Recently, both my desktop computer and tablet had upgrades to the software. The computer was an automatic one, and the tablet was initiated by me. Easy eh? Well it should be, but for some reason, the software developers think they know better than me as to what I want. Now I won’t tell you the manufacturers of my devices, but one runs software designed by Granny Smith and the other developed by a green R2D2.
In the middle of a Skype call, my desktop tells me it wants to reboot to finish installing the software. ‘No,’ I say, ‘you can do that tonight when I’m asleep.’ The computer acknowledges my command and then reboots anyway.
Whilst I’m waiting for this rebellious machine to do its thing, I pick up my tablet, which I had updated in the morning, and went to my Kindle program. Wonderful, none of my books were there. I told it to find them and it refused. One reboot later and a fresh sign in to Kindle, my books return. Having checked what I want, I now open my browser and find my home page has been reset to the page of the equipment manufacturer!
Flash back two hundred years. When something was to be written, you toddled off to the nearest goose and plucked a feather. Pen knife in hand you cut the end of the feather into a nib, dipped the tip in a dark liquid and started scratching your marks on a piece of parchment.
Now, you will note that at no point, despite having a major part to
play in the process, does the goose dictate to you what you can write, how it should be formatted, or which books you can consult. It doesn’t come around to change the ink colour, or the slant on your writing.
When will manufacturers realise that when I change the settings on my device, it’s because I want it to be that way. STOP CHANGING IT BACK!
And whilst I’m at it, I’m tired of being told my password is too short, has been used in the last millennia, doesn’t have enough symbols/capitals/seven dwarf names or any other of the wonderful things they come up with. Pretty soon the only people that will be able to get into any account will be the hackers, because the rest of us will still be trying to work out whether it was an umlaut or a tilde that was the seventeenth character, before we get locked out on the third attempt.
I’m going to go and lie down in a darkened room now, that’s if I can remember the door code to get in.
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