Sometimes Technology Fails

There is a saying: "It's the Stingy Man that spends the most." I just spend a full IT work day becoming increasingly angry trying to get an Android tablet to do what it says it will do, namely to read books. Twitchy, crashy, dysfunctional. And the OS Android 4.0 is not very good. It lacks the crucial exception handling necessary to be stable. Worse, the model I was working on did not have Google Play installed, which meant I could NOT update or upgrade the buggy apps it was installed with, and the instructions to install apps were just plain wrong. Walking off my rage for a good half an hour (that's how angry I was) pondering the situation, and how if I were being paid for this particular job it would already be 3x the value of the device in labor, I knew the right answer was to return it and get something that works, right off the bat, easily, every time, no excuses. With all the exception handling code written and tested so you get an error message rather than a black screen and a non-responsive paperweight.

And Exception Handling is the real ugly bugaboo of the IT industry. Its what people like me learned to hate the absence of. And what SHOULD be a fireable offense for any salesrep or CEO bandying his hardware/software like its finished. If the coding isn't done or tested, its not reliable, and thus will cost untold man hours of IT rage and returned products. Customers will not stand for paying good money for crap product. Salesreps think selling garbage to suckers is funny because they get paid and the IT guy has to deal with all the screwups. The one who sold an untested device to my elderly parents? That's going back as I type this. And my elderly parents are now rather pissed off and suspicious of the whole Android Operating System. They've had an object lesson in DRM and do not think its okay. Something I worked out ages ago, with EFF pointing out all its flaws on Wired. Really, tablets are a mobile sales opportunity attached to your credit card, and if what you're buying doesn't arrive perfectly? Yeah, people get angry. Fingers start pointing. Its a bad scene.

I still want a convergence device someday, but Android isn't there yet. My elderly mother will be using audiobooks on my MP3 player, which is non-DRM btw, and runs on disposable batteries so it still works years after purchase. That's what you need. The real world is about quality and durability. It's not about pulling a fast one.