Hey, that sounds like me at a singles bar!

Thank you, I’ll be here all week.

And many times, there are drinks I want, but there seems to be plenty of reasons to keep me from buying.

“Can’t drink that while I’m working or driving.”
“Too many empty calories.”
“That will stain my teeth.”
“I’ve already had too many coffee-based drinks today.”
“That’ll drive my insulin levels insane.”
“That’s more than I want.”

On rare occasions, the stars align and I buy a beverage.

Ken B: I recently bought a DVD of music videos by Mylene Farmer. My forecast typical use case was to put the DVD in my computer DVD drive and then, over several days, take the occasional break and watch a video. It most certainly was not to put it into my DVD player and watch it start to finish, nor to go to the trouble of seating myself in front of my TV for the purpose of watching a solitary video (in the process swapping DVDs in and out). Guess what? The DVD comes with a “protection” system that deliberately prevents it from playing on computer DVD drives.
Keep in mind further that:
1. Those videos are easily available on the internet.
2. The protection can be circumvented by moderately savvy users.
3. This in no way prevents counterfeit DVDs.
I love Mylene Farmer and her videos. She has another three such DVDs out. Guess how many of them I’ll be buying?
[/venting]

Disagreeing with Alex above, the Lexus iPod problem is very likely because the ability to get to a specific song easily is what the iPod’s relatively complex and intuitive UI is for – Lexus would have to begin to duplicate core parts of the iPod interface to do such things. If you need to get to a very specific song, you would no worse off (or any less safe while driving) interacting with the iPod itself than a hyper-clunky steering/dashboard interface. If they could add in a voice activated song search interface the iPod didn’t have, you might be better off while driving. This safety and UI duplication are the reasons that most iPod/Car interfaces are limited to skip/replay and volume controls – set a general playlist and just get past the songs you don’t want to hear, at least until you hit the next longish traffic light.

As for the meaningless sirens it sounds more like sheer stupidity and active ignorance rather than a core design flaw – I’d suspect that even the staff don’t ask what the alarm’s for and assume that if it’s not needed someone will alter the alarm protocol. This kind of problem exists often in large bureaucratic organizations (like an airport) – and hence tends to be a systemic organizational flaw than a engineering-type design flaw.

I do have a similar story to the Lexus one though. We were in the market for a new vehicle and the utter incompetence of the Toyota Highlander nav system UI – something I wouldn’t use much at all given the iPad and iPhone alternatives – knocked it off the list for me since at the trim level I wanted, I couldn’t not get the GPS. The car, in general, was excellent, but my experience fiddling with the GPS UI ruined the larger experience for me. Given the general complexity of the system, cribbing some of the UI clues from smart-phone Google maps functionality – which I ended up using instead, on my iPhone on my day long test drive – would have been beneficial.

Similarly, Landsburg keeps encountering flashing lights and sirens at airports, and no one will offer him an explanation. The explanation is perfectly obvious to anyone who has seen Borne Identity: Landsburg is a terrorist/assassin with amnesia. I mean, duh.

The iPod docking station issue, on the other hand – that’s a real stumper.

One example used to be Volvo cup holders. Before Ford bought Volvo Cars in 1999, Volvo engineers refused to install cup holders in the cars they manufactured, because of perceived safety issues. Thus, other companies began marketing cup holders that installed in Volvos. At some point Volvo management recognized the size of the market that had arisen for cup holders, and insisted that Volvos be designed with cup holders.

Apparently, for several years Volvos were known for the poor quality of cup holders, but today the XC90 has 18 cup and bottle holders in a vehicle that seats 7.

P.S. I’ve never counted all of the cup and bottle holders in my wife’s Toyota Sienna, but there are 5 just for the two front seat passengers.