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Originally uploaded by schickr.
Mon 24.10.2005 09.48 Image 110
How Apple does it: lessons for all of us
Here’s a great article for inspiration from Time (full article courtesy of Time Canada). Sure, it’s a sugar-coated view of what makes Apple’s innovation machine tick, but there are valuable lessons.
My main points:
1) Control. Someone at the end of the discussion says ‘that’s the way it’s going to be, discussion over.’
2) Deep collaboration. Everyone needs to work together on making the stuff succeed.
3) Ignore the nay-sayers.
4) The most important one: Winning is great, but losing is not bad. Being lame is.
Here’s the quote from the article:
But Jobs doesn’t care just about winning. He’s willing to lose. He has done it often enough. He’s just not willing to be lame, and that may, increasingly, be the winning approach.
Points 1-3 are classic innovation requirements, and are Apple classics. But, point 4 – being lame is not an option – I knew it in my bones, but put this way, it’ll haunt me for the rest of my days. 😉
Now go read the article while the link is still live. Time USA now is carrying the full article.
Link: HOW APPLE DOES IT.
This is partly a story about a company called Apple Computer. It’s also partly a story about a fancy new iPod that plays videos as well as music and that could dramatically change the way people entertain themselves. But it’s mostly a story about new things and where they come from, about which there are a few popular misconceptions.
So, WAP isn’t Crap After All
I remember when I first used a color GPRS phone. My thought was ‘better, faster, color!’. The reality is that with a thicker straw, we shoved more stuff down it, so in the end, the experience was similarly slow.
Now that I browse with a 3G phone, I am still not impressed with the speed.
Link: MobHappy: So, WAP isn’t Crap After All.
According to the BMRB Internet Monitor 49% of 20 – 24 year olds in the UK have used the internet on their mobiles and 21% of all users have bitten the bullet.
But, we shouldn’t focus on the speed, but on what mobile access does for us. It’s a bit of feeding the non-consumption: we put up with a less than stellar experience because the benefits are worth it. For the most part, mobile sites have not been compeling.
I think WINKsite is changing that.
If Car Companies Employed People from Telecoms
A good (and scary) laugh.
Link: MobHappy: If Car Companies Employed People from Telecoms.
Carlo and I have been kicking around what would happen if a car company only employed people from the telecoms background. This is what we came up with.
Request for comments: What is your strategy to integrate your Web product with the Mobile Lifestyle?
Anyone who has been reading these pages knows that I am keen on the fusion of the Web, PC, and mobile. Not only have I been elaborating on what makes a great mobile product, but I have been trying to understand the dynamics of Mobile Living in the Web world.
I’ve mentioned a bunch of Web companies that get mobile, companies that understand how to create neat mobile products, products well integrated into the Mobile Lifestyle. What I haven’t done is list Web companies who I think need an infusion of mobility into their products. I don’t mean that these companies don’t get it, but from what I have seen, they either have nothing, or have a long way to go to create compelling mobile products and services.
Some Web companies that could use an infusion of mobility (in no particular order):
Six Apart – TypePad, LiveJournal, Comet; Yahoo! – Flickr, Search, Yahoo!mail; Google – GMail, Search, Dodgeball, GMaps; Blogbridge; Socialmarks; Broadband Mechanics; Wikipedia; Social Text – SocialText.Net, SocialText.Org; AskJeeves – Bloglines; Apple – iTunes, iPhoto, .mac; 37signals – Basecamp, Backpack, Ta-da lists; eBay – Skype; Writely; Amazon; del.icio.us; Feedster; Technorati; qoop; dropcash; Barfrog
This list is by no means complete, but includes a subset of companies I have been observing and like. To be fair, some of these companies have already created connections to the mobile world or already on the right track. Also, some of these are actually companies connected to the Mobile Living space, but could go further than, say, just SMS or basic browsing.
But, here is my question for all Web companies:
What is your strategy to integrate your Web product with the Mobile Lifestyle?
Please leave a comment or send me a private email on your thoughts about this. Here are some related questions to help you formulate an answer.
– How important is integrating your Web-based product to the mobile world?
– How does mobility extend your business model?
– Would you hire a full-time person or team to do the integration for you?
– Would you hire an external team of consultants to either guide you or do the integration for you?
– Would you partner with a company to add mobility to your offering?
– Who do you turn to to understand how integrating your product to the mobile world will impact your business?
Feel free to add or comment on this list of companies or what kind of questions you’d like to ask. You can also participate with your mobile phone: visit http://winksite.com/cschick/mobile (bookmark it!) with your phone or click on the ‘Powered by WINKsite’ graphic on the upper right of this page to open it up in your browser.
A few disclaimers and comments: Of course, the goal here is to get a feel for what Web companies are doing in the mobile space and thus make some business suggestions. I will collect info for the next month or two and try to summarize at some point. All responses mailed directly to me are confidential and will not be repeated without permission. Also, don’t get all excited thinking this is directly related to Nokia (my employer). It’s not. But, what I learn here might spill over there, so let me know if you’ve withheld something because of my employer. And, my personal email address is on my about page.
Ease of use sometimes means nothing to a first time user
My brother, who lives in the US, just got a new non-Nokia phone. So, I started playing with it to check out the browsing and messaging experience. Of course, many years of using the Nokia UIs made it difficult for me to use my brother’s phone. And really, there were some dumb usability mistakes.
My niece (10 years old), saw me playing and I showed her how to send her first SMS using her dad’s phone. I walked her through the (to me) awkward process and she was delighted when my mother’s phone beeped.
Thinking I was going to show her how to really send an SMS, I then showed her how to send and SMS on my mother’s Nokia phone.
That’s when it hit: The Nokia UI is not necessarily easier for a first time user. It felt almost as awkward showing her how to send her SMS from my mom’s Nokia phone than it was from my brother’s non-Nokia phone.
I still will say that for regular users, the Nokia UI in this case is far superior and generous for sending SMSs – and operator SMS revenues from Nokia phones proves it. But the first time user has no usage model that maps onto the phone, so it’s all confusing no matter what.
Interesting, no?
What does that say for the hurdle of first few uses restricting uptake of a service or product? I’ve seen it happen with other products as well – you need to get over a small hump before the user has the ‘Aha!’ and starts avidly using the product.
How should one design a product to minimize the barrier to first-time use?
Is this the first mobile tag cloud?
If you go to winksite.com/chat from your mobile and select "Browse Chat Tags" you can view the tag cloud for all the chats on WINKsite. And it loads pretty fast.
Might this be the very first tag cloud that works well on a mobile? I haven’t seen any before.
Call for comments: It works fine on my super-duper, top-of-the-line, whizz-bang phone. Does it work on yours? Let me know! Put phone make and model at the bottom and tell me what you see, regardless if it works or not.
InterCasting Corp: TravelPod Integrated With Rabble
Very interesting run down on Intercasting Corp’s product strategy.
I think they are spot on.
Link: InterCasting Corp: TravelPod Integrated With Rabble.
We don’t reinvent most web-based blogging and social networking sites, but we do add mobility very well, and make the functionality appropriately simpler for the mobile environment than on the web. Rabble is growing organically unto itself but is also a sort of consolidation point for different types of social and personal publishing services in the mobile environment, enabling users of these other services to put the respective functionality in their pockets.