This week, Plugged In is right in front of you, begging that you can’t see it.
Obvious is a weird old concept.
You’d think, by its very definition, we wouldn’t even need the word. If something simply is, then surely it’s obvious by its nature?
To put it another way, if it’s obvious, why are we even mentioning it?
Well, tech companies are here to answer this rhetorical question loudly and shirtless on my roof.
"NOTHING IS OBVIOUS," the organizations shout.
I began trudging down this path of teenage-level philosophy last week. I had one of those moments where long-term irritation turned elegantly into irrational rage.
Why? Because there’s no goddamn warmup mode on the Apple Watch Workout app.
While my anger has subsided, my bafflement has not.
If I was creating an exercise tracking app, one of the first things I’d include a warmup mode. Surely that’s obvious
Yet, here we are, six years after launch — and still nothing.
Me, waiting for the launch of warmup mode.
This is hardly the only situation where a company has missed an obvious feature for a long fucking time.
It took EIGHT YEARS for Fitbit — a literal health tracker — to monitor periods. Thank the lord that almost no humans menstruate. Would be really embarrassing if, say, about 50% of the world did.
Another example are the Cowboy ebikes. These took four years from launch to include mudguards as standard. My ass got splashed a lot.
And the iPad? Well, that still doesn’t have a native calculator app.
I can imagine one person missing these things — but multitudes of them? Teams of designers and marketers and engineers? And none of them thought, “Maybe you should be able to copy folders on Google Docs?”
"He's about to do something stupid."
Of course, some of these... oversights (?) are straight-up failures and deserve derision.
For example, the only rational explanation for the Fitbit “omission” is no one working there had heard of “women.”
The rest of these cases just prove to me once again that obvious is a dumbass word. Obvious to who?
(P.S. We're keen to improve Plugged In and hear what you think about it, so head to the bottom of this email to give us your thoughts!)