Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
If I were to take anything from this week’s Consumer Electronics Show as an indicator of what to expect in 2012, that would be that there a lot of people interested in gadgets and that we can expect to be standing in more lines.
Having attended this annual congregation of all things “things-related” on and off for more than a decade, I can honestly say that this year’s event was as well attended as any I have ever covered. There were people everywhere. And when I say everywhere I mean they were standing in lines … everywhere.
There were lines to get in the door of the show; lines to all the restrooms; lines to get food; lines for cabs; lines for buses; lines for monorails; lines for lines; lines for dancing; and as it was Las Vegas, I am guessing other lines as well.
The Consumer Electronics Association, which puts on the event, said attendance was somewhere in the neighborhood of 140,000 people. I have no idea how many people that is or what that amount of people would look like in one place, but I think I now have an idea. In fact, I might go so far as to say that the CEA estimates were a bit short as at one point I do believe I yelled to no one in particular that there must be “1 million people in this place … where are the blackjack tables?” So, from that alone I would say that there was in fact 1 million people in attendance and that at that moment I could not find a blackjack table. Shocking.
I have never been a “line” person, in that whenever I am planning on attending an event I tend to try to attend that event when there might not be as many people also attending thus avoiding lines. This of course does not count for anything “Star Wars” related where I will – and have – gladly stood in any line necessary to attend said event.
But, I am also not a line hater. That is I don’t get all bent out of shape when I am forced to stand in a line. I chalk this up to a “growing up” process where when I was younger I would simply throw myself on the floor and begin kicking and screaming when I encountered a line. As I have “matured” I have realized that while such actions do typically have a positive outcome, I have increasingly been unable to pick myself up off the floor and thus negate any benefit gained from such an outburst.
There were numerous line haters at this year’s show, all of whom I can only guess had their heads explode by the time the event closed as there was no way to get away from lines.
Not that I did not enjoy watching how these line-haters in action, and maybe this is why I don’t mind lines so much. There always seemed to be at least one person nearby in any line that was either physically or verbally fuming at having to wait for something that 140,000 other people also wanted to do at the same time.
The physical fuming usually took the shape of them looking both forward and backward in disgust of just how long the line was and the fact that it was not moving. This was followed by a lot of head shaking, transferring of briefcase/backpack from one arm to the other and the color of their head taking on that seen in a thermometer.
The verbal fuming was more fun, as this person would begin talking to no one in particular about how the line was not moving, how there was no way this line could not be moving and finally a muttering of why was this line not moving. If I was lucky, this person would also go on to curse whoever had designed/engineered/envisioned whatever device/contraption/mode of transportation we were standing in line for. Overall, it was a great time.
Look, I understand that no one likes to waste time standing in line for something. But, giving youself a heart attack is probably not going to solve that problem. All of us standing in that same line are probably feeling the same pains, but by blowing your stack over it you are just making it more difficult on yourself and more fun for the rest of us. So keep it up.
Now that I got that line mess out of my system, let’s take a look at some of what we actually stood in line to see at this year’s CES event.
–Hyperbole! No, this isn’t some new mobile game or social networking site. This is what truly emanates from CES. From the lowliest booth worker to the highest paid CEO, everything they are talking about is the best thing ever. Regardless of truly how useless or redundant that product or service is, anyone involved in it wants to make sure you realize that it was indeed the end all, be all.
–Failed demos. To me there is nothing better than watching some overly complicated and lame demonstration that fails to work. Bonus points for when the demo fails at the hands of a company CEO who you just know is taking names of the people he is going to fire.
–Automobiles were everywhere at this year’s CES, and not just as their typical window dressing. Countless companies had ideas for ways to add connectivity to cars so that we could soothe the boredom of driving around 2-ton, 400 horsepower metal/aluminum/carbon fiber/plastic machines by playing a nice game of “Fruit Ninja.”
–Lack of creativity. I feel the mobile space has hit a bit of a brick wall when it comes to creativity. A number of companies announced new mobile devices set to launch in the coming months and unless you are a trained professional, there would be no way to tell those devices apart. I know taking a chance on design can be risky, but it just seems that everyone is waiting for someone like Apple to come out and push the boundaries of what is considered normal.
The worst offender to this was Nokia, who despite having a history of creating some of the most odd-ball devices ever, came to the show with some smartphones that looked just like every other device out there. Sure, Nokia was at least throwing Microsoft’s operating system on its device that differentiates itself from all the other devices running Android, but that slab of black plastic is getting old.
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