There are some pieces of technology that are so well engineered that any geek would wish to own them. Not all of them hail from Apple. This week I found that we alreay one such device, but I had not previously realized the brilliance of our home’s smoke alarm.
If I was designing a mains powered alarm with battery back-up, I would have it flash a bright light to warn they the battery was nearing end of life. It had not occured to me how much better am amplified banshee howl would be appreciated by the residents of the house. Never in a month of Sundays would I think to include an internal timer that ensured the insistent, house shaking sound only starts in the early hours. I would have made the mistake of designing the unit so opening the compartment and removing the battery would silence the unit, as finding new batteries at 1:30am might be tricky; while the actual engineers went with keeping the user interface simple by having just one way of returning silence to the night – rip it from the ceiling.
