A Rant on Stupid Products and Ignored Customer Demands

It's no secret that I am not particularly fond of the current debt-based monetary system and its resulting "economy".

But while I used to fight the system endlessly I have since learnt that getting with the way things are is the way to go for me. This of course does not mean that it can't or shouldn't be changed - and working on that without overdoing it seems to be part of my life mission.

However, there's one thing that particularly annoys me every time I find myself in need of a certain product to serve a specific purpose. This will probably turn out to be a nerdy rant, so be warned.

A world of substandard tools

As we have already explored in the article waste = profit, there are ample problems in a system that rewards scarcity and waste. Everybody has to look out for his own self-interest, and the same goes for companies that produce products. The costs of developing, producing and marketing a product have to be factored into the final street price and naturally, the less a product costs the lower its quality is.

I am under no illusion that currently this is the way the system works and I can get behind that for the time being.

What I can't seem to get behind is my seemingly unreasonable demands towards a product in doing what it was allegedly designed to do. Whenever I am looking for a new tool to help me do my work - be it a laptop, a midi keyboard, a piece of software - I usually find myself in some sort of strange universe where my basic requirements for said product are offered but not realized.

I get it, using plastic is cheaper than metal and I can't expect an aluminum casing for a midi controller and expect to pay less than 400 bucks for it. Check.

But what really annoys me is that the demands I have for a midi controller seem to be disregarded by literally all manufacturers claiming to have the perfect tool for the job.

Maybe I'm just unreasonable

So often I figured, "oh well, maybe I just want it all and the world simply doesn't work like that at the moment". But then, in browsing forums, watching product presentations and reading customer reviews I find that literally all other potential buyers I hear from feel exactly the same way about the choices offered.

We all agree - we have to make some concessions in terms of quality if we pay less than a thousand bucks for it. A midi controller will have a plastic keyboard and non-metal knobs. And we don't mind it.

What we do mind is that a controller might offer all the functionality we are after, but only allows it to be used in conjunction with their substandard software. There are proprietary hurdles everywhere, purposefully built-in limitations that are utterly unnecessary except from the standpoint of forcing customers to use specific software with their new controller that is far behind the software the customer already uses.

For the mere sake of binding them to the company.

Look at all these marvellous, unusable features!

So for example, there is a midi keyboard I was recently looking at that claims to have velocity sensitive touch pads for recording a drum pattern. The controller is about 400 bucks, the same model has been available since 2012. Which is kinda steep considering it's basically a plastic build - even in the parts that are often touched and used.

ALRIGHT THEN...

But then I read that most customers instantly disliked the touch pads. "It's like hammering your hand on concrete, these things may be touch sensitive if you hammer down on them with considerable strength but I find I don't play natural rhythms anymore, I feel like hammering a nail into the wall with my bare hands and after 20 minutes I went back to putting my notes in with a mouse".

Ouch. Remind me again why I need that controller?

I go on and read a dozen similar accounts testifying that "I would never buy this thing again, I am hugely disappointed".

Then I think: Oh well, maybe I don't really need the touch pads, better to know beforehand what I'm getting into. So I see that the controller still features on-display functionality which would allow me to focus on the controller exclusively when tweaking sounds and work more intuitively. Workflow improvement x 10 - sounds good.

So I go and read about that aspect and I find that "while the functionality is there, the display is so annoyingly small that I quickly found myself going back to tweaking my synths with my mouse because it's still more accessible than the controller-overview". Another one reads: "While I do like that I can manipulate my sounds in all aspects with this controller, the menu system makes it really complicated to find what you are looking for without browsing through 5 different menu tabs first."

Well is this a workflow-improving controller or not?!

And another half dozen customers agree, stating that they could easily part with the 3 included software synthesizers, the touch strip functionality and the aftertouch feature on the keys... if the damn thing only did the major things right it claims to be designed for! These other features are all nice to have but we could easily live without them as long as the manufacturer concentrated on the main selling points of the device and made those work as they should.

What we really want is for this thing to simply do what it claims: improving our workflow.

"So, you want the car without the doors or the bike without the brakes?"

Testing products before release

Why I find this so odd is that I literally always have this situation when I want to buy anything, especially with electronics.

Here is a mass of potential customers who have clear demands, despite their diverse methods of working. And yet, when a product comes out that seems to address these concerns (and that has no objective price-related reason to not deliver) we find out that - at the end of the day - the upgrade to said product brings with it an enormous set of drawbacks that spoil the whole experience.

Companies always test products, they build prototypes, they have whole armies of product testers. And yet, a product will be released in a way that literally conjures up buyer's remorse if I wasn't smart enough to read some real-people-reviews beforehand. And often times even then.

Good old competition

But that is what we have competition for right? So that at least one of the manufacturers will do their job right...

Well, I used to think so, but then I find that while the competitor's product has amazing touchpads, it forces you to use their nested software for using the full functionality of the controller. And the software of course overcomplicates it all again to a major degree. sigh

"Sure you can wear this amazing suit, but you kinda have to wear our super-specially designed wonder-shirt underneath it for that coat to do its job."

What?

No, I just want the coat, PLEASE! Your coat is literally perfect for what I need, except for that annoying shirt-dependence thingy you have purposefully built in. And everyone online knows that it is so, so why don't you guys get it and build a thing that people actually want?

Well I have my own theories about that that might be too conspiratorial to name here... Either way this set of circumstances annoys me to no end, and it's probably one of the main reasons I never buy things except when I really, really need them.

Don't even get me started on how the once simple Windows XP has been intentionally overcomplicated in their consecutive "upgrade" operating systems that came out since then so that now - as a long-time windows user - I can't find anything in the settings that I am looking for without pulling up a youtube tutorial with 2 mio. views of people who have exactly the same basic demand that I do. And all of us find it highly odd that they overcomplicated this simple feature that always used to be easily accessible and intuitive, even for new users.

And in the end I always feel to be the stupid one because I still use windows despite wanting to switch to linux for years, but always finding my tools don't work there yet... In code (just like in product creation in general) nothing happens by accident, everything was decided upon by someone...

I used to explain these sorts of issues with incompetency on the manufacturer's part, but after 15 years of buying and using electronics, instruments and software I see a certain pattern at play here that I can't or won't believe is due to negligence or incompetency. These manufacturers have feedback from tens of thousands of customers, they are professionals in designing and testing products and software and - hopefully - they have tried to use their own product at least once and see how they like it themselves.

The end result is seeing a product presentation of a midi controller that is supposedly usable without looking at the computer-screen, but the presenter in question is looking at the screen constantly while trying to create the impression that he doesn't really need to.

As my dad jokingly used to say: "Excuse me sir, have you ever tried using your own product for what you claim it is useful for? Apparently not."

How right he was <3

About the only product that delivered more than it promised was the good old N64 from my childhood days. It stayed with me for many years, took countless hours of gameplay and even survived a freakin' flooding of my basement once without even so much as complaining. It just worked.

Now I don't have that expectation for any product out there. But it sure shows that these sorts of things are possible, or at least: they used to be.

I'm curious, do you find yourself in a similar situation along with everybody else when you consider buying something? Do you regularly get buyer's remorse despite your best efforts? Or are my demands really too much to be honored by a company setting out to create the "perfect product" for my requirements?

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Thanks for stopping by <3