Thu, Sep 25, 2014 page9

• Forget smartphones — how about smart domestic appliances?

  With all the technology now available to us, it may be a teensy bit more useful to have our dinosaur domestic appliances updated rather than our phones

  • By Catherine Bennett / The Observer
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  In his inspirational review of two newly updated phones — the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus — British actor and writer Stephen Fry correctly anticipated that his admiration for these “exquisite” and “utterly gorgeous” devices would not please a contingent he identifies as “Apple-haters,” many of them moved by equal loyalty to other brands, such as Samsung, Sony and Dell.

  His critics responded with comments such as: “Pity it’s crap,” and the more constructive: “Stephen, you can buy the new Moto G Android phone for just ￡155 [US$254], which offers 95 percent or more of the functionality.”

  Meanwhile, crowds camped outside the Apple store in Sydney. One acolyte explained why he had traveled from the US, to buy both devices a day early: “It’s finally a bigger screen from Apple.”

  Even without the lifestyle in which phone size is crucial, or the expertise to judge which of the great mobile armies has right on its side, one has to admire the passion and rage generated by a marginal increase in dimensions and a new barometer that, Fry rejoices, allows the phone to distinguish between various kinds of gradient, with obvious benefits for larger-handed members of the fitness community. For if consumers can get that fussed about these tiny adjustments in function and color — silver, gold or “space gray” — in a market where progress is increasingly imperceptible, imagine what might happen if its brilliant minds ever turned their attention to washing machines.

  Here, the last great leap occurred around the time of the mangle. A little later, front-loading was invented. Since then, as far as I can tell, nothing. Whites. Coloreds. An insatiable appetite for Calgon and bra-wires. Door-release control-freakery. A detergent/softener dispenser drawer that is specifically designed — perhaps to keep housewives busy — to become rapidly bunged up with powder and slime, and will thus, if left alone, ensure reduced function and the same black mold that grows on the door seal.

  It remains a technological tradition for any key domestic appliance that its continued service depends, much in the manner of a temperamental donkey, on the patience and overwhelming dedication of its owner.

  “Wipe the door seal before and after each use,” washing machine makers will order, in an operating manual that, since the machine is not an intuitive smartphone, is indeed essential study and must never be thrown away, or not until several decades after the relevant appliance went to the dump.

  Neither miniaturization nor a designer name is any indicator of advanced labor saving.

  “Wash filters with cold water at least every month,” Dyson commands, in a manual that makes particularly extreme demands on behalf of its DC 26’s Filter B, which needs a coin to turn the stubborn plastic screw that liberates the part from a hidden chamber on the underside, prior to being rinsed and shaken precisely 10 times over. The filter then wants 24 hours to dry. The plastic drum and suctiony bit also require regular dismantling, rising and wiping. In fact, it is very easy to spend more time wrestling with the DC26 and its complex hygiene needs than on measuring gradients, although presumably the commitment is still greater for appliances not manufactured by one of the world’s greatest living designers.

  Washing machine still not working? You probably left cleaning it too long. Or used a rogue cleaning agent. Call one of our engineers at this now defunct number.

  Imagine the response, and not only from Fry, if every smartphone subjected the owner to incomprehensible instructions for its disassembly and the warning that, unless responsibly sluiced out and dried — using recommended brands only — no one could reasonably expect it to remain, in Fry’s word, “ravishing.”

  In reality, it is the very durability of mobile phones that requires their designers to keep adding millimeters and rounding corners in order to be acclaimed by famous personalities for their “matchless design and innovation.” Dissatisfaction will then be almost instantaneous among discerning consumers, for old phones that now look so repellently small and — in gradient assessment terms — ignorant.

  While Google is hailed for its glasses and handy, driverless car, vacuum cleaners have gone into reverse and Mumsnet (the UK’s largest Web site for parents) message boards host regular debates on how to fix a smelly washing machine. One controversial solution is regular boiling-hot, maintenance washes: Others insist this only exacerbates a problem best alleviated by vinegar and the avoidance of low-temperature cycles.

  Alas, as well as being an energy-saving selling point, 40o washes create a perfect home for bacteria, which enjoy the sludge and eco-friendly fat residues.

  Is this conundrum something that might interest the brilliant Australian designer Marc Newson, at the point that repeatedly growing/shrinking the iPhone, so as to make it more ravishing than a Samsung, ceases to be a rewarding project?

  As anyone who regularly uses an iron, cooker, food mixer or dishwasher will know, opportunities for greatness in household maintenance design are not confined to laundry. However benevolent the current rhapsodies about “smart” kitchens, in which the multitasking fridge, with its mobile phone-inspired console, knows how to tell the cooker who’s coming for dinner, many of us would prefer thick appliances that work better and, ideally, do not explode regularly.

  It could easily be concluded, from the determined lack of technocratic interest — and favored proposals in design competitions — that all the above white goods had achieved some kind of platonic ideal, as opposed to a rattly, limescaley plateau. None of them has advanced, significantly, for decades, a technological and design failure that at least benefits the illustrators of all children’s books since Peepo!, if not, given current vintage susceptibilities, A Christmas Carol.

  Consumer conservatism appears to be the prevailing explanation for this failure to build on technology that first liberated women from sculleries full of steam, souring milk and the smell of wet wool.

  However, the contrasting representation of the sexes, inside kitchens as opposed to palaces of computer technology, may account for some of the complacency about inefficient, often comically ugly, domestic machinery.

  For all Apple notices, we could be whacking sheets against a rock. Studies have shown women do three times as much housework, excluding childcare, as men: 17 hours per week, as opposed to six. Look up washing machines on the popular Gizmodo Web site and the most recent story is about NASA’s quest for one that works in space.

  Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect people who have never experienced the joy of laundry to give much thought to problems such as non-dissolving detergent sachets or overflowing lint trays, which, after all, never did worse than waste women’s time. The far greater marginalization of aging and infirm people probably explains why shake correction and enhanced pixel count constitute urgent advances in broadsheet reviews of smartphones, but for, say, the growing number of patients with macular degeneration, the doctor can only suggest brighter lights and a magnifying glass.
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