Tag Archive for 'Apple'

Proof That Apple is Obsessed With The Customer Experience

Published on February 13, 2010 in Capitalism!. 2 Comments Tags: .

I was at the mall today just wasting my time (and looking at options for getting my eye prescription checked), and I stopped by the Apple Store. As I approached, I noticed an army of people in blue shirts, just waiting to help anyone who walked in. I soon realized that they were just cardboard cutouts.

Neat. I walked in and looked around at the unibody Macbooks (the white ones that are now more curvy) and checked the battery life on them. They apparently get something like 5 hours (when I unplugged them and the computer actually calculated) versus my MacBook Pro that gets like 2 if I’m lucky.

Then I walked around and noticed something:

Apple printed the backs of the cardboard cutouts! They’re in the same poses in the back as they are on the front! If the backs had been blank, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed. But Apple pays so much attention to detail that they decided that peoples asses must be printed.

It is likely due to this level of detail that Apple is succeeding where other companies fail hard. I don’t care what anyone says about Apple, they care more about the user/customer experience than probably anyone else out there.

Why the Apple iPad Will Fail

Published on January 27, 2010 in Gadgets. 51 Comments Tags: .

Edit: Cool, looks like my blog got posted to from some hack blog called “PCWorld.” I will note that while it is easy to make dumb predictions about the future, it is even easier to go back and look at the incorrect ones. If everyone made accurate predictions about the iPhone, it would’ve existed before Apple invented it. Please keep the comments section nice, or I might pull an Engadget. My mom reads this, you know!

Once upon a time, I made a post about how the iPhone was going to fail. I did it mostly for lulz and also to try and get on the front page of Digg. Seriously, that post was diggbait! That was back when people still went to Digg and people still tried to get on the main page of Digg. The interesting thing is that post got a lot more commentary than other technology posts I made before and since then.

Today, I feel the urge to write a post about how the iPad thing will fail. This time, I actually mean it.

In essence, the iPad is just a giant iPhone with no camera, no microphone and no phone. What it gains in screen size it loses in a lot of core functionality. It doesn’t even really bother me so much that they took out important features. It’s what they left in.

The iPad works on the iPhone OS. This could be a good idea, except that they really didn’t consider that making a device four times bigger might introduce some design considerations. The iPad is quite literally a giant iPhone. Most iPhone games, etc (at least, those not requiring a mic or camera) are supposed to work on it. But when you think about it, what games using the accelerometer will actually work out of the box when you’re dealing with something 1.5 pounds heavy and clunkier than a handheld device? Shaking a tablet is different from shaking a small phone.

I’m not sure if the designers were just lazy or if they didn’t care at all about the new scale. The mail app looks like it was hacked into the iPad. It should look like it was designed for the thing, but for some reason we still have the really thin column and a bunch of whitespace. WTF?

I suppose that Apple needed to release the thing and do it with an unpolished product. Some apps look well designed, like the iBooks one (clever naming convention there, Apple), but most look like they were just stretched to fit the larger resolution. A lot of companies could get away with this, but I think people expect more from Apple. If Apple wants to control the entire end user experience, they should take that responsibility with a burden.

My predictions:

  • Apple will get better at designing apps for the iPad. The best ones will come from them.
  • Most developer apps will look like crap on the iPad. A few will “get it.” Those ones will be successful.
  • Most developers will probably find developing (quality) apps too difficult on the damn thing, give up.
  • People will realize that they don’t want a computing device that only allows Apple-approved software on it. They’ll stick with the Macbook, which can do much more than an iPad and runs any third-party software, including Flash and Firefox.

Open vs. Proprietary Platforms

Published on August 11, 2009 in Software. 2 Comments Tags: .

Google Chrome

There’s been a lot of talk lately about proprietary platforms. Apple has been rejecting apps left and right due to various reasons. For example, they rejected the Google Voice app using their generic “duplicates iPhone features” reasoning. Isn’t that kind of reasoning grounds for an antitrust case? They also rejected a dictionary app for potentially bad words! Someone think of the children!

While I think Apple deserves some credit for popularizing the whole app store notion, they also kind of suck for holding such an iron grip on it. It’s nice to find apps in the store without having a third party directory or searching for apps all over the mobile web. But it sucks when honest developers get screwed because of totalitarian control.

I wonder if there can’t be a nice, happy medium. Maybe an app store combined with a way to legally (without jailbreaking) install apps via a third party. For now, the iPhone’s App Store is great for customers, but I have a feeling that abused developers will eventually learn their lesson and go elsewhere.

Thoughts on the Microsoft “Cheap PC” Ad

Published on March 31, 2009 in Gadgets. 6 Comments Tags: , , .


So there was this Microsoft ad that came out during an NCAA game. It featured a cute girl, Lauren, trying to decide which computer to buy. The voice of the ad (some omniscient being?) told her if she could find the kind she wanted under $1000 he’d buy it for her. The computer she wanted at the Apple Store was too expensive. She chose a Windows PC instead for $700.

A lot of people have claimed the ad is a huge success. It hits Apple in its weak point: price. That may be true, but there’s also this thing called “value.” Apple computers have always been about quality. Software quality, build quality, design. While it’s true that the upfront costs of a Mac are higher than a PC, you get what you pay for. There are tradeoffs associated with buying an HP versus a Macbook. The specs are not the computer.

I would argue that the amortized price of a Mac is probably about the same as a PC (or better). They’re built to last (even if Apple forces you to buy a new one every year or face inferiority). I’ve gone through too many Dell, HP and Toshiba laptops whose hinges explode. You can’t use a laptop after the hinge explodes. I haven’t had a Macbook explode yet (though the plastic did start coming off; it won’t happen on my aluminum Macbook Pro). Dell is trying to get into the premium PC market, which is great. But that sorta negates the price argument. In this economy it’s smart to play the price card, and people pay more attention to upfront costs than maintenance costs.

Also, it’s not the best idea to try and sell your product by having a “real” person shop for PCs when the person turns out to be a professional (SAG) actress. It makes it seem more staged; this definitely is not a Pepsi Challenge. But hey, whatever. I think MS got their point across. Plus I forgive Lauren because she’s way cute! I just hope her back can handle lugging around a 17″ computer.

Personally, I would advertise netbooks since they’re super cheap and Apple doesn’t have an equivalent, yet.

Managing Rejection (And Success!)

Published on March 4, 2009 in Job and Life. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

Over the past few years, I’ve found myself in a number of situations where I’ve been rejected. I read an article via BoingBoing on why some people see failure as crippling, while others see it as a motivator. Pretty interesting stuff. I have the book on hold at the library. I guess I fall into the latter category as I haven’t really let my numerous failures drag me down.

When I was fresh out of college (for the first time), I got an amazing opportunity to interview at Google. If you were a CS major in 2006, Google was pretty much the holy grail. In my mind, it definitely was (well, maybe second to Facebook, but they never got back to me). Like many of my adventures, I wrote about this in a blog post.

Long story short, I was rejected. I think at that point I was a bit cocky and thought Google was a sure thing. You should never have a sense of entitlement; that leads down a pretty depressing path. Getting rejected was a good wake-up call that I needed to improve myself if I wanted to end up with my dream job. At the time I thought I had missed an amazing opportunity. This may have been true; I’ll never know what my life would be like if I had started working at Google. Looking back, though, I think the rejection was really a blessing.

Continue reading ‘Managing Rejection (And Success!)’