Panasonic's recent launch of the S9 reminded me of a complaint I'm finding myself having more and more often: not optimizing for your product design.
In particular, the S9 has the same issue as the Nikon Z30 does: a camera that relies on the Rear LCD doesn't have a display capable of practical use outdoors. TFT displays aren't exactly all that bright to start with, but anyone wearing polarized sunglasses is going to have real problems. The creators Panasonic (and Nikon) are targeting already complain about screen brightness on bright days with 1000 nit brightness smartphones, so why would these companies think that they can get away with 250 to 450 nits? It seems to me that this is just asking for trouble with customers, and likely to provoke returns or "no buys".
Products solve user problems, or at least they should if the designer was paying any attention. But more and more I keep finding that this is being ignored in various ways by the camera companies. The reason for ignoring use cases usually breaks down to "easier to design it that way" or "bean counters told us to use a cheaper part."
Another good example is tripod mounts on long lenses. Canon, Nikon, and Sony all apparently continue to give the job of designing that to a junior intern engineer, who just copies previous designs and thus guarantees failure. First problem: the "handle" portion of these mounts are far too small for most hands, and the best way to carry heavy long lenses without putting too much stress on the mount is via that handle. Oops. Second, no one uses 1/4" screw threads to mount three to eight pound lenses on a tripod any more; we all use Arca-Swiss style plates, which provide a faster and more secure mount as well as doing a better job of making two masses into one, which is what you want for stability.
Tamron has finally started making their tripod mounts with Arca-Swiss plates, so Canikony can no longer claim that they haven't seen any such thing in their home ballpark. In essence, virtually everyone now (1) removes their supplied tripod mount or (2) replaces it with a third-party plate. I don't recommend #1 on lenses over two pounds, as you need a way to carry via the lens, so everyone ends up spending US$50 to US$200 more to buy a part that should have been supplied with the lens. (And let's not talk about the stability of the foot to rotating plate connection...)
