Thursday, January 11, 2007

Things to think about as we wait for June

From Lev Grossman's iPhone review:

- "When our tools don't work, we tend to blame ourselves, for being too stupid or not reading the manual or having too-fat fingers. 'I think there's almost a belligerence—people are frustrated with their manufactured environment,' says [Apple's lead designer Jonathan] Ive. “We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we're trying to use.'" Maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere for WalMart.

- "A college dropout, whose biological parents gave him up for adoption, Jobs has presided over four major game-changing product launches: the Apple II, the Macintosh, the iPod, and the iPhone; five if you count the release of Pixar's Toy Story." Which is why even reasonable stuff like this is kinda tiresome. He's not a nice guy -- got it. When's that phone gonna be ready again?

- "One reason there's limited innovation in cell phones generally is that the cell carriers have stiff guidelines that the manufacturers have to follow. They demand that all their handsets work the same way.... Jobs demanded special treatment from his phone service partner, Cingular, and he got it. He even forced Cingular to re-engineer its infrastructure...." Awesome. Do you know anyone who likes their carrier? Anyone?

And the coup de grace:

- "I can’t think of a comparable company that does no—zero—market research with its customers."

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