We Don’t Want a Thousand Features

[Clayton Harper]

I thought you guys might appreciate this one:

Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to
some independent record label people. My favorite line of the day was when
people kept raising their hand saying, “Does it do [x]?”, “Do you plan to add
[y]?”. Finally Jobs said, “Wait wait – put your hands down. Listen: I know you
have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes could have. So do we. But we don’t want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.”
-Derek Sivers, president and programmer, CD Baby
and HostBaby ( from Say NO by default)

[Jim Arthurs]

I agree... how many "features" does a film camera actually have? Not that many, even less if you don't count the "features" on the lens itself.

RED- pull up a "look/LUT/ASA", set your shutter speed, dial an fstop, focus and pull the trigger. Layer on the "more-complicated-than-film" needed tools for display and data managment, then sort the rest out in post...

[Thom Steinhoff]

As a software designer (for windows applications), I am constantly confronted with this issue and worship the design philophy of Jobs.

As someone who straddles the fence between OSX and Windows I constantly see where Windows applications are designed to pack as many "features" into an application as possible, where an apple application is designed to pack as much user functionality into their applications as possible.

In windows applications, often these features are so overwhelming to the user, that they have trouble extracting the functionality that they need where the user of the Apple designed software that has fewer functions gets far more productivity out of it because the application focuses on organizing the features they need in the most logical fashion possible.

If anyone doubts what I have to say--you don't have to look any further than windows media player 10 to see feature frenzy driving functionality into the ground.

As a long time Apple user, I'm sure Jim is of the same mindset--so I don't think we have to worry too much about it.

[GlennChan]

To take a slightly contrarian position...

I think the Red camera will have a long list of crucial (or at least very useful) features.
Just for viewfinder itself, you'll need a way to control focus assist, zebras (and/or histogram / other), framing lines, whether the VF should show warnings (i.e. shutter on, etc.), whether it should show your f-stop and audio meters, etc. etc.

I think the right approach is:
A- Put in all the useful features. This is sort of like the difference between iMovie and Final Cut Pro... iMovie boxes you in by limiting your feature set.
In a professional environment, you don't want limitations and a higher learning curve is ok as you can expect a specialized professional to figure out the camera (i.e. a DIT, AC, or cameraman).

B- Organize the features so that the menu structure is intuitive and you can (ideally) figure out the camera without reading the manual or documentation. This is sort of like the difference between OS X and Windows... in OS X, everything is laid out in a similar fashion and in an intuitive manner.

What I wouldn't like to see are menu settings that are found in different menus instead of all in one place. i.e. in one of the Sony dbeta decks, there are the normal menus and the engineering menus. To even access the engineering menu, you need the engineering manual (doesn't come with the deck) and you have to open up the deck physically and set a dipswitch on one of the boards (!!). The stupid thing is, you need to go into the engineering menu to enable useful menu items in the normal menus.
In a professional environment, I don't think there's any need for this. A saner system would allow you to save + recall menu settings (all of them), and to recall factory settings in case you don't have your favorite menu settings around. The Sony dbeta decks have menu banks, but they are pretty useless since they don't recall everything (and therefore you have to check those non-recalled settings, which defeats the point of having menu banks).

[Martin Ludwig]

I am sure, you all are too late. Most of this stuff is surely done already...

[Michael Schrengohst]

Software is never "done"

[Ace]

I concur with Glenn, A consumer product is much different to a professional product. Two very different worlds and very different goals.

[Clayton Harper]

Basically you guys are saying features should be where they are needed. If you have a complicated problem you have a complicated solution.

Keep in mind motion picture cameras and manual still camera are deadly simple and they work wonderfully because you have simple manual control of a limited set of features and you do your image processing in post (like a certain camer we get to see in 2 weeks).

All the bullshit contained in the menu systems of most modern video camera systems are workarounds to maintain image quality. I would give anything not to have to fiddle with a million controls while I'm working. So would every operator who has worked on these HD-acquired features. We know because they bitch about in the trade magazines.

Hell, even the Genesis was a step in the right direction and the Sony srw-1 has a pretty simple UI when you consider how well it handles the offspeed shooting.

I just get nervous when people start asking to be able to check their email in the viewfinder or whatever nonsense gets dreamed up around here sometimes. :bleh:

Hopefully we'll only get what we need to make a good exposure or select the right frame rates and use our own creativity and abilities to fill in the rest.

That being said, I really hope the Digital Slating thing makes it on the camera soon and props to Thom for the great illustration of the concept.

[GlennChan]

Isn't digital slating something that is an unnecessary feature? I think the camera would be simpler by leaving it off.

[Adrian T.]

Isn't digital slating something that is an unnecessary feature? I think the camera would be simpler by leaving it off.

You don't have to use it if you don't need it. But having the feature would be cool. :cold:

[GlennChan]

Well to go back to the first post of this thread:

Finally Jobs said, “Wait wait – put your hands down. Listen: I know you
have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes could have. So do we. But we don’t want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.”

[OwenR]

Oh but we do the more high quality the features the best - we need more cinemas to show them!!!

[Clayton Harper]

Isn't digital slating something that is an unnecessary feature? I think the camera would be simpler by leaving it off.

Canadians are slow but they usually come around at some point. :devil: