.
Many times I cut through a greeting and begin leaving a message immediately by pressing the command that the system taught me on the call before. Try "1" or "5".
Sometimes it's also the design of the fuel tank