Ask Slashdot: Why Does Almost Nothing Come With a Proper Printed Manual Anymore? 332
OpenSourceAllTheWay writes: As someone who grew up with 1980s and 1990s computers and electronics and still has whole boxes of lovingly prepared printed computer, peripheral, game and software manuals from that era, I am continually surprised by how just many products ship without a proper printed manual these days. Case in point would be things like Android phones. Android has quite a few not-entirely-obvious functions built into it. And a lot of people aren't even aware they exist. No Android phone I've bought has ever had a printed manual included in its little product box. Not even a small one. Even expensive laptops ranging in price from 2,000 to 5,000 Dollars often come only with a few sheets of printed paper in the box -- warranty card, where to register the device, URL for downloading drivers and so on. Why is this? It can't be environmental concern -- the electronics devices themselves, when thrown away, are a hundred times (if not worse) more harmful to the environment than a little 50 to 100 page recycled paper booklet would be. So where are the manuals? Is it the cost of preparing the manuals? The cost of printing them? Is it a few grams of extra weight added to the product box? Is everyone supposed to look up everything online now, even in places where there is no internet connection? And why can't there be a print manual option -- e.g. pay 3 to 5 Dollars extra, and get a full, printed manual you can study on a couch?
What a stupid question (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, that's a fucking retarded question to ask and you don't deserve an answer.
Re:What a stupid question (Score:5, Funny)
Weirdly enough - mod parent up.
Re:What a stupid question (Score:5, Insightful)
If any of you sat in a tech support call center for one day you'd realize that few end users are reading and understanding the manuals we've been providing.
The most effective method is to include a small bit of colorful card stock in the top of the stack of packaging with something like "Quick Start" in a big font. Some users will see this when first opening a product and if you're really lucky they will try to follow directions the pictures and very short sentences. If all else fails a phone number and website is on the back of the card for a proper hand-holding experience.
PDF downloads on the company website of a very comprehensive manual is especially nice. As I can search it, or access it from my phone instead of having to remember where I hid the physical copy.
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If any of you sat in a tech support call center for one day you'd realize that few end users are reading and understanding the manuals we've been providing.
I have worked tech support before. What your statement tells me is that your company can't write a good manual to save themselves. I feel sorry for your users.
My cheap chinese 3D printer from Anycubic came with an assembly manual. It was clear, concise and didn't have any errors. And it was colour to boot. And there was a PDF version on the SD card that came with the printer and the PDF version is available for download on their web site.
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How about including a link to an online manual? (which probably doesn't exist anyway)
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No, I have the same question. Sometimes you can't easily find the answer online for some basic stuff. Like "what is that weird icon on my new phone?" None of this new tech is even remotely intuitive, unless you've bought every model that was ever released since version 1 and read all the release notes along the way.
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Stupid questions are often the best ones to ask. And when they're not, well, they're still more constructive than pissing all over someone because they're asking a question you don't need answered.
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Mod parent up!
(this is like the Slashdot comment version of Amway)
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What if the manual doesn't even exist online or is difficult to find? I've never seen a slip of paper with a URL for those who need help.
Go Button (Score:5, Insightful)
Designers tend to be of the persuasion that if it needs a manual, it isnt user friendly enough, and writing one anyway makes them look like quitters.
Users themselves just want a black box with a go button that takes them to pleasureville.
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http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/images/dilbert_user_friendly_computer.gif
What a bunch of cynics (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Go Button (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually the questioner answered the question already. It's cost. Manuals cost money to prepare and print. If there is a mistake it's not easy to fix. The add weight to the package which increases shipping costs. And in the end most people don't read them anyway.
Go look at some computer manuals from the 80s. They are thick because they teach you how to use a computer. Computers were hard to use back then, often booting directly into BASIC. Even the GUI ones were unfamiliar to most people, especially first time buyers.
Customers mostly don't like manuals either. They prefer stuff that "just works" or is intuitive, and only go to the manual if they have a problem.
The only time manuals make sense is when you need to cover your ass legally, e.g. cars. Even they will stop getting manuals soon I think, since a lot of them are moving to over-the-air software updates that make manuals almost immediately out of date. Not looking forward to that.
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And they don't want to "give away" their proprietary secrets anymore. Back in the day the manuals explained nearly ever API detail necessary to use a product,
You don't need "every API detail" to use a product. You need to know what the buttons do and what the cute little symbols called "icons" or "widgets" mean. For a phone, you need to know what buttons to press to store a contact or make a call.
You don't need to know "nearly every API detail" unless you are developing software for the phone -- and 99.99% of the users will never do that. Why would you expect them to waste the money and resources to print a thousand-page paper manual detailing every API and it
To save money on paper. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is this even a question. When a company does not include something it's because they are trying to save money. Even offering a servi e to print the manual for you means they will have to spend money on things to do that.
Just get a tablet and load all your manual/pdfs on that.
Seriously Slashdot, do you let these posts through because you have nothing better to do?
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The question is clearly not being posed for the technically-literate person, who knows how to find this information, but for the average user.
I'm guessing manuals aren't included for cost reasons (why else?) and the companies have concluded that few enough people complain that they can do it.
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Most stuff does not even have a PDF manual.
How is this a mystery? (Score:3, Insightful)
They add bulk, cost and can't be updated. You may think each one is cheap individually but the costs add up when you have to print millions or billions of them.
Nobody reads the manual (Score:4, Insightful)
Why print it when nobody reads it anyway?
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This. I work in medical and we DO ship real manuals. Which no one reads.
Re:Nobody reads the manual (Score:5, Informative)
You don't seem to be familiar with medical devices. To get FDA approval they generally have to have very limited, very well defined functions. And if you're going to make any substantive changes, you need to go through an approval process all over again.
This leads to less-than-cutting-edge technology which has robust features and documentation. That's not shit that ships out with errors that need to be corrected most of the time. Often one model will be in use for years if not decades, and the manual will be unchanging during that time.
It's a radically different mindset than most consumer goods, which get booted out the door to meet the schedule, and bugs fixed later. Companies that ship medical devices with bugs and incorrect manuals don't tend to last long. There's not an analogy to medical malpractice in the consumer electronics world.
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There are a lot of products that don't have an up-to-date on-line manuals either. This is because of the cost of a technical writer especially if they are bilingual or multilingual. Bilingual and multilingual technical writers can make as almost as much as the engineers designing the products.
Dead trees cost money (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dead trees cost money (Score:5, Insightful)
What costs even more than trees are the Technical Writers who make the manuals. Easier to just lay them off, and not provide any manual.
- Also manuals were mandatory in the 80s. When I turned-on my first Commodore computer, it just sat there and blinked at me. I needed the manual to teach me the BASIC commands.
And subscriptions to magazines like RUN or Compute to learn how to put those commands into useful programs. It was a whole different era that revolved around the printed word.
Re:Dead trees cost money (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet's better (Score:2)
With the Internet when I hit a wall I can go on stack overflow, ask a question and 9 times out of 10 some kind soul will point out my mistake. Heck, I rarely have to do that. Odds are somebody beat me to it. Better yet, there's often 10 explanations for the same thing. T
Re:Dead trees cost money (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no CTRL-F on a printed manual, so why bother when I can use an electronic one and search for what I want to know?
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Conversely, sometimes context matters and a search through a large tome reveals dozens of hits for a term. It's in those cases that you appreciate the time and effort someone put into properly arranging and indexing the content. It's almost a lost skill.
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Unless the product in question is your modem/router etc.
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So the issue sometimes is that it's difficult to identify the item. Cheap electronics are notorious for this, and if the company is based in China / Taiwan / Korea etc the language barri
Re:Dead trees cost money (Score:4, Informative)
It took courage to remove the manual (Score:3)
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"The reason to move on: courage. The courage to move on and better line the executives pockets."
Translated that for you.
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"The reason to move on: courage. The courage to move on and do something new that does more to line the executives pockets."
Translated that for you.
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"The reason to move on: courage. The courage to move on and do something new that does more to line the executives pockets."
Translated that for you.
Hmm, the first one didn't show up even after I refreshed the page so I thought I failed to hit submit. My apologies for the dup...
People don't care (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, devices came with thick, detailed manuals back then. People also typically didn't read those manuals. The vast majority of people either just stumbled their way through "figuring it out" or avoided the product entirely as being overly complicated.
These days, more work has gone into product design to make things intuitive so that people can just "figure it out" easier rather than providing the manual that will go unused anyways. At most things will typically come with a "Quick Start Guide" to give you the most basic of instructions to get the device up and going - and for the most part that's what the market wants.
Those manuals cost money - both to print and to pay someone to write in the first place. Offer the same product on the shelves - one without a manual and one that costs $5 extra that includes it. I'd wager quite a few dollars that the one without the manual will outsell the one that includes it 20 to 1.
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Wireless printers and modern routers are a great example. Press the WPS button on both. Wait a bit. Printer spits out a sheet telling you it's all set up.
I may still have the manual for one of the first wireless printers I bought kicking around somewhere. I can still recall how much of a pain in the ass it was to get set up and configured. Wireless SSID and password which needed to be entered using arrow keys, choosing the correct settings, FFS might have needed some port fiddling too.
Why spend a million do
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Electronic Manuals (Score:2)
The last few laptops I have gotten game with electronic manuals. They were nicely formatted, complete, on the usb stick that came with the laptop so I could view it offline along with a complete set of drivers and other recovery information.
I much prefer electronic manuals to paper ones.
Google is the manual (Score:2)
Online Manuals: (Score:5, Insightful)
To find out why your smartphone won't connect to the internet, just connect to the internet to download the manual telling you why you can't connect.
What could be simpler?
Lots of products ship with manuals (Score:2)
Just not computers. Considering the typical computing device product cycle, it's unlikely that a printed manual would be both reliable and useful by the time the customer opens the product and loads the first update over the net. Plus contextual help on anything with a reasonably sophisticated UI is probably more helpful, anyway.
Ask the question... (Score:2)
Yes. That is what you are supposed to do. What is the point of a printed manual for a whiz-bang piece of tech like an Android phone or $2000-$5000 laptop when there is no internet connection? Maybe such tech is still useful without the connection, but that is a tiny minority of use cases. That tiny minority does not justify the expense of preparing, printing, and distributing manuals.
A more c
Re: Ask the question... (Score:2)
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Cost is a huge factor. Not just to cost to print the manual but the cost to ship the manual as well.
Then as soon as you turn the phone on the first time, it's downloading Mealy Migrant or Washingmachine Wombat or whatever cute name the developers have given the latest update ("Marshmallow"? Really?) and the manual is completely wrong anyway. Like, "when you are receiving no signal, you will see no bars on the display". Woopsie. Now you see all five bars with a small line through them.
Re: Ask the question... (Score:2)
Easy (Score:3)
Just buy an iPhone, it needs no manuals, even 80year olds can use them.
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Just buy an iPhone, it needs no manuals,
Even an iPhone needs some manner of instruction, it may not be a manual, but the instruction is needed. Typically, if you've never used on, there is someone nearby to help you get started.
even 80year olds can use them.
Yes, that is correct, after some amount of instruction of how to use them. Give an iPhone to an person in their 80s who has never seen a smartphone before, and come back with your observations.
No one cares (Score:2)
Simple answer: (Score:2)
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Worse than that, neither a printed manual, nor the search functions built into virtual manuals are any real use.
Far faster to just type your question into Google. I use Google to search for MSDN Microsoft development issues given their built in search function is an idiotic programmer's lazy wrapper around an internal string search function.
Microsoft's search jas even apparently forgotten context-sensitive search was invented 30 years ago.
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who reads manuals that cannot download one?
Someone setting up for the first time the computer and Internet connection with which to download a manual.
Nobody reads manuals. (Score:3)
No product these days should ever require a manual - we have the tools available to make it possible to produce products intuitive enough that manuals are unnecessary. If you'd like some help learning about it yourself, I suggest you read Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" and Don Norman's books for more extensive advice. If your everyday consumer product requires a manual, you're a failure as a designer. The only exceptions to this are really, crazy advanced products, and even then a lot more could usually be done to make them easier to use.
If you want a book on Android, you can buy several, there's no shortage.
Check out the winner of this years Ignobel prize in Literature: Life Is Too Short to RTFM: How Users Relate to Documentation and Excess Features in Consumer Products [oup.com]
Another reason: software updates (Score:2)
Because hardly anyone (Score:2)
Duh... (Score:2)
Manuals are printed at a cost to the manufacturer, placed in the box by a worker paid by the manufacturer, adds weight to the package shipped by the manufacturer, and potentially ends up going missing at a replacement cost to the manufacturer. The more of those boxes they can pack into a shipping container from China the lower their costs will be.
There are plenty of reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
First, most people have seen or used something similar to what they have purchased. This was not true when computers/software... was first available.
Second, the printed material was probably already outdated when it was originally printed, much more so when updates to the software/microcode have been made.
Third, the lack of enough (good) translators that can actually take the original language and make enough sense of it and carry that over to other languages.
Fourth, If something is simple enough to use without a manual, why bother printing one?
Fifth, Search engines with access to Online manuals and support group sites, combined with phone/email support can answer most questions. If you need detailed information, the answers a click away.
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Lack of translators? No. I write manuals for a living and we've never had a lack of good translators (and we tested their translations). What you do get is cheapskate companies unwilling to pay for a good translation so they either let Google auto-mangle the translation or they illegally don't provide them at all.
Why? Costs. (Score:2)
Cost and Accessibility (Score:2)
Printing is costly and if I want to search for a specific term, give a copy to a friend, keep an archival copy, or load one on to a mobile device: I want the electronic version
Recent artcile: Life Is Too Short to RTFM... (Score:2)
Life Is Too Short to RTFM: How Users Relate to Documentation and Excess Features in Consumer Products
https://academic.oup.com/iwc/a... [oup.com]
When was a manual ever 'proper'? (Score:2)
Printed manuals for electronic gear always did suck to varying degrees. It's true that back in the nineteen hundreds when machines like the Altair and Commodore were aimed at the hobbyist market, the writing was nerd-to-nerd rather than by the illiterate Chinese peasants who wrote the manuals for other electronics.
Computer manuals have never been the worst. Try deciphering a camera manual sometime. After you invest in a new Kosmo-Kazac 5000 and are immediately lost in a maze of twisty little menus, all alik
People won't read them anyway (Score:2)
Having created numerous products during my career, I can tell you that I always got tech support questions about something that's clearly explained in the documentation. Doesn't matter how those docs are distributed either. People will STILL not get it even if you came to their house and set it up for them.
A printed manual costs money to produce and then you're stuck with it if you make a change to the product. Video is better than text and photos because you can show people how to do things but they sti
I come from the time (Score:2)
It does not bother me at all, the first thing I do is download a pdf now. Actually better because I get instantaneous gratification most of the time.
The other thing I have noticed is I buy very few books now, don't go to the library much anymore. But more interesting is I don't print save an archive information, I usually recall the search terms to d
TLDR (Score:2)
No one has the attention span to RTFM anymore.
Dude, we use web sites and PDF (Score:2)
The websites and PDF are more easily changed when one of the users realize that our product has major problems when held upside down in a closet during a full moon.
Include a PDF pre-installed (Score:3)
Include a PDF pre-installed on the device - if your device's screen isn't good enough to view PDFs, then you've bought the wrong device -)
The PDF should include a URL for downloading the latest version of the PDF. I get annoyed when manufacturers release a new firmware or software update that changes or add features and don't revise the manual to match.
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Several reasons actually: (Score:2)
2) Updating: an online manual (usually in .pdf format) is enormously easier and faster than having to send out updated copies of the printed manual.
3)
Why? (Score:2)
a) You can download the manual from a website to read on a Kindle or iPad - most even come with a barcode on the outside to do just that.
b) Most people are tech-advanced enough NOT to need a manual
c) Most of the time, the manual is outdate by the time you receive the package
Because there is no docs at all? (Score:2)
I'm less bothered by the lack of a default paper manual, but I am bothered by things that don't really appear to have any kind of documentation at all, paper or electronic. Or if they have documentation, it's like paper thin (that's a pun) and doesn't cover most of the product or only a subset of features.
You're expected to just grok the design and figure it out, or google it somehow and find someone else who did figure it out and felt like sharing.
I feel like the world gets more and more technical but the
If your in an industry that requires it: (Score:2)
Our products are not for consumers. Our products are super expensive, pretty much 10 times COT's. The required manufacturing Flow Control Documents, Quality Control Documents, Identification Documents, recording of all of the above on paper, and proper filings makes up 90% of the cost of the parts.
Documentation of API requires changes from both our company and customer, so you even need a little wag of that cost to add into the part. Or in some cases, where our customer likes to change all of the above, its
Tech is now the market of the unstable (Score:2)
Do you know what's worse than not having a manual? Having a manual that tells you something outdated that no longer applies.
Tech companies now make a profit for novelty. "Windows (10) as a service" is the perfect example - try looking up online ways to do something particularly complex on W10, and chances are you will land on a non-official blog post from, say, 2016, which has instructions to access a setting that no longer exists, or simply changed names. Bummer. Now here's the tricky part - companies chan
the rise of transient, mimetic culture (Score:2)
First of all, once we became networked, it was possible for 90% of everything to be propagated by word of mouth. This wasn't the case back in the 1980s. (I was there.)
Second, if you never make a formal claim, you can't ever be wrong.
Right around the time that most developers realized that their application could only ever be as stable as the APIs you develop on top of (the dark days began with Windows 95 and progeny) it became wise to keep a low profile on your software ever working precisely as advertised.
A manual has no value. (Score:2)
Since updates are delivered automatically and electronically, any printed manual that would ship with a product is pretty much out of date as soon as it is turned on.
The android example is a good one. First it is not a pure android, so a manual from Google might not even apply (the manufacturer and cell provider can tweak it). Second, it is not a pure product, so a manual from name your hardware vendor here may not even apply (because the cell provider can change it). Your cell provider often has the last
Google is your friend..... (Score:2)
Tesla does not have printed manual either (Score:2)
In a Tesla you can turn its A/C on, while it is in the garage and peacefully read the manual without any fear of carbon monoxide poisoning. Actually the sound system and acoustics are very good, there is no engine noise, so it is not a bad place to listen to music or to banish your kids to so that their "music" does not disturb you....
I've seen this episode. (Score:2)
Tattoos (Score:2)
Printed material is just tattoos on dead trees. Creepy..
Wrong Question (Score:2)
manuals have their place (Score:3)
Our users had to convert circuit diagrams into printed circuits that actually worked. Even with our software and our manuals there was an element of magic (this was 20 years ago). For instance 'noise' from one circuit interfering with another. We were in a perpetual update mode and the documentation was always a bit behind, but without it the software would have been useless.
OTOH, I'm a Mac user and since 1984 I've never needed a manual cuz 'it just works'. Even third party software is usually designed with Mac principles and it just works. Exceptions are Adobe, math and CAD programs which still require study to use effectively. Even MS Office can get beginners to a good start without a manual. And Windows itself is almost understandable having copied Mac OS rather closely.
Smartphones can be confusing in this early part of their evolution, but very soon standards will arrive and users will be able to move from one to another without having to relearn from scratch. Some old timers may recall the Model T and other early autos which came with many different configurations, levers, switches, gauges, doodads, etc; all now standardized. You don't need a manual to drive a Chevy or a Suzuki car.
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I disagree. Every piece of hardware I own, TV, soundbar, laptop, game console, etc., has a proper, downloadable PDF manual with lots of good info in it. Most are well written and designed.
If, say, LG anticipates selling 20,000 of a certain model of TV, the costs of physically printing and shipping all those manuals is significant. They don't have their own printing plant so when I say cost, I mean the cost of printing and shipping the manuals to LG HQ.
Plus the argument that 99% of people immediately throw t
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There was
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Back in my days, the full electronic schematic for a radio was attached to the inside of the removable back cover.
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You had stone tablets? We had to wait for the stellar dust cloud to congeal into planets first.
Re:Almost nobody RTFM (Score:5, Interesting)
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The problem isn't just missing printed manuals, we also have a problem of there being no PDF manual as well, and often no online manual. For Android and iPhone both, learning how to use those involved a lot of time online searching through various hint and help sites and watching stupid videos intended to earn advertising because no one gets paid if they just write plain text.
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Exactly that. Those manuals in the box from the '80s and '90s? Never read.
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I'm not sure how many nerds actually RTFM, versus just having the ability to figure it out and/or search online for specific questions.
When I was a kid, and my father got a new piece of software, he definitely would RTFM. Cover-to-cover. Then he'd buy some 3rd party book on the same piece of software, and read that cover-to-cover. He'd then somehow be less able to use said software than I was, armed only with the intuition of someone with computer fluency.
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So we are pushing for more waste?
Why print something out that will likely be used once?
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Why do hate those of us who made S-100 bus computers in the 70s so?
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I remember the day I cracked open the box for Ultima VI (in particular) - and in all it's glory were a cloth map of Britannia, two (count 'em) manuals (spellbook and general adventuring guide), and an "authentic replic Orb of the Moons moonstone"
Today this seems to have been replaced with one of two (mutually-exclusive?) options:
1) An in-game reference that's hopefully convenient to use, but might not be.
2) A completely unofficial 3rd party wiki site, that's very inconvenient to use (unless you have a secondary laptop/device next to your gaming machine).
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It's called a bookshelf. Of course most people buy them from somewhere like Ikea and they can't figure out how to put them together.
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Nintendo 3DS games come with an e-manual.
Switch games generally do not. There's usually an option in the menus to show the controls, but other than that you're at the mercy of the tutorials.
3DS game packaging is the same size as DS packaging, which included a manual. Switch packaging is smaller than WiiU game packaging, but it's still plenty big enough to put a manual in there if you want. And the cases have clips to hold a manual. And some third-party games do have manuals.
The game packaging was made small