Whether one thing is evolutionary or revolutionary is pretty hard to determine anyway since it's subject to one's preferences and experience. In my case i'd say that what Gmail did to the way email works is just revolutionary... The idea of labels is beyond just cool, as you may want to portray it. When you're able to put something into two different places, it changes a lot of things..
And no, there is no basic model of email that is being changed here, with labels+conversations, at last an email service is getting the correct model of email right: that email should not just be a collection of separate email messages (yes, threading helps, but still it pales in comparison the gmail's implementation) but rather it's a media for communication, which should be a continuous exchange of ideas. (the conversation view excels in that regard)
I can go on pitching gmail, but it wouldn't be as good as experiencing it and seeing the difference that it makes...
not with the apple computer. and certainly not with the ipod. you should read your personal computer history again and remember once more why people use microsoft (hint: it's not because it's better). Apple computer having the niche market share is not the same as iriver etc. catering to the niche market. its a totally different story.
They are the first movers, but our good friends at Microsoft have proven time and again how little that really means
They were not the first movers this time.
Way before the first generation ipods were introduced, there are already a plethora of mp3 players present in the market.
they were not the first in the digital music business neither. pressplay and others jumped to the bandwagon way ahead in time.
What makes them "ahead" now is not a case of the early bird catching most of the worms. it's all about a solution that works. and works great it does. Steve Jobs is right. Maybe this time the better product will win.
Apples computers are different enough to avoid much of the direct competition but I would propose that the iPod and iTMS do not share this advantage.
but apple's market share eroded still. sad to say, the success or failure of a product in the mind+market(share) is not just about how different or better a product is over its competition, as what history has told us. That's barely half the story. Marketing and good Strategy is what cements the lead in the end. And i do agree with all of the three strategies that you mentioned. again, at the end of the day, its still nice to see the better product having the greater share.
One strange GUI quirk is that there are two options for Exit on the iTunes File menu - Exit, and Close Window. One would assume that Close Window would just close the window and leave iTunes running, like on the Mac, but no such luck - it exits, with no confirmation dialog. Strange.
in case you didnt know, you can open a playlist as another itunes window. maybe this is what the "close window" is for.
You can't resize the iTunes window unless you grab the bottom-left corner. I've never liked this aspect of Mac GUIs at all, but I'm sure there are some people who do like it.
i personally am not bothered by this. on a related note, i was at first perplexed by the way itunes "ideally" resize your itunes- unmaximized (unlike the familiar windows ideal size that most of windows people have come to accept), and at the center of the monitor. weird as it may seem, it just felt comfortable to me. since we can only see so many lines at a time, its just right that the app window should be where it is most comfortable to be used: at the center. why not a maximized window? because doing so would result into a full page of information that doesn't really fit in our normal field of vision, ergonomically speaking. something not found in our windows world. but come to think of it, usability and ergonomically wise, it's pretty smart.
not a mac owner, but il bite.
On the G5 I spent about 20 minutes trying to install Adobe Arcobat 6. 20 minutes
even if you start "installing now", it would probably take you a lot longer that 20 minutes to install Acrobat Reader-days maybe, coz you would still have to wait for "your" _g5_ to arrive...
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Whether one thing is evolutionary or revolutionary is pretty hard to determine anyway since it's subject to one's preferences and experience.
In my case i'd say that what Gmail did to the way email works is just revolutionary... The idea of labels is beyond just cool, as you may want to portray it. When you're able to put something into two different places, it changes a lot of things..
And no, there is no basic model of email that is being changed here, with labels+conversations, at last an email service is getting the correct model of email right: that email should not just be a collection of separate email messages (yes, threading helps, but still it pales in comparison the gmail's implementation) but rather it's a media for communication, which should be a continuous exchange of ideas. (the conversation view excels in that regard)
I can go on pitching gmail, but it wouldn't be as good as experiencing it and seeing the difference that it makes...
Isn't that what Apple's business plan is?
not with the apple computer. and certainly not with the ipod. you should read your personal computer history again and remember once more why people use microsoft (hint: it's not because it's better). Apple computer having the niche market share is not the same as iriver etc. catering to the niche market. its a totally different story.
They are the first movers, but our good friends at Microsoft have proven time and again how little that really means
They were not the first movers this time. Way before the first generation ipods were introduced, there are already a plethora of mp3 players present in the market. they were not the first in the digital music business neither. pressplay and others jumped to the bandwagon way ahead in time. What makes them "ahead" now is not a case of the early bird catching most of the worms. it's all about a solution that works. and works great it does. Steve Jobs is right. Maybe this time the better product will win.
Apples computers are different enough to avoid much of the direct competition but I would propose that the iPod and iTMS do not share this advantage.
but apple's market share eroded still. sad to say, the success or failure of a product in the mind+market(share) is not just about how different or better a product is over its competition, as what history has told us. That's barely half the story. Marketing and good Strategy is what cements the lead in the end. And i do agree with all of the three strategies that you mentioned. again, at the end of the day, its still nice to see the better product having the greater share.
this is a photo from the Lonestar images site... funny. look at the third guy from the left. is that an os x he was wearing... hmm. ironic.
not a mac owner, but il bite. On the G5 I spent about 20 minutes trying to install Adobe Arcobat 6. 20 minutes even if you start "installing now", it would probably take you a lot longer that 20 minutes to install Acrobat Reader-days maybe, coz you would still have to wait for "your" _g5_ to arrive...