We enjoyed a lovely vacation on the coast of NC, last week; namely, a small residential spot in Brunswick County called Oak Island. I spent a lot of summers there as a kid, and hadn’t been back in some time, and it was just as great as I remembered it being, if not better in many ways. However, we’d left a thing or two undone when we left for the week, one of which was mowing the lawn. When we returned last Saturday night it was positively jungle-like, and was going to require some serious hacking to get back to normal.

Enter our latest purchase: a weed whacker. I’d been thinking about getting one for a while, did some research and finally decided on a Troy-Bilt four-cycle model.  Four-cycle engines are easier to start, easier to maintain, and better on the environment (somewhat) than their two-stroke counterparts. Also, no gas and oil to mix and fuss with. In theory you open the box, bolt two pieces together, gas up and go. Of course, had it been that easy I wouldn’t be writing this, right?

The first one we bought died half way through using it. No amount of tinkering could get it to idle properly, and it I exchanged it for one that’s better behaved but no easier to use. And all this has me thinking that there should be an Apple for lawn equipment. I had to use the manual last night to figure out how to rewind the line on this thing, and was struck by how overly complicated and poorly written it is. I’ve been spoiled by the savvy manuals that ship with bits of technology as the rest of the world suffered with these wordy passages and poorly reproduced line-drawings. The box is cumbersome, there’s no “Quick Start” card; it’s just a thing (or pieces of a thing) sitting in a cardboard carton. And this says nothing of the trimmer itself, which sort of looks like the absolute nicest thing ever to go up on a Soyuz rocket. Inside is a maze of springs, pins, bolts and plastic. After seeing it, I’m sort of amazed and pleasantly surprised that it works at all.

If ever there was a gadget made for re-imagining by the good folks at Apple or Dyson, it’s this beastie. The whole line could ship in hip colors, with brushed aluminum exposed metal parts only where needed. Why not even allow the trimmer to track the hours it’s been used, and let you download all that data onto your computer. Seriously, someone with an engineering background needs to run with this, so the iPod generation can get their lawns mowed. The current situation is causing serious cognitive overload, and causing my neighbors to wonder if we’re the Addams Family.