http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/04/06/the-obama-doctrine
this is such a baffling paraphrase of the quoted passage
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, April 6, 2015 8:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
lol design solutionism
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:03 (nine years ago) link
about half of Apple's success has been delivering good products, the other half has been strictly controlling the narrative and perception of those products
they really use the stick/carrot approach with journalists, and I think Gruber probably has some pretty sharp night vision, if you catch my meaning
― mh, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:04 (nine years ago) link
Gruber as part of the Apple-media syndicate that delivers people who "care about design," but really only maybe know web design and like to talk about Important Men
― mh, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:06 (nine years ago) link
Apple doesn’t approach PR the same way now as it did before. I think Cook addressed this specifically . . . in Lashinsky’s Fortune cover story maybe?
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:08 (nine years ago) link
tbf if u want to credit gruber with anything he understood the concept of user experience design before it became common place, in other words he took the right lesson from apple, or at least one of the lessons he took was right
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:09 (nine years ago) link
Yes, that’s definitely not the only lesson though.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:10 (nine years ago) link
and i do think apples success is largely based on making products that just work, the marketing is nice and all but, i mean this is not jewelry (<<<), also the supply chain aspect is huge but that never wouldve been possible if the design didnt appeal to enough ppl to reach those economies of scale
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:12 (nine years ago) link
There are other factors too, like picking the right products at the right time and not being afraid of cannibalization, blah blah blah.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:16 (nine years ago) link
When I was in college, they were the iPod and Mac company!
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:17 (nine years ago) link
The Mac isn’t the biggest business on the planet. The iPod disappeared as a direct result of the success of the phone, but it’s possible that in an alternate reality someone else got to the phone and Apple didn’t or Apple did but never got traction or scenario C, D, E, or F.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:18 (nine years ago) link
ppl thought canceling the mini for the nano was crazy at the time!
― brunch technician (silby), Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:19 (nine years ago) link
There’s also the way Jobs thought about hiring people. That was important.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:20 (nine years ago) link
― markers, Tuesday, April 7, 2015 12:16 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
those both fall under the rubric of ux design imho at least philosophically if not as far as typically prescribed
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:20 (nine years ago) link
yah maybe now, their late 90s comeback through the iPhone was basically releasing mostly-baked ideas and hoping people would get into them because they looked cool and had an ethos
OS X performed like crap for the first few years, but you could spend your time waiting by cleaning lint out of your iPod's moving scroll wheel
― mh, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:20 (nine years ago) link
The fact that Jobs (eventually) listened to people who disagreed with him was crucial! No iPod on Windows!
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:21 (nine years ago) link
steve jobs was the best "product guy" ever is all you need to know
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:21 (nine years ago) link
also remember when iPods didn't have sudden motion sensors and the hard drives would fail because the read head would smack the platters
Click of death!
― mh, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:21 (nine years ago) link
― lag∞n, Monday, April 6, 2015 9:21 PM (10 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
my experience with "product guys" at 4m4z0n was that none of them seemed to have any insight into what anyone might possibly want
― brunch technician (silby), Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:23 (nine years ago) link
it's probably hard to be a "product guy"
You key word there is the 440 thing.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:23 (nine years ago) link
They don’t know how to make consumer electronics a lot of people want beyond that one thing for reading books that most people don’t care about.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:24 (nine years ago) link
amazon's firetv is currently about twice as useful as appletv, mostly due to apple not developing it much at all
― mh, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:25 (nine years ago) link
Ah forgot about that. Some people seem to like it, sure! I don’t care about the Apple TV though. Or the entire category, basically.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:25 (nine years ago) link
you are apple
― mh, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:26 (nine years ago) link
I was only around/working on website stuff, lots of people clearly want to buy things, trying to figure out dumb ways to make them want more things was really a pointless exercise
― brunch technician (silby), Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:26 (nine years ago) link
xpost Apple and I will diverge later this year probably, because it looks like they might start caring, and I don’t see how I will. The Watch is more interesting to me; I will be saving up for one of those, not so much with the TV.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:27 (nine years ago) link
amazon is a great product company! it just has a very low end shitty throw shit at the wall and see what (empirically) sticks approach, which is in its own way more fascinating and emblematic of our consumerist times than apple even imho
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:28 (nine years ago) link
What products, lag00n?
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:29 (nine years ago) link
the watch is an epic fail imho but we will see
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:29 (nine years ago) link
ppl really like watching TV, some ppl really like playing video games on their TV, everyone hates their cable company, that business pretty much just putting some pieces together in a way that people will hurry up to pay for xps
― brunch technician (silby), Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:29 (nine years ago) link
I already know multiple people who aren't really into following technology who want the watch!
― mh, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:30 (nine years ago) link
I will be shocked if Watch is not a disaster on some scale but then I don't really know any serious crossfit types
― Clay, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:31 (nine years ago) link
For me and for most of their customers, I think Amazon is about getting me the shit I need as quickly as possible. They provide a service. And, yes, they are very, very good at that, and I have Prime and buy pretty much all of my books through them. But the actual stuff they produce is . . . The Fire Phone flopped. The Kindle is good. Would you ever pick a Kindle Fire over an iPad? I don’t know anything about their accessories, but that’s small potatoes shit.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:31 (nine years ago) link
the product is amazon.com mostly but that consists of a million little things, like i set my dad up to get all his sponges and paper towels and dish soap delivered on a schedule, i order larabars and they get here the next day, thats all "amazon prime" i guess but its also just amazon the horrifying interconnected logistics macine
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:31 (nine years ago) link
― mh, Tuesday, April 7, 2015 12:30 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
do you know anyone... who needs it... owned
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:32 (nine years ago) link
yeah the "real things" amazon does are fulfillment and now AWS, everything else is window dressing and a just staggeringly bananaballs codebase
― brunch technician (silby), Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:33 (nine years ago) link
Didn’t Cook already admit somewhere that the market for the Watch, at the beginning at least, is limited because it requires certain iPhone models? Anyway, not predicting anything here; I have no idea what kind of numbers it’ll do the first year or beyond. But the fact that it’s $349 at the cheapest is also going to limit its market, and especially at the beginning a lot of people aren’t even going to see the point. Perhaps they never will. Perhaps with good reason! We’ll have to see.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:33 (nine years ago) link
i suspect the iwatch will do okay the first round and then not grow as expected cause it doesnt really have a crucial use case
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:33 (nine years ago) link
― Clay, Tuesday, April 7, 2015 12:31 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
its not even good as an exercise watch! and regardless that market is tiny
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:34 (nine years ago) link
the product is amazon.com
OK, I think I was talking more about tangible goods, but if that’s what we’re talking about, I’m not shitting on their core service. I use it, I like it. Hail Jeff Bezos for all that shit.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:34 (nine years ago) link
the whole nobody needs notifications on their wrist and it's too small for anything else argument persuades me pretty strongly.
― Clay, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:35 (nine years ago) link
"product" is just like can u make something people want to use
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:35 (nine years ago) link
are there any "the times we live in now" thinkpieces combing apple watch and health goths
― Clay, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:37 (nine years ago) link
turns out "no", mostly xp
― brunch technician (silby), Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:37 (nine years ago) link
(I'm just bitter b/c of my 10 months working on a totally directionless project don't mind me)
― brunch technician (silby), Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:38 (nine years ago) link
the subtext of the johnny ive new yorker article was so much as i could tell that apple let him make his watch and hire his friend because they were very afraid he would leave the company, and he likes to ride around in a bently not because hes a rich dick but because he really likes the design, as to why he likes the design that is specifically tailored to appeal to rich dicks one was left to speculate
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:39 (nine years ago) link
― Clay, Tuesday, April 7, 2015 12:37 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
the awl has been doing some good normcore/tech articles
The Watch will have more compelling use cases later on. Right now it doesn’t have enough sensors to give us a more comprehensive overview of our health situation. That will come later, in future iterations of the device. I’m sure there’ll be some interesting stuff happening around ResearchKit and the Watch too. It’d be silly if something wouldn’t spring up around that. And I think that we’ll also have to see what app developers do when they get their hands on an actual, full SDK and not whatever the hell they’ve had up until now. So we’ll have to wait until the fall or next year or whenever to see the fruits of some of that work. And anyway, I really need to go and get ready for bed, which is unfortunate because this isn’t actually a bad discussion (thank you all!), but I’m not sure I could actually in good faith tell anyone except people interested in the tech industry and maybe people in certain industries that they would benefit from having the Watch. I think it’s cool. I’m probably getting one. But do I *need* it? Not now. Maybe not even in the future. The market for this could turn out to be small! But maybe it doesn’t. I heard somewhere someone say something like people who have the watch find themselves using the phone less and less. The Watch could keep taking on more functionality that the phone used to have. Maybe at some point you don’t even need the phone when you go out. It’s hard to see that happening though because of screen size issues. We’ll have to see whether the Watch becomes a minor computing platform or a major one. Maybe the next one is VR. Who knows. Anyway, I need to bolt.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:41 (nine years ago) link
― brunch technician (silby), Tuesday, April 7, 2015 12:37 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
im sure working there is horrible and it is a horrible dystopian company, but i still want to use it, tho tbh a lot less since i moved back to ny from vt
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:41 (nine years ago) link
The Awl also has some good articles on the media. Look up Content Wars or w/e.
― markers, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:42 (nine years ago) link