It is ever surprising to me how often large companies have obvious design misses. Here’s a few examples of just the last days:

My new TomTom remote cannot say “metres”. Instead, it says “meep” – it cuts off the word. A bug, and a very obvious one: evidently no-one tried this device set to English but metric (there’s only just enough time to say “feet” or “yards”).

That same TomTom no longer turns off when the 12V power disappears (i.e. when you switch off the car). Drained battery every time, then.

Apple left the IR sensor off the new Retina MacBook. Meaning I cannot use it for the presentations I do (a remote control advances the Keynote presentation to the next page) – hence I need to keep the old MacBook around just for presentations. Since Keynote is a key app for Apple, this oversight seems odd, and it is very disappointing to me. The lack of a $1 sensor makes the laptop non-usable for my work!

Talking about Apple apps; iBooks Author is not bad, but it has some pretty atrocious issues. That’s why my Camera Recipe Book is not out yet – it’s 99% there but the remaining 1% will take me a couple of days yet. The good news: the book’s better than ever. Stay tuned here!

And I haven’t even started talking about Japanese cameras, whose User Interfaces are evidently designed by committee.

In the past few weeks I have encountered many other such issues: it is surprising that corporations fail in such obvious ways. It seems to me that every company needs a Steve Jobs around to kick some sense into people.

Back to my book design.