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I've been on this planet for a while now and during my tenure here I've seen many examples of the most insidious forms of idea development ever. NIFE (Nice Idea, Failed Execution) and DFTSOD (Design For The Sake Of Design). The latter is pronounced "daft sod" on account of that's who came up with the idea in the first place, some daft sod.

I'm a fan of neither as they make life a pain to live. For example, and this is going to get a bit gross, one example of DFTSOD was when I helped my mate move. After the shift I had to christen the dunny and  when I went to flush DFTSOD came into full swing for whoever designed the outlet decided a small hole was a good idea. I'll tell you this for free... it wasn't. I had to go outside to find a stick to break up yesterday's dinner to allow it to be flushed away.

Poorly designed bogs aside, NIFE and DFTSOD affect technology more than you could ever imagine. None more so than Microsoft's latest OSs namely XP and Vista.

In an ever increasing effort to curb their security issues with their OSs, MS employed NIFE rampantly through XP and Vista. For example Internet Explorer tells you it has blocked the download of a file that you clicked on to download. You then have to click a box to tell IE to download the file that you wanted to download in the first place. Then, when you go to run said downloaded file it asks you if you actually want to run this file that you double-clicked on so as to run the file. Even when you untick the "Ask this for all files of this type" box it will continue to ask this the next time either this file or an EXE like this file is run. Wow. That's a brilliant waste of time and effort to simply install a program that you wish to use. Thanks MS.

How about pop-up blockers? FireFox won't run pop-up ads, and many Flash ads it will also block. How does IE work? It pops up a message saying it blocked a pop-up. Alright I suppose until you want to run said pop-up because it contains login screens for a site you need to access like say... oh I don't know... the call system we use at work. To get around this I need to tell Internet Explorer to allow pop-ups for every site that has our domain name on it. FireFox will allow the pop-ups through so long as they are from links clicked. It does have a bypass list but this is a cumbersome way of doing things. Safari on the other hand has a lot of thought put into it. With pop-up blocker running it will prevent pop-ups running but like the above scenario it will also block the required pop-ups. Does Safari have a pop-up manager? Nope. You untick Block Pop-Up Windows then run the link again then turn pop-up blocker on again. It then remembers that setting and each time you visit that site it will run the pop-up. A browser that you can train??? Isn't that the same as Junk Mail filter in Mail? Brilliant.

NIFE is a drain on productivity but worst of all is DFTSOD.

As a Systems Engineer I see DFTSOD in every machine out there. Some, like HP, go to great lengths to design their machines in such a way that everything is easy for an engineer to work on. For the most part HP succeeds very much but there's some where you wonder what they were smoking at the time. A good example of this is the HP D530. The motherboard slides out on a metal tray. That's good design. The drives slide up so you can get to the harddrive all the while the drives are held in by metal clips so you don't need to unscrew them (except when replacing the drive you need to unscrew the screws from the faulty one then screw them into the replacement but that's not too bad). That's good design. However, to get to the drives you first need to remove the front plate. This is only unclipping some plastic tabs but this is still DFTSOD because it's really unnecessary. But the worst example of DFTSOD on the D530 is the removal of the power supply. To get to the power supply you need to remove the entire backplane which is seriously bad DFTSOD not least of which is because the case lock switch is in such a position that removal almost destroys the plugs. DFTSOD. But once the backplane is removed the power supply just slides out. That's good design.

Why is it that good design is ALWAYS thwarted by bad?

Meanwhile the Macs are so wonderful to work on. I just recently replaced my 512MB RAM with 2GB RAM in my Mac Mini. The Mini is almost out of warranty so I decided to do it myself. I've seen the videos for the old PPC based Minis and they're pretty much the same for the Intel Mini. While I removed some screws that ultimately didn't need to be removed (the two versions of the Mini do have some differences) and while I had to work out how to reach a couple of screws, ultimately the placement of everything was logical and well designed. The DVD Writer, Harddrive, and CPU fan came out as one whole unit leaving easy access to  the motherboard. I'm amazed that while it was more akin to working on a laptop in terms of time taken to get to the work area, it still took less time than I thought.

Even my old iBook when I went to replace the harddrive in it. It took a while to get into it and replace but as I pulled the machine apart I realised just how much thought had gone into putting everything in place. At that time Apple hadn't gone for user-replaceable parts so replacing the HDD wasn't as easy as it is now but even still there was no space wasted. That's efficient use of space.

Unfortunately I work on Acers and while they are getting better they have a long way to go. For example one of their models, the Veriton 2800, has a design flaw that makes the machine a piece of junk. I often have to replace the power supply in this because they keep blowing. In some machines more than once. They have the power supply sitting behind the drive cage where the HDD and CD ROM drives are. The problem is that the distance between the two are negligible  and as such heat from the drive is sucked through the power supply. Sooner or later the power supply heats up and pops. Good one.

Apple doesn't employ NIFE or DFTSOD. Their designs are logical and with intense thought behind them. Many people think they designed Macs, iPods, and iPhones for good looks instead of practicality but this is so far from the truth. The speakers on the iMacs pointing down so as to be bounced to your ears is pure magic. The clips that you pop-out to allow you access to the RAM and HDD while note removing the aesthetics is magic. There's no reason why computers can't look good and be easy to access as well.

The removal of the keyboard from the iPhone is another aspect that many complain about but fail to realise the significance of. "Can't text and drive" say many, all of whom fail to realise you SHOULDN'T text and drive in the first place. But why have half the phone dedicated to something that isn't needed most of the time anyway? The buttons on many phones are nigh on unusable anyway either being too small or to close together or worse being indented so as to make them difficult to use (I'm talking to you Sony Ericsson V800i). The iPhone keyboard is pure magic and I can't wait to get my grubby little mitts on one.

The tech world, in particular the PC world, needs to wake up and put thought into their designs. Design to make things look good but design with the engineer in mind as well. Design with security and ease of use in mind rather than placing sticking plasters on broken arms. You can't be perfect but you can at least try.