If you buy an expensive piece of electronics (or an expensive anything, really), you should be happy with that choice. Like everything else, it should function as you'd expect, without the artificial limits or constraints that companies sometimes apply in order to keep people safe from themselves. If you happen to believe that making concessions to the lowest common demonimator is putting artificial barriers between you and satisfaction with your purchase, then you have one of two options:
I don't know about anyone else, but I tend to go on features, and figure work-arounds as need be. I recently came across such a situation when I bought a Pioneer AVIC-Z1. It has almost every single feature I want in an in-dash nav system (I wish it would show you raw GPS info). Except that lawyers have obviously gotten to the designers before the product got out the door, and so some of those features don't always work when you'd expect them to. This annoys me.
Tracy and I take road trips occasionally. Wouldn't you know, the Z1 plays DVDs -- in Dolby/DTS stereo no less. And even though the screen is only like 7 inches, it looks pretty good. Except for that little issue of how the DVD function only works if the car is in park and the parking brake is on. Uh... if I want to watch a DVD while my car is in "park", I'll go inside and look at my TV. What? Am I supposed to want to watch DVDs at rest stops or something? I figure that Tess might like to watch a movie while we're on the road. And I figure that I'm responsible enough not to be saying "Durrr... that's a good movie..." right before we crash.
Likewise, I'd like to be able to set a new destination while underway. Say that you think you need to go to a certain Point-of-Interest (POI in Z1-speak) but on the way there realize that your needs have changed, or that you'd like to go somewhere else. Well, you need to find a place to park, stop the car, put it in park, set the e-brake, then change your route to include the new POI. Why can't my passenger do that for me if one is available? The seat has a pressure sensor in it. Why isn't it smart enough to know that if I have a passenger, some features aren't at all dangerous and are in fact very desireable? The thing already understands natural human speech, why can't it figure that simple thing out? It's a binary decision!
Well, the Z1 has many nice features. And you get access to all of them. When parked. I would ike to access them maybe while not in park. Not competing product has the same featureset or interface, and many have similar restrictions anyway. So I'm faced with choice #2 above.
Lo and behold, other folks felt as I did. Someone discovered that before starting the car, you can disengage the e-brake and then flash the headlights three times right after the car is started. The Z1 thinks it's in some demo/diagnostic mode and every menu option works. And while this is a handy feature, it's just a little too Rain Man for me.
Luckily, someone with more electronics skill than I has developed a tiny electronics package that simulates this flashing by oscillating the power to the wire which senses if the headlights are on. And they sell this circuit to folks willing to cut and crimp a few wires in order to get more convenience out of their purchasing decision. How cool is that!?
I'm in the process of ordering my flasher circuit now. I've already got the crimpers and heatshrink tubing, so all is well. Soon, I will not have to be faced with decisions spawned by fears of litigious idiots. Huzzah!