

How Japan Lost Its Electronics Crown - gagan2020
http://allthingsd.com/20120815/how-japan-lost-its-electronics-crown/

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alwaysinshade
Japan's electronics industry has many issues holding it back, but the biggest
one in my mind is how they perceive and implement user interfaces.

I recall buying a Sony MZ-N10 minidisc player [1] around 2002 and it was a
technological breakthrough for its time - impossibly thin, light, robust and
could record audio to disc with incredible clarity. The electronic disk
ejection mechanism was very cool. The battery life was unheard of. The was a
button for every function, and every function could be messed with. I remember
keeping the language in Japanese and the eerie blue backlight on the remote
permanently turned on so that it looked cool.

But at the time it was released Apple had released the iPod. Basically a tiny
HDD and audio decoder hidden under a simple user interface and simple human-
machine-interface. All it did was play music, and it could store a lot of it
for a little over half the price of the MZ-N10. Instead of being encrusted
with a myriad of buttons, it relegated the functionality to the user
interface. Simplicity through clever software.

Since then every Japanese gadget I've purchased has suffered from the same
problem - excellent engineering but poor user-interface. The one exception
being my Canon image stabilised binoculars which have exactly one button and a
focus ring. Japan still reigns supreme for optics.

[1] <http://www.minidisc.org/brian_youn/mzn10/>

