Sound of Money, Part 2

DKnight MagicBox II Bluetooth 4.0 Portable Wireless Speaker
TechPicks has a video review where he demonstrates the buttons.
That's also where I got the photo. 

Younger son tells me about this miniature loudspeaker. Sounds like it might be just what I need, but geez, it's sure got a lot of stuff I don't need, and me, being all curmudgeon-like, I don't wanna hafta pay for a buncha stuff I don't want or need, like buttons and Bluetooth and batteries. On the other hand it's really small, not very expensive (it's only a fraction of the price of the Amazon Echo that I was talking about earlier), and ain't that the way of the world anyway?
    Products that are mass produced for the masses include as many do-dads as they can so they will appeal to as many people as possible. I mean look at cars. Most cars only carry a single person, but cars come with four seats and four doors. I would venture to say that 90% of the miles driven are done with only a single person aboard. So why are most cars four passenger? Because the incremental cost of adding 3 more seats is tiny compared to the cost of the basic car. Add five percent to the cost of building the car and you've covered another 9% of the market. That's me making a big fat guess.
    The other part of the economics is volume. The number of people like me who want a featureless speaker probably numbers in the thousands. The number of people who want a speaker to work with their smart-phone likely numbers in the millions. If you are going to build a speaker, who are you going to build it for? So I benefit from what other people want.
    Anyway, I'm reading up on this speaker on Amazon and I was struck by some of the comments:

• It comes with a 'Bass Pad' that 'holds the speaker in place so you can rock out without your speaker leaping over the edge.'
• I like that the volume buttons are separate from the skip buttons because then I don't have to remember whether I need to do a long press or a short one for the function I want.
• It's heavy duty and rugged for using it inside or out. Except in water. Don't let it swim.
• ... unlike the Magicbox I it does not talk to you in a weird computer voice when you connect your device, just a nice simple beep.
• Invest in the second one. It's only $7 more. That's almost an hour of work at a minimum wage job for a much better speaker.

The world is full of strange and wonderful people. I've summarized the important parts of the Amazon page here.
    After spending all this time reading about this thing I think I gonna hafta buy one. Besides, that's the only way to find out if I can play tunes over the USB connection.