We Mac users give Apple a draw of heartache . And while some of it is justify , in other cases I suspect we ’ve all lost a small perspective about the company that makes so many of the products we expend on a regular basis .

I was think about this the other solar day , as I used a new product that ’s fundamentally a “ video iPod ” — it ’s got a color LCD screen door , a 20 GB hard drive , and built - in music and video musician , along with a bunch of other features . I ’m still trying to get playable video onto its hard drive , so that ’s a frustration . But it ’s not my major one .

My major thwarting with this mathematical product , and with several others I ’ve seen recently , is that they seem to have been design at random . There appear to be very little care , and certainly no creativity , go into their designs . This picky equipment has an interface style clearly inspired by the Mac ( it ’s get a lot of , um , familiarOS 9 - Platinum windows ) , but in terms of usability it ’s not even on the function . You use a joystick to navigate through its port , but the ( poorly marked ) “ enter ” clit is not the nigh to the joystick . The “ cancel ” push button is . Which means half the prison term I ’m lead in the faulty direction when I ’m using this affair .

The medicine player user interface is totally based on its file - system , so if I do n’t have my music sorted in folders by artist and album ( and with the case-by-case files of each album amount ) , I ’m in real trouble .

From the badly labeled and ill placed forcible clit to the confusing , unattractive interface on the LCD , this product ( which , if I can actually get video to play on it the right way , might be very coolheaded in terms of what it can do ) is a admonisher of what Apple is so unspoilt at . Pick up a Dell DJ or Archos Jukebox sometime and compare it to the iPod . It ’s not even closelipped .

Apple does n’t just create pretty piece of music of computer hardware . When they do it right , the hardware is also remarkablyfunctional . Even when Apple makes mistakes , it ’s clean-cut that its creative people are working very hard to consider the ramifications of button placement , labeling , the position of a equipment ’s ports … plus they ’re take that care with the software running on that equipment .

Yes , I ’m the same guy who just complained about the locating of the third - generation iPod buttons . But I think the level of that complaint evidence my point . Whether Apple made us wish profoundly about honest interface design or it was our demand for good user interface design that led us to Apple , we really care about this stuff . And seeing a starkly non - Apple interface on a product with several Apple - like feature really drives that point home .