Samsung's not "Smart" enough TVs

I own a Samsung TV. It was a reasonable value. I don't care much about all the A/V specifications that most reviewers go on about. I care about the user interface. It gets a C-. Here's why:

Let's start with the input selection. There are plenty. TV, 4 HDMI ports, component, old-style A/V. That is great, but then let's have a way of disabling the ones we don't need. When I press the source selector, I get an overlay like this

WTF? This is far too many enabled choices. I have 3 HDMI devices (Tivo, Chromecast, Mac) and a DVD player on Component. That means I should have to cycle between 4 things. Nope. TV stays live, even though there is no input. Screen Mirroring is there - I have no idea what it even means. Touch_P5 is another inexplicable option. It should be possible to disable the useless choices and make the interface less confusing for the daily user.

But less clutter does not seem to be the Samsun way. Let's open the Smart functions. We get this menu

What's wrong? MLB.tv is the most obvious thing wrong. I will never want that app. Ever. But it is featured on the quick launch bar, and not removable. The more subtle issue is that this does not seem to be "my" apps. The choice is Featured and Recent. We can select one of the few recently used apps, or press Featured, which brings us to this screen.




You'll notice that we landed on the What's New page. Why? Mostly likely because branding money is flowing somewhere. Someone might want to channel surf on regular cable, but who wants to start their entertainment experience with "app surfing"? No one does. We want to watch something.

OK. I can press up-arrow, left-arrow to get to My Apps.

Again, we see the same love for sponsored apps over my content. The 6 apps in the upper left corner are mine. The rest are forced on by Samsung and I can't get rid of them. I can't even use many of them because I don't subscribe to the channels.

So much for a seamless, pleasant viewing experience. I have to navigate around a set of billboards hawking Samsung's partners before I can get to the entertainment I was hoping for. Sigh.

I know this kid who wants a job at Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, ...

At least once a month I get mail like this. I'm sure many of you have too.

Hi Tony,
My friend's son is a super smart computer science student at Whatsamatta U. He is looking for a job at <Insert FAANG here>. He wants to know where he should send a resume.
Thanks, Billy

Please. Please. No more of these.

To be perfectly honest, if the kid does not realize that they can search for "jobs at ..." and get direct links to the hiring pipeline, then they are probably not cut out for the job at a tech company in the first place.

If you want to ask if they can reach out to me for help with how to write a resume, fine. That is something where I can provide mentoring. I'll be happy to. Just don't ask questions that someone who is "super smart" can figure out on their own.

Maybe they are really asking a different question. Most likely, they are asking "Can you use connections get this child of a friend a job?" Probably not. But if you ask directly, maybe I can explain why.