LATEST ADDITIONS

That last cell phone you bought—the one with the nearly telephone book-sized instruction manual—did you take the time to read through the tome completely, learning every function and programming feature before using it to actually make phone calls? Products are becoming so over-engineered and laden with features and functions, most of us merely skim the surface of the ones we buy, often remaining content with just getting the thing to actually function as intended.

My friend Jon is a wiz with pretty much anything mechanical, and he has a Rain Man-like gift for motors. Whether it's a pool pump, a lawn tractor, or a car, Jon is the man to call. What amazes me is that he can often diagnose my motor problems over the phone with only the most basic description.

Speaker-industry pioneer Irving M. ("Bud") Fried passed away on March 31 at his home in Philadelphia. A lifelong resident of that city, his first exposure to audio was listening to the sound of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1928. But it wasn't live. Though he was to become a fixture at Philadelphia Orchestra concerts, he first heard the ensemble's music emerging from the theater horns of his father's movie theaters in 1928. That was not only the year movies learned to talk, but also the year young Fried became a confirmed music lover and audiophile—decades before high fidelity even had a name.