I recently bought a new washing machine. It has a mode with an odd name that turns out to be tied to a cleaning product from another company. The manual doesn’t have any information on what the mode does or why it exists. The manual is a generic manual for like 5 or 10 models, and seems to only include the functions common to them all. Any function on a higher-end model that’s not included on the lower-end model is just not documented. I guess if you want to use those, you’re on your own.

But of course, there’s a phone app you can download and give the company a bunch of personal information to connect your washer to your home network so you can get notification when it’s done with its cycle.

Companies used to provide manuals that'd include part numbers and even schematics!

Now they're developing products for themselves. No customer ever asked for a TV that plastered the screen with ads every time they adjusted the volume, or a lightbulb you need some shitty app to turn on and off, but now it seems everything comes with some kind of hidden monkey paw style gotcha attached to it.

What I'm trying to point out is the shift in complexity and similarities between the areas of the same complexity. Check this out:

- 2020s appliances (throw away manuals) are like 90s hardware toolbox (throw away manuals)

- 2020s smartphones (easy to understand manuals) are like 90s appliances (easy to understand manuals)

- 2020s specialized tools (manuals with mental models) are like 90s computers (manuals with mental models)