I think it's easy to be cynical, given what's happened in this country since 2001. You figure the options are:
1) Blogging will be outlawed
or
2) Megabucks Media incorporated will lift stories with impunity... then sue the living daylights out of whatever damn fool Blogger originally put up the work..."
As to (1), how do you figure blogging will be outlawed? Blogging is really just a form of writing, with distribution via the Internet. The newsmedia is already being forced to change how they do business, based on what bloggers have been doing. Thousands if not millions of people freely express their opinions online without any trouble, and given that outlawing blogging would be akin to outlawing newspapers, there is no way news media professionals would get behind such a prohibition anyway. They depend on freedom of speech, and they know restricting it would run counter to their own interests. Beyond that, even if they were interested in outlawing blogging somehow, even the most righteous social conservative would be firmly opposed to this. For every muck-raking blog, there is a dittohead blog. The Bush Administration is having a tough enough time selling its own party on its main agenda items these days. Attempting to outlaw blogs would be an absurd diversion that would quickly get shot down.
As to your second assumption, news organizations have to sell to advertisers and the public. It's how they stay alive. They know that if they were to actually countersue a blogger, when they were the plagiarists, the truth would out. They still have to sell ad space. They still have to convince people reading or watching the news that they follow ethical guidelines. Look at the damage that has been done to the NYT with all of their recent high-profile ethics problems. One news outfit might sue a blogger, but if they're in the wrong, the courts will find for the blogger. The legal system has its problems, but it is not so screwed up that little guys can't win when the facts are in their favor. The hit to credibility in such a case would be huge, and all of the other mainstream media companies would act as quickly as possible to distance themselves from that sort of behavior.
Civil liberties have been taking a hit for the last four years, but the Bill of Rights still has force. Plus, judging by the opinion polls, even the voters who brought Bush into office are starting to realize that his fear-based policies don't make any sense. I think Americans are easily swayed in the short term, but in the long term they won't buy the argument that dissent must be muzzled and big business should get its way regardless of the consequences.
Translation: many more people are online nowadays, a goodly percentage of whom have addictive personalities.
That's perfect. I find it interesting how often people confuse addictive or deviant behavior with the mechanism through which that behavior is expressed.
Here's an example: When I was in my early teens, it was pencil and paper role playing games (actually they only targeted D&D, because they didn't really realize there were other games out there, but I digress). These games led to Satan-worship, seances, and finally, tragically, suicides. Oddly enough, once the pencil and paper RPG craze settled down and only the hard core gamers were left, we no longer heard about all of this dangerous behavior. You'd think that those most involved in the games would be the ones most prone to the dangerous behavior, if it were the games themselves that were the problem.
We have the same thing in reverse with the Net. Its use has permeated society, so most people are now using it. But how come we haven't heard about this addiction before? Why weren't all of the MUD denizens and usenet addicts rounded up and brought into therapy earlier? Perhaps the shrinks just haven't been diligent enough.
What we really need is a Psychiatry Response Force, ready to swoop in and monitor use of any new technology. They could create special task forces (The XBox Awareness Team, Blue-Ray Watchers, etc.) to keep us all safe.
Or maybe what we need is to simply acknowledge that addicts will find something to get addicted to.
wall st analysts are initiating a downgrade and sell
Mmm.. no. The market as a whole dropped yesterday, supposedly because of inflation fears.
i used to respect Yahoo back in the early 90's , now they are just another desperate american advertising company
Well, they are American. I suppose that's good cause to loathe them, if that's your thing. But lately Yahoo has been changing quite a bit. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but after they purchased Flickr, they've been "flickrizing" their apps at a fairly rapid clip. They're overhauling the interfaces to their key apps. Some of their beta apps are work very well and are a pleasure to use. It's easy to add new Yahoo services without getting tied into any Passport-like crap. You can use the apps you like and disregard the ones you don't like.
They're not first to market, but they're restructing their whole approach to provide regular non-geeks the opportunity to exchange information, establish online communities, create their own blogs, and so on. It's not the Google approach, which is tool-centric. Yahoo is remaking itself as what AOL could have become if it had any brains. As for being an "advertising company" maybe you haven't compared Google web apps to Yahoo web apps lately.
Microsoft claimed that protecting intellectual property encouraged innovation, in other words they don't want people copying them because they feel copying is detrimental to being innovative.
Their primary "innovation" argument has actually been something along the lines of: "Open Source software is evil because it does not reward innovation, therefore it creates disincentives to innovation."
Microsoft's embrace of software patents is explained by their second "innovation" argument, which is that truly advanced software development will only occur if it is protected by patents. If Open Source is a detriment to innovation, then software patents are a spur to innovation.
Google eating their lunch has nothing to do with either of the above arguments, and MS knows it. They've made their fortunes primarily by getting into a market after it has been established by someone else (Excel for Mac being a notable exception), copying the leader, then piling on features. In that sense they're a bit like the US government, which in the early days of the republic launched a vigorous campaign of IP theft targeted at Britain. Once America gained technological leadership, its embrace of more and more restrictive IP laws developed.
Did Microsoft come to you with a specific set of metrics, or did you work with them to develop the metrics, or did you determine them completely on your own?
Kudos to you for braving the inevitable flames to answer people's questions here on Slashdot.
In the long run, everything becomes unimportant except whether your product is good.
I agree with you to a degree, but you also have to be able to make money at it. Plenty of companies that made great products are now dead and gone because they couldn't figure out how to make money selling their great products. Google has thus far been able to make great products and make money at the same time, without pissing off their customers (users and advertisers). That's a very difficult thing to do well, and to me is the real reason for Google's success to date.
Just once it would be nice if their technological approach failed (the database was wrong, the drivers licence pointed them in the wrong direction, etc.) but no, they're perfect.
The American worldview at present is a curious mixture of faith in higher powers and faith in technology. Americans tend to believe that our sophisticated technology will always prevail. We like bright, easily-discerned lines and are very uncomfortable with nuanced ethical decisions. It's obvious in our entertainment (lest the video game industry smirk and point fingers at Hollywood, movies aren't alone in this), our generally idea-free political process, and our bewilderment when our technological marvels don't automagically win wars for us.
CSI's treatment of video games is just one more episode in an ongoing list that goes back to the dawn of Hollywood. Fictional entertainment may purport to be realistic, but it seldom is. Let's flip this one on its head and look at video game realism. Just walking around in body armor in blazing heat, with a helmet on your head, a weapon in hand, and assorted other crap festooned to your person is a pain in the ass. Games can't give us anything remotely approximating what that feels like. When you go into combat in the streets of Bagdhad, if you get shot in the face, you're either dead or fucked up for life. "Realistic" first-person shooters go to great lengths to be as realistic as possible in all aspects but the most important one of all. Ah, but how entertained would we be if our on-screen personas died every time we entered combat? Well, therein lies the rub. Just as first-person shooters distort reality by pretending that with enough guns and enough automagically-supplied bullets and miracle life-saving rejuvenators you can win epic battles against long odds, so television distorts reality by providing seemingly realistic settings that actually present the reality ass-backwards.
Bottom line: No matter how slick the presentation, it's all still entertainment, and it is usually almost completely divorced from reality.
As others have noted, Google didn't cause the radical diminishing of obnoxious ads all by themselves, but their role was very important. At a time when other search engines were still stuck on the "throw as much at the user as possible" model, which was intended to make search engines "sticky" destinations, Google went with a clean, user-centered interface.
Their emphasis on the user was applied to ads as well. They recognized that text ads are less visually intrusive than image ads. So their refusal to allow banner ads in their results was great for users. But the real importance of this move was made important when advertisers began migrating to Google in droves. They discovered that text ads actually provide better long-term results than banner ads. Google forced advertisers to examine an approach web interface experts had been advocating for some time.
Yes, all this excitement about Google's role seems like deification, but Google really did change the landscape. They did it with a user-centered approach, which the prevailing players at the time simply did not have. Whether Google will continue to keep the interests of its users in mind is an open question, but their advertising model has radically altered the playing field in a good way.
Control Chaos obviously got caught up in an overabundance of hype-speak. But Scrum is just a process. The idea behind it is to shift the project structure so that managers work primarily to remove obstacles for developers, rather than creating additional reporting requirements that hinder them. Developers identify problems and make decisions about how to deal with them. Because managers are present for these discussions, they know what resources the developers need and how to keep the rest of the organization off their backs.
It doesn't work in every situation or in any organization. You can't just plug it in anywhere, because it's very dependent on how managers perceive their role. It did work well when, at the suggestion of one of the developers, I used it with a small team in a small organization with a relatively trusting client. I have no idea how well it would work on a larger project for a more hierarchy-oriented organization.
I like Apple products, and I think that on balance the company has done a lot of good for the personal computer industry over the years. However, I really hope they don't keep going down the software patent road. We've seen much gnashing of teeth on Slashdot over similar moves by Microsoft. Let's not be hypocrites. Apple needs to wake up and recognize that they'll gain less than they'll lose from patenting software.
This company has a long history of choosing short term profits over long term success.
That history stopped several years ago. Apple isn't the same company it was in the 1980s or even the 1990s. One look at the aftermarket that has built up around the iPod, and the way Apple has been selling the iPod through a wide variety of channels will tell you that.
Plus, one bad product release does not mean Apple has suddenly turned sour. I don't buy the conspiracy line for a minute. Apple gave Moto the lead in developing the ROKR because they saw the product as a test vehicle in an uncertain market. The Apple of old would have jumped in with both feet (Newton) and declared that they were going to radically alter everything about mobile communications. The new, much more savvy Apple instead let a partner do the heavy lifting for them. Apple can always introduce a better cellPod if they want to, though I doubt they will. If the market for phone/music combos doesn't pick up, Apple isn't going to impale itself trying to move the market the way the Apple of old would have.
There will be cell phones that double as outstanding MP3 players. It is only a matter of time.
This is pure conjecture on both our parts, but I disagree completely. The cell phone is an absolute mess from a usability standpoint, and adding MP3 functionality to them ony worsens that. Some people will like the hybrids, just as some people like cell/palm combo devices. But I think that the active nature of mobile phones and the passive nature of music players makes a marriage of the two fundamentally flawed. Phone-centered devices that play music will not knock music/video focused small devices out of the market.
I'm not sure I get your point. One of the most powerful religious organizations in the world has reiterated its commitment to separation of faith and science. I'm not a Catholic, and I consider this to be a rather important statement which will hopefully make some Christians rethink the scientific validity of "intelligent design." Since there are more than a few Christians around the globe, I'd say this has ramifications beyond the Catholic Church.
Maybe if we're lucky, some influential Hindus and agnostics will make their own similar declarations.
is to get them to stop reading so many Q & A sessions on Slashdot that have to do with managing geeks. Instead of letting the geeks read these "managing geeks" articles on Slashdot every three months, sit down and read the responses yourself. You might learn a thing or two, Mr. Smartypants Manager!;-)
Seriously, though. You'll get a million and one answers to the question of how to best manage geeks and most of them won't really matter, because they work well for some people and organizations, and don't work well for others. The trick to managing geeks or anyone else well is to become not just a manager of time and resources, but a leader. There are plenty of ways to go about learning leadership, but the important thing is that leaders recognize that humans are the most valuable asset in any organization. All the MS Project charts and spiffy time-management tools and HR policies in the world don't matter if you don't lead your people.
That doesn't mean you have to become Patton. Some of the best leaders I've encountered were quiet, calm, and almost always in the background. I've also come across great leaders who were always talking, always on the go, and always visible. Leaders can't all be cut from the same mold, and they can be hard to find. Taking raw leadership capability and nurturing it is difficult, which is why most companies shy away from it and focus on management (a concept that was spawned in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, when everyone worked on factory floors) instead. The result: Most companies have managers who are ill-prepared to lead.
I get really sick of this immediate assumption that anyone who has anything bad to say about Apple is somehow "traumatized" or "bashing" the Mac.
Point taken. I give Apple a hard time from time to time and even though I've used Macs for a very long time, sometimes people consider me too critical for doing so. I read too much into your original statements.
All the stuff about how Apple is solely responsible for the GUI and incredibly influential on the entire market, however, is rubbish. They didn't invent, the mouse, they didn't invent the GUI, they didn't even invent the desktop metaphor, or the windowing environment. There is very little evidence to support the idea that the modern GUI owes its existence to Apple, anymore than it owes its existence to XeroX PARC, or AT&T Graphics Software Lab, or Autodesk, or Aldus, or Lotus, or any other of a number of companies who were experimenting with graphic presentation layers at the same time.
Of course Apple didn't invent the GUI, but I think there is strong evidence to support the idea that Apple did accelerate commercial acceptance of graphical user environments, at a time when nobody else was willing to take the risk of bringing a graphical OS to market. Xerox-PARC did a lot of heavy lifting, but nothing ever left the shop there. Even with the PARC contribution, Apple had to do an awful lot of work to bring the concept from the lab to a shipping product. The point is that while the other guys experimented, Apple shipped. Apple learned that early, then forgot about it for a long time. Now they've remembered again.
What Apple is very good at, is seeing where things are going, getting out a product that caters to the current trend, and then claiming credit for the fact that it went that way.
So is it the claiming credit part that bothers you the most? If a company spots a need and fills that needs, shouldn't they get credit for being adroit enough to do those things?
I'd actually argue that Apple is ahead of the curve as often as not, sometimes to their detriment. The Newton is a classic example of this. Fundamentally, though, with the mistakes they make as well as their successes, Apple focuses on the user experience. Claiming that this is all mere marketing hokum doesn't obviate the importance of user experience to Apple as a company. It is always arguable whether the user experience provided by Apple's products is any better than that provided by Microsoft or Creative Labs or whomever. But if you talk to anyone who works at Apple, they'll tell you that they spend a huge amount of time working on the small details of user experience.
We may also be talking about two different things when we say user experience. I'm talking about the integration of hardware, software, and the human being using them. Making it easy and intuitive to use their products is very important at Apple. I'd argue that this is of less importance at most tech companies, Dell included. Again, that doesn't mean that Dell is a stupid company or a bad company, but they are as we both agree, a different animal altogether.
A broader interpretation of the term would incorporate your notion of lifestyle marketing. Apple does market its products in that fashion, so I believe I understand what you're saying there. Apple's products, their retail stores, and their ads are all pitching Apple as "cool" in a fashion similar to Nike. This larger interpretation I would call customer experience rather than user experience.
I think well-done marketing flows from the reality of what motivates a company. Dell's ads always, always, always show the price of their products, which is smart. They're in the business of providing commodity hardware inexpensively. Their relentless driving down of prices has definitely helped the computer industry and consumers. Apple's ads almost never show the product prices, because their emphasis is on shipping well-integrated, well-designed products that people enjoy using. That's what informs their
1) Apple didn't find an aesthetic that they knew defined a market. They defined the market first. Remember, they didn't show up yesterday. Before Apple arrived, computers were anything but "lifestyle" items.
2) Just because something is marketed in a particular fashion doesn't mean that it isn't different or better.
3) You've obviously been traumatized by experiences with Apple true believers. Not all people who buy Apple products look down on those who don't buy from Apple. I've been using Macs and PCs for over 20 years, and in that time I've encountered more zealously anti-Apple people who bash on Mac users than I've encountered Mac users who bash on PC users. There's a difference between really enjoying using your computer and bashing on people who don't share your purchasing choices.
4) Does any of this address my initial point, which is that Apple and Dell are very different companies? Would you argue that Apple wasn't one of the fundamental forces in the creation of the personal computer market, then the GUI environment? Marketing images aside, some companies are more watched than others for good reason.
... but lawyers represent the rule of law. If you've ever been in a country that doesn't have lawyers, you understand the humor in that "Oh, I think we want to keep these proceedings as pleasant as possible" comment from Pleasantville.
Dell has built a very successful business out of operating in a cutthroat hardware market, where the pressure to reduce prices is constant. As countless others have pointed out, the brilliance of Dell is in its distribution model, which keeps costs low and allows the company to more readily tailor its products to fit customer needs. Really, Dell is just an OEM assembling standard parts. But Dell does it better than anyone.
Apple makes the news not because it dominates the computer industry, but because of its impact on the computer market. Again, as many have argued, Apple doesn't always innovate. It has become very good at bringing integrated software/hardware combinations to market and pushing the rest of the market to catch up. They've also transformed themselves in recent years from a computer company to something still being defined. Perhaps we should call Apple a User Experience Company. Opening up the legal music download market is frequently pointed to as merely a by-product of the iPod phenomenon, but it's a rather substantial achievement. Early signs indicate that Apple may be on to something with their expansion into video as well.
We see so many articles about Apple rather than Dell in large part because the DNA of the two companies is radically different. Apple moves forward by putting together very well integrated user experiences. Their products make a splash because from inception to roll-out, the focus is on user experience. Dell makes a splash when it has a good quarter and ships half a zillion units, trampling yet another also-ran into the dust. Apple is an inherently more exciting company to the layman, in part because it has to continually re-invent itself to stay competitive. Dell, on the other hand, just has to keep perfecting its initial business formula, in boring but lucrative Coca-Cola fashion.
This guy seems serious. Now let's just hope the USPTO realizes the stupidity of allowing even an application for this sort of patent. Stories have been around since the beginnings of humanity. Patenting the ideas behind them would be like patenting speech itself.
I still can't believe this. It's like something out of The Onion.
Good point. $500 is pretty steep. I wonder if there's a tax angle for the participants. Presumably nobody put a gun to their heads and made them do this, so there must be something in it for them.
Movie critic who doesn't have to pay to see films, or your friend who has to shell out hard-earned cash to see it? The movie critic will bring in all kinds of esoteric critical theory crap because they never actually directed a movie but always wanted to, and now they're just out to prove how much they know about the meta theory of film.
Music critic who doesn't have to pay to review an album, and in fact gets paid to write a review, or your friend who had to pay for it? The critic knows everything there is to know about the genre and the artist, but he's listened to thousands of albums and is interested primarily in showing his mastery of artful language and his ability to place the album in some sort of hierarchy with other music by other bands.
Making the testers pay keeps their opinions honest. They won't be tempted to blow off little annoyances, and they'll be more inclined to appreciate the things about the vehicle that they really like.
Jobs may consider possibly extending...
on
Pixar For Sale?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
From TFA: The paper attributed Jobs' willingness to consider a sale to "two people with knowledge of the talks" now taking place between Disney and Pixar about possibly extending their partnership.
Jobs is possibly interested in maybe possibly selling Pixar to Disney or perhaps to someone else maybe, possibly. Disney is trying hard to show Jobs and the rest of the world that their animation arm isn't completely dead. Jobs is angling for content deals that will help Apple. Much is possible; nothing is known.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Blogging will be outlawed
or
2) Megabucks Media incorporated will lift stories with impunity... then sue the living daylights out of whatever damn fool Blogger originally put up the work.. ."
As to (1), how do you figure blogging will be outlawed? Blogging is really just a form of writing, with distribution via the Internet. The newsmedia is already being forced to change how they do business, based on what bloggers have been doing. Thousands if not millions of people freely express their opinions online without any trouble, and given that outlawing blogging would be akin to outlawing newspapers, there is no way news media professionals would get behind such a prohibition anyway. They depend on freedom of speech, and they know restricting it would run counter to their own interests. Beyond that, even if they were interested in outlawing blogging somehow, even the most righteous social conservative would be firmly opposed to this. For every muck-raking blog, there is a dittohead blog. The Bush Administration is having a tough enough time selling its own party on its main agenda items these days. Attempting to outlaw blogs would be an absurd diversion that would quickly get shot down.
As to your second assumption, news organizations have to sell to advertisers and the public. It's how they stay alive. They know that if they were to actually countersue a blogger, when they were the plagiarists, the truth would out. They still have to sell ad space. They still have to convince people reading or watching the news that they follow ethical guidelines. Look at the damage that has been done to the NYT with all of their recent high-profile ethics problems. One news outfit might sue a blogger, but if they're in the wrong, the courts will find for the blogger. The legal system has its problems, but it is not so screwed up that little guys can't win when the facts are in their favor. The hit to credibility in such a case would be huge, and all of the other mainstream media companies would act as quickly as possible to distance themselves from that sort of behavior.
Civil liberties have been taking a hit for the last four years, but the Bill of Rights still has force. Plus, judging by the opinion polls, even the voters who brought Bush into office are starting to realize that his fear-based policies don't make any sense. I think Americans are easily swayed in the short term, but in the long term they won't buy the argument that dissent must be muzzled and big business should get its way regardless of the consequences.
That's perfect. I find it interesting how often people confuse addictive or deviant behavior with the mechanism through which that behavior is expressed.
Here's an example: When I was in my early teens, it was pencil and paper role playing games (actually they only targeted D&D, because they didn't really realize there were other games out there, but I digress). These games led to Satan-worship, seances, and finally, tragically, suicides. Oddly enough, once the pencil and paper RPG craze settled down and only the hard core gamers were left, we no longer heard about all of this dangerous behavior. You'd think that those most involved in the games would be the ones most prone to the dangerous behavior, if it were the games themselves that were the problem.
We have the same thing in reverse with the Net. Its use has permeated society, so most people are now using it. But how come we haven't heard about this addiction before? Why weren't all of the MUD denizens and usenet addicts rounded up and brought into therapy earlier? Perhaps the shrinks just haven't been diligent enough.
What we really need is a Psychiatry Response Force, ready to swoop in and monitor use of any new technology. They could create special task forces (The XBox Awareness Team, Blue-Ray Watchers, etc.) to keep us all safe.
Or maybe what we need is to simply acknowledge that addicts will find something to get addicted to.
Mmm.. no. The market as a whole dropped yesterday, supposedly because of inflation fears.
i used to respect Yahoo back in the early 90's , now they are just another desperate american advertising company
Well, they are American. I suppose that's good cause to loathe them, if that's your thing. But lately Yahoo has been changing quite a bit. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but after they purchased Flickr, they've been "flickrizing" their apps at a fairly rapid clip. They're overhauling the interfaces to their key apps. Some of their beta apps are work very well and are a pleasure to use. It's easy to add new Yahoo services without getting tied into any Passport-like crap. You can use the apps you like and disregard the ones you don't like.
They're not first to market, but they're restructing their whole approach to provide regular non-geeks the opportunity to exchange information, establish online communities, create their own blogs, and so on. It's not the Google approach, which is tool-centric. Yahoo is remaking itself as what AOL could have become if it had any brains. As for being an "advertising company" maybe you haven't compared Google web apps to Yahoo web apps lately.
Their primary "innovation" argument has actually been something along the lines of: "Open Source software is evil because it does not reward innovation, therefore it creates disincentives to innovation."
Microsoft's embrace of software patents is explained by their second "innovation" argument, which is that truly advanced software development will only occur if it is protected by patents. If Open Source is a detriment to innovation, then software patents are a spur to innovation.
Google eating their lunch has nothing to do with either of the above arguments, and MS knows it. They've made their fortunes primarily by getting into a market after it has been established by someone else (Excel for Mac being a notable exception), copying the leader, then piling on features. In that sense they're a bit like the US government, which in the early days of the republic launched a vigorous campaign of IP theft targeted at Britain. Once America gained technological leadership, its embrace of more and more restrictive IP laws developed.
Funny how that works, isn't it?
Kudos to you for braving the inevitable flames to answer people's questions here on Slashdot.
I agree with you to a degree, but you also have to be able to make money at it. Plenty of companies that made great products are now dead and gone because they couldn't figure out how to make money selling their great products. Google has thus far been able to make great products and make money at the same time, without pissing off their customers (users and advertisers). That's a very difficult thing to do well, and to me is the real reason for Google's success to date.
Just once it would be nice if their technological approach failed (the database was wrong, the drivers licence pointed them in the wrong direction, etc.) but no, they're perfect.
The American worldview at present is a curious mixture of faith in higher powers and faith in technology. Americans tend to believe that our sophisticated technology will always prevail. We like bright, easily-discerned lines and are very uncomfortable with nuanced ethical decisions. It's obvious in our entertainment (lest the video game industry smirk and point fingers at Hollywood, movies aren't alone in this), our generally idea-free political process, and our bewilderment when our technological marvels don't automagically win wars for us.
CSI's treatment of video games is just one more episode in an ongoing list that goes back to the dawn of Hollywood. Fictional entertainment may purport to be realistic, but it seldom is. Let's flip this one on its head and look at video game realism. Just walking around in body armor in blazing heat, with a helmet on your head, a weapon in hand, and assorted other crap festooned to your person is a pain in the ass. Games can't give us anything remotely approximating what that feels like. When you go into combat in the streets of Bagdhad, if you get shot in the face, you're either dead or fucked up for life. "Realistic" first-person shooters go to great lengths to be as realistic as possible in all aspects but the most important one of all. Ah, but how entertained would we be if our on-screen personas died every time we entered combat? Well, therein lies the rub. Just as first-person shooters distort reality by pretending that with enough guns and enough automagically-supplied bullets and miracle life-saving rejuvenators you can win epic battles against long odds, so television distorts reality by providing seemingly realistic settings that actually present the reality ass-backwards.
Bottom line: No matter how slick the presentation, it's all still entertainment, and it is usually almost completely divorced from reality.
Their emphasis on the user was applied to ads as well. They recognized that text ads are less visually intrusive than image ads. So their refusal to allow banner ads in their results was great for users. But the real importance of this move was made important when advertisers began migrating to Google in droves. They discovered that text ads actually provide better long-term results than banner ads. Google forced advertisers to examine an approach web interface experts had been advocating for some time.
Yes, all this excitement about Google's role seems like deification, but Google really did change the landscape. They did it with a user-centered approach, which the prevailing players at the time simply did not have. Whether Google will continue to keep the interests of its users in mind is an open question, but their advertising model has radically altered the playing field in a good way.
It doesn't work in every situation or in any organization. You can't just plug it in anywhere, because it's very dependent on how managers perceive their role. It did work well when, at the suggestion of one of the developers, I used it with a small team in a small organization with a relatively trusting client. I have no idea how well it would work on a larger project for a more hierarchy-oriented organization.
I like Apple products, and I think that on balance the company has done a lot of good for the personal computer industry over the years. However, I really hope they don't keep going down the software patent road. We've seen much gnashing of teeth on Slashdot over similar moves by Microsoft. Let's not be hypocrites. Apple needs to wake up and recognize that they'll gain less than they'll lose from patenting software.
That history stopped several years ago. Apple isn't the same company it was in the 1980s or even the 1990s. One look at the aftermarket that has built up around the iPod, and the way Apple has been selling the iPod through a wide variety of channels will tell you that.
Plus, one bad product release does not mean Apple has suddenly turned sour. I don't buy the conspiracy line for a minute. Apple gave Moto the lead in developing the ROKR because they saw the product as a test vehicle in an uncertain market. The Apple of old would have jumped in with both feet (Newton) and declared that they were going to radically alter everything about mobile communications. The new, much more savvy Apple instead let a partner do the heavy lifting for them. Apple can always introduce a better cellPod if they want to, though I doubt they will. If the market for phone/music combos doesn't pick up, Apple isn't going to impale itself trying to move the market the way the Apple of old would have.
There will be cell phones that double as outstanding MP3 players. It is only a matter of time.
This is pure conjecture on both our parts, but I disagree completely. The cell phone is an absolute mess from a usability standpoint, and adding MP3 functionality to them ony worsens that. Some people will like the hybrids, just as some people like cell/palm combo devices. But I think that the active nature of mobile phones and the passive nature of music players makes a marriage of the two fundamentally flawed. Phone-centered devices that play music will not knock music/video focused small devices out of the market.
Just don't slap your subordinates and call them cowards after they've been traumatized in battle. ;-)
I'm not sure I get your point. One of the most powerful religious organizations in the world has reiterated its commitment to separation of faith and science. I'm not a Catholic, and I consider this to be a rather important statement which will hopefully make some Christians rethink the scientific validity of "intelligent design." Since there are more than a few Christians around the globe, I'd say this has ramifications beyond the Catholic Church.
Maybe if we're lucky, some influential Hindus and agnostics will make their own similar declarations.
Seriously, though. You'll get a million and one answers to the question of how to best manage geeks and most of them won't really matter, because they work well for some people and organizations, and don't work well for others. The trick to managing geeks or anyone else well is to become not just a manager of time and resources, but a leader. There are plenty of ways to go about learning leadership, but the important thing is that leaders recognize that humans are the most valuable asset in any organization. All the MS Project charts and spiffy time-management tools and HR policies in the world don't matter if you don't lead your people.
That doesn't mean you have to become Patton. Some of the best leaders I've encountered were quiet, calm, and almost always in the background. I've also come across great leaders who were always talking, always on the go, and always visible. Leaders can't all be cut from the same mold, and they can be hard to find. Taking raw leadership capability and nurturing it is difficult, which is why most companies shy away from it and focus on management (a concept that was spawned in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, when everyone worked on factory floors) instead. The result: Most companies have managers who are ill-prepared to lead.
Point taken. I give Apple a hard time from time to time and even though I've used Macs for a very long time, sometimes people consider me too critical for doing so. I read too much into your original statements.
All the stuff about how Apple is solely responsible for the GUI and incredibly influential on the entire market, however, is rubbish. They didn't invent, the mouse, they didn't invent the GUI, they didn't even invent the desktop metaphor, or the windowing environment. There is very little evidence to support the idea that the modern GUI owes its existence to Apple, anymore than it owes its existence to XeroX PARC, or AT&T Graphics Software Lab, or Autodesk, or Aldus, or Lotus, or any other of a number of companies who were experimenting with graphic presentation layers at the same time.
Of course Apple didn't invent the GUI, but I think there is strong evidence to support the idea that Apple did accelerate commercial acceptance of graphical user environments, at a time when nobody else was willing to take the risk of bringing a graphical OS to market. Xerox-PARC did a lot of heavy lifting, but nothing ever left the shop there. Even with the PARC contribution, Apple had to do an awful lot of work to bring the concept from the lab to a shipping product. The point is that while the other guys experimented, Apple shipped. Apple learned that early, then forgot about it for a long time. Now they've remembered again.
What Apple is very good at, is seeing where things are going, getting out a product that caters to the current trend, and then claiming credit for the fact that it went that way.
So is it the claiming credit part that bothers you the most? If a company spots a need and fills that needs, shouldn't they get credit for being adroit enough to do those things?
I'd actually argue that Apple is ahead of the curve as often as not, sometimes to their detriment. The Newton is a classic example of this. Fundamentally, though, with the mistakes they make as well as their successes, Apple focuses on the user experience. Claiming that this is all mere marketing hokum doesn't obviate the importance of user experience to Apple as a company. It is always arguable whether the user experience provided by Apple's products is any better than that provided by Microsoft or Creative Labs or whomever. But if you talk to anyone who works at Apple, they'll tell you that they spend a huge amount of time working on the small details of user experience.
We may also be talking about two different things when we say user experience. I'm talking about the integration of hardware, software, and the human being using them. Making it easy and intuitive to use their products is very important at Apple. I'd argue that this is of less importance at most tech companies, Dell included. Again, that doesn't mean that Dell is a stupid company or a bad company, but they are as we both agree, a different animal altogether.
A broader interpretation of the term would incorporate your notion of lifestyle marketing. Apple does market its products in that fashion, so I believe I understand what you're saying there. Apple's products, their retail stores, and their ads are all pitching Apple as "cool" in a fashion similar to Nike. This larger interpretation I would call customer experience rather than user experience.
I think well-done marketing flows from the reality of what motivates a company. Dell's ads always, always, always show the price of their products, which is smart. They're in the business of providing commodity hardware inexpensively. Their relentless driving down of prices has definitely helped the computer industry and consumers. Apple's ads almost never show the product prices, because their emphasis is on shipping well-integrated, well-designed products that people enjoy using. That's what informs their
and if programmers interpreted the law, everything would be strict liability. ;-)
2) Just because something is marketed in a particular fashion doesn't mean that it isn't different or better.
3) You've obviously been traumatized by experiences with Apple true believers. Not all people who buy Apple products look down on those who don't buy from Apple. I've been using Macs and PCs for over 20 years, and in that time I've encountered more zealously anti-Apple people who bash on Mac users than I've encountered Mac users who bash on PC users. There's a difference between really enjoying using your computer and bashing on people who don't share your purchasing choices.
4) Does any of this address my initial point, which is that Apple and Dell are very different companies? Would you argue that Apple wasn't one of the fundamental forces in the creation of the personal computer market, then the GUI environment? Marketing images aside, some companies are more watched than others for good reason.
Apple makes the news not because it dominates the computer industry, but because of its impact on the computer market. Again, as many have argued, Apple doesn't always innovate. It has become very good at bringing integrated software/hardware combinations to market and pushing the rest of the market to catch up. They've also transformed themselves in recent years from a computer company to something still being defined. Perhaps we should call Apple a User Experience Company. Opening up the legal music download market is frequently pointed to as merely a by-product of the iPod phenomenon, but it's a rather substantial achievement. Early signs indicate that Apple may be on to something with their expansion into video as well.
We see so many articles about Apple rather than Dell in large part because the DNA of the two companies is radically different. Apple moves forward by putting together very well integrated user experiences. Their products make a splash because from inception to roll-out, the focus is on user experience. Dell makes a splash when it has a good quarter and ships half a zillion units, trampling yet another also-ran into the dust. Apple is an inherently more exciting company to the layman, in part because it has to continually re-invent itself to stay competitive. Dell, on the other hand, just has to keep perfecting its initial business formula, in boring but lucrative Coca-Cola fashion.
This guy seems serious. Now let's just hope the USPTO realizes the stupidity of allowing even an application for this sort of patent. Stories have been around since the beginnings of humanity. Patenting the ideas behind them would be like patenting speech itself.
I still can't believe this. It's like something out of The Onion.
Good point. $500 is pretty steep. I wonder if there's a tax angle for the participants. Presumably nobody put a gun to their heads and made them do this, so there must be something in it for them.
Whose evaluation do you trust more?
Movie critic who doesn't have to pay to see films, or your friend who has to shell out hard-earned cash to see it? The movie critic will bring in all kinds of esoteric critical theory crap because they never actually directed a movie but always wanted to, and now they're just out to prove how much they know about the meta theory of film.
Music critic who doesn't have to pay to review an album, and in fact gets paid to write a review, or your friend who had to pay for it? The critic knows everything there is to know about the genre and the artist, but he's listened to thousands of albums and is interested primarily in showing his mastery of artful language and his ability to place the album in some sort of hierarchy with other music by other bands.
Making the testers pay keeps their opinions honest. They won't be tempted to blow off little annoyances, and they'll be more inclined to appreciate the things about the vehicle that they really like.
Jobs is possibly interested in maybe possibly selling Pixar to Disney or perhaps to someone else maybe, possibly. Disney is trying hard to show Jobs and the rest of the world that their animation arm isn't completely dead. Jobs is angling for content deals that will help Apple. Much is possible; nothing is known.
Wake me up when there's more than a rumor.