Understanding Users
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The Heart of Dropbox
Last Thursday, after waking up to the news of Dropbox’s most recent announcements,1 I couldn’t have been less impressed. To quote myself from a chat I had with a friend: “Dropbox is an unfocused mess.” But then I actually watched the event. I’ve long been a believer in cloud storage; back in college I experimented […]
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Misunderstood
Apple just posted their holiday iPhone commercial: This is what I’m talking about. It’s not about specs, it’s not about thinness, it’s about what those physical properties make possible for real people. Now please do the same for the iPad (which has always been harder to advertise). Previously: Whither Liberal Arts link The Magical iPad […]
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The Magical iPad
This is part three in a series on last week’s iPad event. Part 1: Whither Liberal Arts? | Part 2: The Missing “Why” of the iPad | Part 3: The Magical iPad In The Missing “Why” of the iPad I wrote: Yesterday’s presentation covered the “What” and “How” of the iPad, but it had nothing […]
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The Missing "Why" of the iPad
This is part two in a series on last week’s iPad event. Part 1: Whither Liberal Arts? | Part 2: The Missing “Why” of the iPad | Part 3: The Magical iPad Christina Warren took issue with my article, Whither Liberal Arts: To this I have just one response. It’s the best Apple commercial in […]
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The (alleged) 13-inch iPad and the triumph of thin clients
The WSJ, in an article entitled Apple Tests Larger Screens for iPhones, iPads: In recent months, Apple has asked for prototype smartphone screens larger than 4 inches and has also asked for screen designs for a new tablet device measuring slightly less than 13 inches diagonally, they said. The current iPhone 5 has a four-inch […]
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Tim Cook is a Great CEO
Perhaps my favorite Steve Jobs keynote moment was one of his last, at the iPad 2 introduction in March 2011. The last demo of the day, just before Jobs introduced the idea that Apple existed at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, was GarageBand for iPad. The demo was truly spectacular, and it clearly […]
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Apple, Samsung, and the Parable of the Model-T
Steve Jobs was famously fond of the Henry Ford adage: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” It’s true! New products – new categories – require vision and an unflinching focus on the job to be done (i.e. transport), not simply enhancing or extending solutions that already exist […]
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Apps, People, and Jobs to Be Done
I read two great interviews tonight, and its the combination of the two that really captures why I’m skeptical about Facebook Home.1 First off was Mark Suster interviewing Clayton Christensen. The interview – as is the case with most things Christensen related – is fascinating and instructive, and well worth a read. However, I want […]
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Stuck in the past
This was originally posted on my old, defunct Tumblr My earlier observation that technology companies too often don’t appreciate the needs of normals is hardly groundbreaking. What is less intuitive is how often geeks are the ones stuck in the past. During a recent discussion about the future of the PC, a friend posited that […]
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Dropbox and the Entrepreneur’s Blindspot
This was originally posted on my old, defunct Tumblr I love Dropbox. Seriously, it may be my most essential app/service. When I save a document, it’s backed up instantly. No matter what happens, I will always have access to that file from any computer. I can even sync it to a second computer if I […]