An exclusive gaming industry community targeted
to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses
and Students in the sectors and industries
of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely
related with it's Business and Industry.
A Rich content driven service including articles,
contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads,
and debate.
We strive to cater for cultural influencers,
technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
A medium to share your or contribute your ideas,
experiences, questions and point of view or network
with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
Sure we all love Apple, but it doesn’t mean we have to turn a blindeye when they occasionally make the odd design decision. Below is ourlist of the top 5 most glaringly bad design decisions the company hasrecently (and is still currently) incorporating into its hardware. Feelfree to add your own favorites in the comments.
5) The iPhone’s speakerphone volume is (still) pitiful In “reinventing the phoneâ€, Apple chose to unnecessarily re-invent the “low volume speakerphone“.Even after the alleged volume increase brought about by the 1.1.1firmware, the iPhone’s speakerphone volume is laughable. If this is aploy to sell more headsets, I hope Apple reaches its goal soon, as I amgoing nuts trying to use the iPhone in the car. The lowvolume doesn’t quite seem to be hardware specific, as the volume whenplaying movies and music via the speaker is MUCH louder than the volumethe speakerphone is capable of when placing calls. This may besomething Apple can address with yet another firmware boost, but ifnot, the iPhone 2.0 needs some new serious new speakerphone hardware.
Advice: Increase the speaker phone volume to a level usable outside of a monastery
4) MacBook discoloration. Sure, we all love the white plastic material the MacBooks are made of (or DID a couple years ago (hint hint Mr. Ives)) but one thing no MacBook owner loves is the dingy discolorationthat forms around the palm rests. Sometimes it’s easy to forget whendesigning something that a person has to actually use it, and that oddsare, that person has sweat glands. Even those of us not suffering fromHyper-Hydrosis find that after a relatively short period of time we’reforced to raid the wife’s medicine cabinet looking for nail polish remover, or searching online for a MacBook specific polishing solution.
Advice: The MacBook has been around long enough now (and so has this problem) that a better choice of materials is long past due.
3) AppleTV low end model still has a 40 GB hard drive?!? These days a 250 GB of drive space can cost a consumer $100 (orless). A big company like Apple could obviously score an even betterdeal. It’s pretty sad when the smaller and cheaper base model iPodclassic comes with twice the hard drive space as somethingspecifically designed to serve as your digital media hub. This is justplain embarrassing. If the rumors of slow sales are true, I thinkApple’s marketing department has a good place to start looking fortheir culprit.
Advice: Apple, either bump the low-end model to 80 GB or just discontinue the project.
2) MacBook cracking OK, just like number 4 above, this is a well documented problem,and should have been acknowledged and addressed sooner. The crackingcases issue has spurred a couple theories, but whatever the cause, ithappens too often to be anything other than a design flaw.
Advice: Apple, change the MacBook’s latching mechanism and lid bezels
1) Combo drive on the MacBook Yes, this is not nearly as horrible as your computer physicallyfalling apart like number 2, but it just screams “tackyâ€, somethingApple fans pay extra to avoid. It is hard to find a PC for under $650that can’t burn a DVD (or at least give you the option for an extra $25or so). Apple’s stubbornness in sticking with the “good, better, bestâ€sales scheme has forced it to create perceived value by holding their“Superdrive†for ransom, not allowing it to be even an option on theirlow-end MacBook. Apple was first to ditch the floppy, but is the lastto ditch the CD-ROM? What happened to cutting edge? Their computers aremarketed as being the ideal music, photo and movie editing platform,yet we’re forced to burn 6 CD’s instead of 1 DVD? (what ’tillGreenpeace realizes this waste of resources!). Besides, Apple bundlesiLife with new MacBooks, but iDVD is useless on the low end model. Ismell rip-off.
Advice: Kill the combo drive, it’s enough already.
Digg Topic
Tag topic on On del.icio.us
Technorati Search
Post to Slashdot
