Overanalyzed

“It just works”

November 7, 2008 at 7:48 pm | In Business, Technology | No Comments
by Chris Davenport

There’s been a lot of talk about “It Just Works” lately, probably due to the renewed popularity of the Mac platforms. I recall quite a few “just works” promises in the past. Plug and Play was supposed to be that. Heck, the very meaning of the phrase is almost identical.

The problem with “It Just Works” is “It Just Doesn’t”.

I can’t count the number of times some unnamed thing has gone wrong and prevented something from “just working”. I had a windows box that lost its drivers. The built-in drivers that ship with windows. Lost. Plug in a USB key, and it asks you to install the USB Storage driver. Or the Floppy Disk driver. Could make it work, browse to the windows driver directory, find the file that’s already in the OS driver collection, and tell it to use that one, and it goes. Still, a normal user confronted with such things is immediately lost, all because windows can’t find it’s own driver database, which should “just work”, for a USB generic device, which should also “just work”.

This morning I had a RedHat 5 system that couldn’t see it’s PS/2 mouse. i8202 driver loaded, gets interrupts from the keyboard, no problem, no mouse. You’re not supposed to have to reboot Linux, but what can one do when the bus just won’t talk to the device? Yeah, yeah, go hardcore CTRL-ALT-F1 and drop that sissy graphical desktop. I did. But that’s not fixing my mouse. I’m just glad it wasn’t the keyboard. PS/2 mice are old technology that in my limited experience “just work” the large majority of the time, except this time it “just doesn’t”.

Virtually all of those situations are met with puzzlement and the suggestion to reinstall and/or reboot by the tech support of the world. I’ve been tech support, and I hate that approach because it doesn’t tell you how you got there or ensure you won’t get there again, though occasionally I have little option. Incidentally, that’s one of the things I dislike about the Mac. Fewer knobs and settings to fiddle with to fix things when they’re broken. I agree all the tweaks shouldn’t be presented to the user generally, but they should be accessible somewhere. Windows does a little better, though also much worse, if you have any experience with the registry (of doom!). Linux does better still, though again, much worse, virtually every knob and dial is available to a linux admin, you just have to know what where to find the knob, where to find the changes it makes, what to look for, and how to read what you find.. A lot is documented, and if you’re so inclined, you can probably go read the code, which you’ll have to do if google doesn’t pan out. Of course, now you’re a theoretical administrator who has all that time to fix the problem, and it’s probably pointless since they don’t pay or listen to noncorporeal sysadmins.

Of course, there are systems for which a reboot or reinstall meaningless….

I set up powerline networking recently, HomePlug AV protocol, specific device is probably irrelevant, they all advertise “plug and go”. It didn’t work. My device was able to get an IP off my home network, but every time it tried to update itself, it failed. Could be poor circuit layout, too much distance, the unavoidable power strip I had in the mix. I relocated it to an adjacent outlet and did some testing, I was losing 14% of all pings. No explanation, no diagnostics or other setting manipulation possible. I upgraded the firmware. Blindly, I might add, since none of them mention what’s changed or why I’d want to upgrade. But it works now. More of a “it just works after you fiddle with it” situation, which is true of virtually everything.

SlingBox did the same thing. It’s been a great product for the “just works” situation, except now it’s forgetting remote codes. Error 93260000, nicely unexplained and ignored by their tech support. Forums are full of witch doctor fixes “reboot it twice and resave the configuration”, hold the power button for 5 seconds, etc. It’s only been a problem since the slingplayer 2.0 upgrade.. Which has had it’s hardware performance requirements jacked up to the point where my 2GHz laptop can’t play video anymore, even though it was doing fine with 1.5 at ~4300Kbps HD quality video, that’s now a .Net app, in case you’re one of the converted. Downgraded that, reset the slingbox, and the remote codes are working again, for about an hour. Reset the slingbox, and it works again.. Connect the next day with nothing touching it in between, and they’re lost again. It just doesn’t work anymore. Must be something in the slingbox configuration and/or box firmware upgrade, though I’ve read on their forums that folks who haven’t upgraded the slingbox firmware are having the same problem.

I’ve worked in software/hardware development of commercial products, and the issue is usually time and testing. Can’t test every configuration, can’t get every bug fixed, can’t get every feature in. If it’s a new or emerging standard, like powerline ethernet, there’s often a lack of test tools. In the end, it’s a business decision. Eventually it costs you less money to ship it as is than to continue to work on it.

So I understand the issues with making perfect products, and I take “just works” with a grain of salt, trying hard not to insert the doesn’t. If you work on such products, I encourage you to check the error codes that should never happen, expose the dials under a hood for those that need them, and try to give some minimially unique and preferably useful (to a user) output when everything goes tits up.