A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
It’s November again, the time of the year when we gather to feast on a large gallinaceous bird, Meleagris gallopavo, of North America, having a bare wattled head and neck and a brownish iridescent plumage. This would probably be a good month to talk some turkey. To be more specific, I’m going to talk turkey from the slang section of the dictionary. Not a stupid, incompetent or unappealing person, but a thing that fails. This month is about technological turkeys.
The Affordable Care Act brought us the Health Care Website, which was such a big initial failure that it was the target of joke on every late night show. My personal observation is that this was just one of many medical websites that are lacking. For example, the portal for my doctor’s medical group will only allow me to request prescription refills from certain pharmacies, many of which aren’t in Lake Charles. This is just lousy website design. They wonder why more patients don’t use it. The website where I actually get my medications from is down more than it is operating. I’ve found it’s easier to just make a telephone call. Then there was the time I had to get three blood tests in one day because the medical community couldn’t share the results. I’m just happy that the doctors and nurses seem to be programmed much better than their computers.
The Google Nexus Q was announced in June 2012 and officially dropped in October of the same year. I think David Pogue described the Nexus Q perfectly when he said, “I can think of only one class of customer who should consider buying the black Nexus Q sphere: people whose living rooms are dominated by bowling-ball collections.”
Does anyone remember the Iomega Zip Drive? The problem was that thousands of them didn’t work. You could hear the drive head clicking as it destroyed the data on your disk. Rather than acknowledge and fix the problem, Iomega chose to ignore it until there was a class action suit.
In July of 2011, the HP TouchPad was an eagerly awaited tablet that was going to rejuvenate HP’s WebOS operating system. The machine was buggy, slow and had hardly any apps. In less than three months, it was history.
Whatever happened to the virtual optical keyboard? This was a holographic keyboard that could be projected on almost any surface. It was supposed to be the end of clunky computer keyboards. I’m not sure, but I think the plans were accidentally rolled up in one of those flexible keyboards and thrown out in the trash.
The only good thing about Windows Millennium was that it had a cool name. As an operating system, it was a real dud. When the PadBot debuted, it was going to revolutionize the world as we know it. All you had to do was attach your iPad and the machine would be “you”. You could send it almost anywhere and view, converse and interact with people. This device was so popular that I don’t know anyone that has ever seen one.
The Zune MP3 player was going to be Microsoft’s iPod killer. It had a few problems. It was ugly, expensive and had inferior sound. Not only did it not put a dent in iPod sales, it didn’t manage to gain market share over any of its rivals.
There are many other turkeys. I could talk about things like the Segway, Sony Betamax, Windows Phone 7, Apple Lisa and the wearable computer to name a few. I think I’ll wait to write about them after I get my microchip implanted.
It may not be an official technological turkey yet, but I think the Amazon Fire Phone will soon be one. Originally priced at $199 with a two year contract, the Fire Phone was reduced to 99 cents less than two months after release. Although it has some impressive specs, consumers don’t seem to want Amazon’s forked Android system on their phone. Even on the Amazon website, the phone only gets 2.2 stars. Many of the reviews that are five stars are because of the year of Amazon prime that is bundled with the machine.
That’s all of my thoughts for November. My mind is empty again. Thanks for reading.