It's not what you do, it's what you don't do

Scully said: 

5. Minimalism – “What makes Steve’s methodology different from everyone else’s is that he always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do – but the things that you decide not to do. He’s a minimalist.”

And it's really difficult to show off what you've done (not done) if you're a minimalist. I worked with a minimalist at one time. People would ask me about his contribution and I'd show them a picture of what we'd designed, point to the blank wall around the picture and say "That's Fred's contribution". I think some people got the point.

Apple iPie

More and more people I know are trying and buying Apple products. It's not just the entry level ones either, but MacBooks Pros and iMacs. Pondering why is a good pastime and I thought I'd give my thoughts.

Let's start by following my own first steps into Apple ownership. Sony introduced the Walkman in 1979, the year when I first acquired a disposable income. The Walkman wasn't the first portable music player I'd owned. I remember hearing Itchycoo Park for first time listening under the covers to my transistor radio, and I recall carrying a laptop sized cassette player with me so I could listen to whatever Pink Floyd or Henry Cow opus I wanted. But the Walkman was much better; small, high quality, personal and cool. So, for me the appeal of the iPod was clear - the noughties Walkman. But in the early noughties I no longer wanted to listen to music on a personal stereo so it was no iPod for me. Then came the RSS feed and podcasts; I could obtain all sorts of wonderful programming on my computer - music (thank you Tartan Podcast), science (thank you ABC for Occam's Razor), business (thank you BBC and Peter Day). However, I rapidly found that listening to podcasts on my computer wasn't what I wanted to do. So I bought my first MP3 player, I think it was a Creative Muvo with a 2 Gbyte hard disk. It was great until it broke. Then I tried some number of cheap solid-state MP3 players - why would you pay ~£100 for an iPod Nano when you could buy something just as good for ~£25? What I learned was that even if once playing an MP3 the cheap player worked well, getting it to play, and keep playing an MP3 was a bad experience. So I tried an iPod - job done; happy.  

I'd like to pick out some lessons from this.

The first is that just because a computer can do something, it doesn't that the best way to do that thing is with a computer. And just because a device has a computer inside, it doesn't mean that device is a computer. If Apple is a computer company then Black and Dekker is an electric motor company. Apple understand this and the populous have some understanding of the. The iPod is not a computer. But what of the iPad?

Another lesson is that people will pay for well designed and ergonomic devices. This seems to come as a shock to some people, especially techies, who focus exclusively on function and not on form (and here I consider the ergonomics to be part of the form). Strangely enough, some of those people drive BMWs or Audis rather than Fords. 

Let's now move from the personal stereo to the personal computer. Surely no one buying a computer with their own money would buy a MacBook? Everyone knows you can buy just as good a laptop for half the price. Except you can't. You can by worse laptops at half the price. They're not as responsive, their displays are worse, their keyboards are worse, their software is worse, their battery life is worse, they look cheap and nasty, etc. For a buyer who can pay Apple prices, why would they settle for anything less?

Actually, the really interesting question about personal computers is not which one people buy, but why people would buy any personal computer in the first place. Now let's be clear, by "people" I am excluding the hobbyists, the type of people who would own a personal CNC lathe or a personal arc-welder - I mean normal people who would no more write a computer program than build their own motor car. This question is one I remember being asked from when the first personal computers appeared until, I think, the nineties when the Web and CD-ROMs became commonplace. It should be asked again because I think the answer is now that people shouldn't buy a computer, they should buy an iPad. I didn't link to Wikipedia for "iPad" because Wikipedia describes the iPad as a "tablet computer" and I don't think it is any sort of a computer. There's a great post about the nature of the iPad by my friend Richard Taylor.

So

• Once technology is "good enough", product form is as important as product function
• People don't want general purpose computers. 

and these are the basis of Apple's current run of successes. It will be interesting to see how the forthcoming iPad versus "tablet computer" war will progress. I'm expecting Apple to win this one, although based on my experience with my iPod touch, I'm holding out for an iPad with multitasking, a camera and a higher-resolution display - I don't think it will be very long before it's here.

As I said.....

Confirmation of my posting that Google pay people to use Android - see this post on PaidContent.

How to solve Rubik's cube

Almost enough to make me buy an iPhone.

BBC Radiophonic Workshop

I went to the gym today and listened to a great Radio Clash podcast on my iPod. It celebrates the 50th Birthday of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and is a really interesting listen. So download it here and give it a go.

I was surprised by how good most of the stuff sounded. And impressed by the amount of work that went into preparing the tapes etc. I had (still have, actually) a reel-to-reel recorder, I know how tedious and fiddly splicing tapes is. But in the end, splicing is easy - making music isn't.

Atheism is a non-prophet organisation

according to George Carlin

Printing on froth

I'm fascinated by the potential of print technology and a future where things (blobjects, spimes, ...) are constructed to order. I follow the Replicator blog ("Putting the Custom back in Customer") which covers this technology. It's just covered a repurposed inkjet which can print on froth - as found on the top of a glass of Guiness. Enjoy.

Steve at speed

I was away from home this week and missed seeing the Steve Jobs keynote. However, Jason Calacanis has come to my rescue with the "Steve Jobs keynote in 60 seconds". Thanks Jason for saving 89 minutes of my life.

Offline and Online

I like the web. I really like some of the web based applications; Google Mail, Google Maps, Google Reader and Google Docs. I particularly like the fact that they are available on almost any computer I use that it connected to the internet. This means that I can store a document in Google Docs and use (access, modify, ...) from any of the machines I use without having to do anything.

The problem with the web-based applications is that they don't work on a computer that is not connected to the internet. This is such an obvious issue that I've been expecting to see solutions start appearing, and they are. Google have just announced "Google Gears" which will allow Web Developers to make applications which can work on-line and off-line. (Robert Scoble has a good write-up on this). As a first step, Google have new version of Reader with works offline. The application I want the most is Google Calander; and I'd like a really first rate version for my N800.

Steve and Bill had a related discussion about whether browser based applications would take over from platform based (PC, phone, PDA, ...). Their view was "No" as a platform based application could always be better than a web based one.

Steve and Bill

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates appeared together in an hour long session at "D". Wired Magazine has a video available here. Rather long for most people, but there are some real gems in there.

Jobs repeated his assertion that Apple is a software company, and said that Apple's success with iPod was due to this and the Japanese consumer companies' inability to do software. I was also interested in Jobs's several comments about his past.

When asked about the strengths of the other, Gates praised Jobs' aesthetic sense, and in the context of software design, rather than box design.

Finally, does anyone else think that there is a resemblance between Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking?

Steve Jobs on music

Steve Jobs has written an open letter about DRM and music. I'm cautious about praising it immediately because of the unreality field that surrounds Steve but it seems he is pretty spot on. Is it just me, or does he seem to be saying that way to kill DRM is to continue breaking it?

Steve says "Software replaces hardware"

It seems to me that when hardware designers look at the success of the iPod, they see MP3 chip wrapped in a nice package. Apple doesn't see it like that; it looks at the iPod as one component of a complete system - iPod, iTunes and the iTunes store - most of which is implemented software, not hardware. Apple's design culture is very software centric - yet they design some of the highest margin "hardware" products in the business.

This is a quote from Steve Jobs taken from a Time article about the iPhone:

"When you need to dial, it shows you a keypad; when you need other buttons, the screen serves them up. When you want to watch a video, the buttons disappear. Suddenly, the interface isn't fixed and rigid, it's fluid and molten. Software replaces hardware."

I believe in this philosophy. Design should be software lead. Software technology is the best way to deal with complexity; hardware should be built to provide a platform for software.