Jack of all trades or master of one?
Down south of the border, New York-based startup Peek has just started selling the TwitterPeek. The device is designed to do one thing, and one thing only - get you tweeting on the Twitter microblogging service.
The TwitterPeek has left much of the blogsphere scratching its head. "It's a portable device that only does Twitter. Seriously, who the hell would spend $200 on this? Am I crazy here?" asks gadget blog Gizmodo. Well, quite. It does seem odd to pay for a device that only does one thing - especially a device accessing a service normally used by people that like to do lots of things at once.
But it also raises a broader question: are we better off using multiple devices, each of which does one thing really well, or a single device that does everything kind of ok?
Design experts have been having this argument for years, and so have a lot of us, without perhaps even realising it. I once went to a food show, and was persuaded to buy the latest kitchen gadget. It sliced. It diced. It julienned. I'm sure that somewhere in there was probably a built-in garlic press and juicer. And as soon as I got it home, the cheap piece of plastic crap broke on me. Wouldn't I have been better off with separate devices to do each of those things? Sure, it may have cost more up front, but yes, I probably would have.
In many ways, the PC is overkill for a lot of people. I have older relatives that really only ever want to check their email and do a bit of web surfing. For them, a locked-down appliance with limited functions and an easy to use interface would be far better than a PC designed to do everything under the sun.
And then there's the ereader debate. Do you buy something dedicated, like the Sony eReader, or the Amazon Kindle (if and when it finally gets here), that does one thing very well, or do you just download an application to your phone that lets you read ebooks? Both have their advantages. Dedicated ereaders are built with electronic 'paper' that saves on battery life. They have larger screens than phones, too. Phones often make you squint at text, and eat up valuable battery power by constantly refreshing their LCD displays. On the other hand, phones have lots of things built into them, including cameras, email apps - oh, and you know, the whole phone thing, too. And there are Twitter applications for mobile phones these days, too.
Right now, of course, much of it will come down to weight, cost, and how many devices you want crammed into your pockets. But over time, we are likely to see hardware evolve to the point where a single device can do everything just as well as five or six dedicated ones. In the meantime, I'm finding that my phone is good enough that I'll often rely on it for everything when I'm out on the street - even though its camera is relatively low-resolution and doesn't have a zoom feature, for example.
So, which do you choose, dear reader? A jack-ass of all trades? Or a master of one?
Danny Bradbury, MSN Tech and Gadgets
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Posted by: Ray Ban sunglasses | Oct 6, 2010 10:21:58 PM
deep vein of empathy, both with the errant Giacomo-of-all-trades and with his era, underlies her vision of that scratching pen.