Tech Talk/By Martha Knight

Technology can be unpredictable and unreliable, when it comes to household appliances, indoors or outdoors.

There are lawn tractors that turn on their owners, dryers that set fire to the house, burner units that induce skillets to take up smoking, new wiring systems that invite the lightning in, and coolers that overheat.

Recently I told someone the story of my mother and her first automatic washer. Dad had designed the concrete floor in the utility room to slope toward a center drain. Then he and a plumber had installed the mighty Bendix, a noisy front loader built like a tank. It did seem to think it was an airplane engine like those made by a division of the same corporation, and it might try to take off if it wasn’t bolted to the floor.

One day the Bendix was in the last spin of its last load, really revved up, when it broke the bolts that attached it to the rods in the floor, and began to walk across the floor toward the kitchen, still plugged in and doing its noisy spinning. Mother thought fast and hurried upstairs to the service box and killed the power.

The machine stopped in its tracks, of course, but Mother did not trust it, and would not edge behind it to unplug it.

When Dad came in Mother explained that the machine was nearly through with that load, and was out of things to wash. Perhaps it was going toward the sorting hampers—but those were empty! How much farther might it have gone, looking for more grist for its mill?

Vacuum cleaners devour bees and spiders and even baby hamsters. My bread machine tries to nudge its rival, the mighty stand mixer, off the cart, which is also home to the blender (their adjutant) and the coffee grinder (a frenchified upstart challenger to the blender). Nearby on an old fashioned cabinet’s enamel rolling and kneading surface, a deep fryer, age 40 or so, seems to glower across at the two microwaves (one is also a convection oven)—‘Let’s see you fry doughnuts!’

Do the hand blenders and mixer hanging on the pegboard discuss their relative merits? Across from them, standing in racks and crocks, do knives debate the Wilkinson honing approach, and which chef blade really rocks?

No, surely the muttering I fancy I hear, when the house should be silent, can be explained by the plumbing. And the water heater burner’s refusial to light is not actual rebellion. It, and the pilot, are under water.

•    •    •

Software companies have had problems deciding which version of Windows to develop for. XP was the tried and true, year after year. It had a huge installed base. Vista never came close to dethroning it. The main reason to get Vista turned out to be so one could upgrade to 7, which was not supposed to be possible from XP.

Me, I liked Vista just fine, and still have a machine that runs it. I have an XP machine too, and a 7 machine. Time enough for Windows 8 or Blue when I spend a lot of time on a tablet, and am ready to use Swype instead of a regular keyboard.

In the tablet world, several Android versions still heavily in use present app developers with a similar quandary. All those yummy names ,their icons all looking like friendly invaders from space or the future, all offering to enrich our communications and provide fun  And always, another in the pipeline.

Unlike the proprietary and closed Apple iOS, Android is developed for and supported by numerous hardware makers. But new versions come thick and fast, it seems.

The latest Android version is Jelly Bean (and its latest version is 4.2.2, last I looked). But Gingerbread is still immensely popular (Android 2.3). Android   users favor Jelly Bean 4.1 over Gingerbread 2.3 by 40.4 percent to 33 (percentages of total Android users).

Only 6.5 percent are said to be running the latest Jelly Bean 4.2 build, but that is changing as more device buyers opt for the Nexus and Moto models.

One way Google tracks the adoption and continued use of various Android versions is by collecting the information from customers when they visit the popular Google Play application store.

Continual development of Android has brought a steady stream of OS capabilities. Nice for users, especially when some devices are capable of being upgraded from recent versions. But developers would like stability, such that they can code for devices they believe will be on the market for a while without seeming obsolete. Phone and tablet makers also want to design in compatibility with the latest OS’s coolest features, but will it be the latest when the device hits the market?

And how about the carriers, those giants that sell so many of the smart phones? Phone makers may be increasingly ecumenical in associations with carriers, but the carriers are not all that pleased to play the upgrade game over and over.

The Android upgrade cycle has been shorter than those associated with computer operating systems. Carriers must invest in changes to keep up with OS changes. The better the cameras, the bigger the files. The better streaming capabilities devices have, the more media users consume. Great for the media vendors, but it all adds up to bandwidth, which carriers are expected to provide.

Now let’s hope the device prices will start to fall, as competition heats up.

Drymar@gmail.com. 596-7546.