aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Universally Useless

Steven Berlin Johnson’s having no fun with his universal remote:

...Because of all that irritation, I ordered a Logitech Harmony universal remote (the 680) I think—mostly because I saw that Chris Anderson was using it. It sounded cool—you plug it into your computer for the setup process, and the software walks you through all your media consumption habits and equipment, and configures the remote for you. So I get it from Amazon yesterday, and start going through the installation process. Early into it, the software tells me I need a firmware upgrade for the remote, which I download and install. And then, halfway through the installation, the remote appears to crash, and it’s now completely unresponsive.

Let me just repeat this for the six of you who are still reading: I buy a new remote control to simplify my media experiences, and it crashes during a firmware upgrade! And then stops working altogether! I suppose that’s one way of simplifying your media experience—use a remote that literally does nothing. At this point, I think it’s preferable to the alternative.

Not only was I one of the six who read the whole post, I also clicked through to his where is Apple when you need them? post. Evidently Steven has been drinking the Apple Kool Aid.

It’s not that I don’t agree with him that there’s an opportunity for Apple in the Home AV space, rather it’s that I fault Apple for going too far in the other direction with manuals and support.

Just the other day a commenter on a year old post complained about Apple’s poor service. And my own experiences with iPods once lead me to complain that iDon’t (though I actually do continue to use mine daily).

Much as I enjoy the Microsoft produced parody, If Microsoft Had Marketed The iPod, what it illustrates for me is that we need a middle way. I’d like to see a new company emerge as the next Apple to fill that other space.