End of the Manual

When my parents bought their iPad, they wondered where the manual was. There isn’t one. Today, the no-manual approach is standard for almost all our gadgets. But Steve Jobs saw that technique for the first time when he worked at Atari. Walter Isaacson, in his (official) biography of Jobs, describes it thus:

“(Jobs) intuitively appreciated the simplicity of Atari’s games. They came with no manual and needed to be uncomplicated enough that a stoned freshman could figure them out. The only instructions on Atari’s Star Trek game were:

1)      Insert quarter.

2)     Avoid Klingons.”

It hit me only then: I never had any trouble learning any of the Atari games as a kid even though there were no instructions or manuals. They were that intuitive.

But surely our gadgets are more complicated than video games, right? Like when we were setting up the Wi-fi on my parents’ iPad, they entered the wrong password. So it wouldn’t connect; but if they tried disconnecting and then reconnecting, it wouldn’t bring up the screen to re-enter the password! Not asking the password made perfect sense if they had entered the correct password the first time around, but now they were stuck.

Enter Google. I fired the query on how to re-enter the Wi-fi password and Google’s top 2 links were the Apple site FAQ and a non-Apple site. I clicked on the non-Apple site (I’ll explain why later) and the solution was simple:

1)      Delete the (stuck) Wi-fi network altogether.

2)     Next, add the same Wi-fi network again; and enter the correct password this time.

Bingo! It worked.

Ok, so why didn’t I click on the Apple link? Well, did you notice how the non-Apple site solution was simple but inelegant? The elegant solution would be to have a way to re-enter the password rather than deleting and re-adding, right? Do you think any company would want to put an inelegant solution on their site (or manual)? Especially Apple? Would Jobs have allowed it?

Besides, in the Internet era, who’s going to read a manual anyway? Isn’t it easier to have your exact question answered via Google? Can you even be sure the manual will have an answer to your particular problem? Worse, the manual may become obsolete as new upgrades come onto your gadget. For example, until now, you couldn’t add a custom keyboard on any of the iDevices. But with the just released iOS 8, you can. Wouldn’t the manual have to be updated on that topic?

Welcome to the end of the manual era. It’s not just because the devices are that intuitive (though they usually are); it’s also because we live in an era of continuous upgrades.