Monday, October 26, 2009
Herd Mentality
So of course there’s some degree of herd mentality in every industry.
So of course there’s some degree of herd mentality in every industry.
Tuesday’s piece on Ninjawords was really about two stories. The small story is that of a clever $2 iPhone dictionary app, the developers of which removed “objectionable” words from its dictionary so as to get it published in the App Store.
John Plunkett, reporting for the Guardian last week, in a story titled “Financial Times Editor Says Most News Websites Will Charge Within a Year”:
This whole Jobs liver transplant story really hits the sweet spot for two of my obsessions: Apple and journalism. It’s the journalism angle that I find the most intriguing.
If there’s a formula to Apple’s (AAPL) success over the past 10 years, that’s it. Start with something simple and build it, grow it, improve it, steadily over time. Evolve it.
Scenario: You have an idea for something, start a new document in an appropriate app, and then work for hours before realizing you haven’t yet saved the document? Sometimes this spells disaster: hours of work gone. But what strikes me as odd is when I catch myself doing it, it’s almost always with a new untitled document window, not an existing file with unsaved changes.
Anyone involved in Mac software development is familiar with arguments over whether a particular app is “Mac-like.” In the early days of the Mac–the first decade or so–the entire Mac community was largely in agreement about just what this meant. To be un-Mac-like was to be ignorant of the fundamental concepts and norms of the Mac OS.
If I could travel back 20 years and show my then 15-year-old self just one thing the future of today, it would be the iPhone. It is our flying car.
Monday’s message is pretty simple: Apple is going for iPhone market share in a big, big way. The iPhone 3G seemingly only has two major hardware additions: 3G networking and GPS. The battery, I suspect, might be stronger (and, given the shape of the back of the iPhone 3G, perhaps a stronger but bigger battery. No front-facing camera. No video from the rear camera. Instead of building a better $400 iPhone, they worked on halving the price of last year’s phone.
Along the lines of can’t-really-be-answered-but- gosh-they’re-fun-to-ponder questions like, say, “Who’d win in a fight, Batman or Spider-Man?” or “Star Destroyer vs. U.S.S. Enterprise?” here’s one regarding the iPhone: What historical Mac is a current iPhone most analogous to, spec-wise? I.E., complete this sentence: “An iPhone is like having a tiny ____ in your pocket?”
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