"A bit, I've been a full-time programmer for almost six years now, and a part time programmer for about three-and-a-half before that."
Well, alright. I'll give you that that's more than I had. (And I guess your experience was telling since you didn't argue that adding five features would be hard, but that no one ever meets deadlines.) But if in the development of all the software for the Reader it came down to not finding a couple of man weeks for search... then those guys must have had serious problems.
I do think they just tried copying the iPod. The comparison between the reader and the ipod I think goes quite deep. The reader copies almost completely the ipod's vertical-list-of-options scheme, and Sony has even hired ex-Apple guys to work on the connect store. However, not only does the ipod do its job much better, its interface is a compromise between it brilliant clickwheel and the wheel's and the screen's limitations. Without the wheel or tiny screen, the Reader is simply sacraficing an important facet of good interfaces: visual communication of the importance and relationship between options (in english, grouping and size). The ability to only have 10 options on the screen at once doesn't help either.
With that in mind, I can actually see how staying faithful to the vertical-list scheme can make simple functions like search cumbersome.
"and things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. "
You know, it's a pet theory of mine that the
Flynn Effect is caused by people having to work with a larger number of more complex tools. Although you may not like sophisticated UIs, your children (and probably you yourself) just might get smarter figuring them out.