Feature Overload

Have you ever thought that everything seems to be so complicated today, especially with hi-tech products?

Digital cameras take movies and act as voice recorders, PDA's play music and films and our mobile phones take pictures, have a built in torch, sharpen knives and mow the lawn - all by voice command!
Or, that's what we are lead to believe as consumers, from all the marketing tact pumped into these products to make us want them.

So why all the features in the first place, did we really ask for them? In many cases it is simply because it is cheap to add features. Whether we want, or really need all those extra features isn't the issue, manufacturers add them so they can advertise more features and increase perceived desirability. May be it costs more to carefully determine what features are most needed and to design them and the interface to them