Usable Consumer Electronics

Jakob Neilson has a good post on why consumer electronics are getting progressively harder to use--although I do feel his identification of a "usability trend" is charitably optimistic. I'll beleive in a usability trend when they create an alarm clock that 1) clearly distringuished AM from PM, 2) lets its alarm be set in increments of 5 minutes, 3) has the alarm turned "on" in an obvious way. (link via Tomalak's Realm)