“Stick-Shifter” Holdout In an Increasingly Automatic Tech World

By Aug. 10, 2009, 2:00pm PT 11 Comments

Techdirt’s Derek Kerton says “iPhone haters” are “stick-shifters in an automatic world” when they complain about the iPhone’s limited manual user control of function and configuration.

Kerton analogizes iPhone critics’ attitudes to those of manual gearbox holdouts in the automotive world. He notes that the stick-shift versus automatic transmission debate kind of petered out decades ago in the U.S., although it’s still a lively controversy in Europe, and it’s certainly no dead issue in the motorhead circles I inhabit.

As Derek puts it, “True motoring aficionados could not accept the dumbed-down, lazy automatic transmission. They insisted on doing the work themselves. It was harder, but it was ‘the only way to truly ‘drive’ the automobile.’ Tough luck if it put driving out of the reach of some. By now, the mass market has decided that ‘easier’ trumps a religious argument about ‘real feel for the road.’ Good products take people to their destination as easily as possible. The market has spoken: Getting there is not half the fun.”

I beg to differ, but not on the point of who won the debate in the marketplace, which as Derek observes has been fait accompli in North America for decades. I’m not an iPhone hater, but my strong preference with smartphones or computers is to have as much manual control or override as is practical. One of the things I loved most about the Classic Mac OS was the degree of user-control it facilitated — with usually two or three or more ways to execute a specific task.

Some might argue that the UNIX command line opens up a world of user control in OS X much greater and more comprehensive that anything that was ever possible with Mac OS Classic, and they have a point, especially for the geek-inclined. However, I’m more of a GUI guy myself, and miss stuff like being able to to create a Mac OS boot disk by simply creating a file named System Folder, dragging in a System File and a couple of support files from wherever, and you were bootable in a couple of minutes. You could even often drag in an existing System Folder from another Mac or a backup you had stored on a disk with no necessity of mucking around with installers and user permissions or re-configuration. I loved the flexibility and control.

I hasten to add that I love OS X and would not want to go back to OS 9, but that doesn’t mean I like everything about OS X more.

Other control-freak peeves of mine are “wizards” and helpers and in general software that insists on doing stuff for you, whether you like it or not. Microsoft applications have been some of the worst offenders, but the busybody affliction has crept into Apple software as well. One example would be Find-As-You-Type in Spotlight and the Finder’s Find dialogs. That sort of stuff is OK if you like it and/or need the hand-holding and nannying, but there should always be a way to turn it off.

I don’t begrudge automatic transmissions to those who prefer them, but I do object to there being no option for a real stick-shift with a real clutch (paddle-shifters on automatics don’t cut it as an adequate substitute, albeit they’re better than no manual shift control at all).

It’s probably a losing battle, though. Derek Kerton observes cogently that mass market is what really matters in business, and much of the mass market is likely not even aware of the limitations of their iPhones. And even if you pointed it out to them, would they care? Probably not, just as only a minuscule minority lament the increasingly exclusive ubiquity of automatic transmissions in cars and even trucks.

Smartphones, computers and cars…are you in the stick-shift or automatic camp?

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