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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Thursday, August 01, 2002Bad user interface or RTFM?OK, so I've had this Volkswagen New Beetle for almost exactly two years now and it came with a factory installed six-disc CD changer in the trunk. I've always thought the thing was a little flaky: You'd change the discs around, close the trunk, hop in the car, fire up the stereo, and then at least 50 percent of the time the stereo display would read CHECK MAGAZIN, which I always understood meant that there was a problem of some sort. So for two years, every time I'd see this message, I'd hop back out of the car, open the trunk, eject the CD magazine, and fiddle around with the discs a bit. Nonsensical, yes, but it eventually worked every time. Yesterday, I bought a bunch of CDs at Best Buy and I figured I'd listen to one on the way home from the store, so I popped it in the changer and, sure enough, was greeted with a CHECK MAGAZIN message when I turned on the stereo. This time, I left the car running and the stereo on, got out, opened the trunk and... walla... the music started playing. And then I had the epiphany. CHECK MAGAZIN wasn't an instruction for me to check the CD magazine. It was simply an alert that the stereo knew that the CDs had changed, and it was checking the magazine to see which slots were filled. Duh. So ... is this really bad design? Or am I just an idiot? I think there are compelling cases to be made for both possibilities. [ Posted at 12:35 AM | Permalink ]
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