Does someone care what the consumer wants?

I own a Nokia N95 mobile phone, which is the the most technologically advanced phone I've ever had. It's a phone, a computer with wifi, a mp3 player, a 5mp camera with flash with a a memory card (available up to 8GB today).

As I mentioned in one of my blogs, I have a wifi network set up at home and I wanted my N95 to connect to the wifi network and access the hard drive (containing all my music files). But it would not access the external hard drive for some reason - either the two platforms are different or N95 does not behave like a host. Imagine if I could access my music library through my phone - my N95 would become a remote control for the whole music at home (see Picture)

May be I am imagining - but isn't it what every consumer would want?

The new car...

I remember when my parents bought the first B&W television - it had three control buttons:
Switch on/off/volume, brightness & contrast.

I recently bought a Denon 7.1 channel AV amplifier. It has separate buttons to switch on and off. It has more buttons than I will ever use (or any normal non-geek will). I fully understand that the device is multifunctional but it does not have to compromise simplicity.

iPod wasn't the best portable mp3 player in the world - it was designed with a normal consumer in mind. Nokia is the market leader because it has not changed its user interface since the early nineties - That explains the millions of people who never buy any other phone.

I picked up my new car today. Without getting into the details of the make and model, I must confess that I ordered the highest spec series with the infotainment, SatNav, Adaptive Cruise Control et al. When I couldn't get things to work (they weren't intuitive), I reached for the user manual - it runs into 1200 pages and could be one of the electives in a management programme. I don't know where to begin and how to make everything (or anything) work. I guess that is why God created weekends.