Too Much Stuff in the Thing?

Hey, you’re probably reading this on your handset while you’re out shopping for holiday gifts, and, if you’re like me, you’re probably looking at all of the cool new consumer electronics products available. A noticeable trend in recent years has been electronic devices becoming distinctly more multi-function in nature. The wireless handset has in fact become the poster child for what some might call excess. It started, of course, as a phone, but then that subsumed the PDA and the smartphone was born. Since everyone has voice and personal information management, the next step for vendors was to add cameras (and upload charges for photos), GPS (often at an additional monthly charge, which the carriers again just love, of course), FM radio, and all manner of additional stuff, including downloadable apps. Just how productive one can be learning to use all of this before one’s handset becomes obsolete (usually a day or two after purchase) calls into question whether the device is serving us, or we are instead serving it and its carrier master. But it doesn’t stop with handsets.

Have you seen that some TVs now come with browsers? This Samsung is a good example. Is this browser as good as one you’ll find even on a netbook? Probably not, plus now you get to coordinate favorites and other settings on yet another device. Does this make sense? How about this HP printer with Web access? Again, the same question. I’ve always thought a TV should be little more than a big video monitor. The tuner is in the cable or satellite set-top box, and the speakers are often separate 5.1 or 7.1 configurations. If modularity is the best approach, as it is in home-theater apps, then why not simply allow remote access to a PC elsewhere, displaying its screen in a Window using VNC, Windows Remote Desktop Services (without requiring Windows Server, of course), Apple Remote Desktop, or whatever? Why not use the convenient big screen and big keyboard of the PC you already own to tell your printer, (which just, BTW, prints) what to splatter on the paper after that big-screen preview, thus saving time, paper, and ink?

I think this trend towards putting more stuff in the thing to get competitive advantage will eventually backfire. It will result in complexity, increased support costs, frustrated users, substandard features, customer lock-in, higher capital and operating expenses, and anything but ease-of-use. Thoreau remains right today – simplify. Buy products that do a few relevant and related things really, really well. Design products for interoperability. We built an entire industry, networking, around that. Works for me.

Of course, the really cool new stuff will be at CES in a couple of weeks – too late for this set of holidays, but that’s not the point. CES is now quite literally the focal point for both the consumer and the very edge of the corporate network, and I’m going to attempt to see everything in two very long days on the ground. I expect to find that the trend towards more stuff in the thing is accelerating – that is, after all, what happens with most products, from toaster ovens to cars. But I think it’s fair to ask if this direction is really a good idea in the first place.