Jon's tumblr

Plan, build, ship, and scale.

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:36:47 -0500

So don’t let all the news of the day slow you down. Don’t let your competitors press releases and launch parties get inside your head. Plan, build, ship, and scale. Assess. Repeat again and again. Win.

Initial thoughts on the Blackberry "Playbook"

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:41:53 -0400

Blackberry just unveiled their response to Apple’s iPad, the playbook.

Gut reactions:

Why 7”? Does their research run counter to Apple’s? Or is their a constraint on display availability?
The pixel density on the screen is better than iPad.
The ad didn’t really show me anything uniquely blackberry. Why not show off something that only I can do on a blackberry? It seems like they are banking on the strength of the blackberry brand.
Why a 3 megapixel front facing camera? Why a rear camera? I’m not sure either of these justify their cost.
Looks identical to iPad.
What kind of battery life?

Most importantly, what will it cost?

"The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me."

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:55:57 -0400

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.””

- Ayn Rand (via heyamberrae)

I’ll add:

“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.”

again from Mrs. Rand

The strange case of virtual machines on telephones

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:55:24 -0400

The strange case of virtual machines on telephones:

“Look, theory says that a JIT can run as fast as, or maybe faster than, a statically compiled language. It might be slow right now, but it’ll be much better when we get a real/better JIT. Plus, the new version is already a lot faster, and I’m looking forward to the next version, which they promise will have huge speed improvements.”
— Every Java user since 1996

So true.

Flood Lite: Apple's Attention to Detail

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:18:48 -0400

Flood Lite: Apple's Attention to Detail:

In July 2002, Appled filed a patent for a “Breathing Status LED Indicator” (No. US 6,658,577 B2). They described it as a “blinking effect of the sleep-mode indicator in accordance with the present invention mimics the rhythm of breathing which is psychologically appealing.”

The average…

What a great find.

Oracle v. Google

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:46:00 -0400

So, we now have a more detailed answer to the question “Why did Oracle buy Sun?”:

So now we know that Jonathan shopped Sun with a big “Sue Google” sign. So much for his visionary patent defense against Apple and of course this jewel

and, from James Gosling (“The father of the Java programming language”):

Oracle finally filed a patent lawsuit against Google. Not a big surprise. During the integration meetings between Sun and Oracle where we were being grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google, we could see the Oracle lawyer’s eyes sparkle. Filing patent suits was never in Sun’s genetic code. Alas….

still plenty more here: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Aug-13.html

"In the first quarter of 2010, net sales at Zappos were up almost 50 percent, and we’ve added..."

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:05:49 -0400

“

In the first quarter of 2010, net sales at Zappos were up almost 50 percent, and we’ve added several hundred new employees. The growth has made Amazon very happy, but it’s also creating new challenges. I’ve noticed that at company happy hours, you don’t see as many employees from different departments hanging out with one another.

To address that, we’ve begun tracking employee relationships. When employees log in to their computers, we ask them to look at a picture of a random employee and then ask them how well they know that person — the options include “say hi in the halls,” “hang out outside of work,” and “we’re going to be longtime friends.” We’re starting to keep track of the number and strength of cross-departmental relationships — and we’re planning a class on the topic. My hope is that we can have more employees who plan to be close friends.

”

- Tony Hseih, “Why I Sold Zappos”

MacPorts/ImageMagick Installation and Missing Index(es)

Thu, 27 May 2010 20:24:20 -0400

For the google archives…

After installing MacPorts, I ran into a problem when I tried to get ImageMagick running (as per these instructions):

Warning: No index(es) found! Have you synced your source indexes?

The MacPorts installation page mentions that you must do a system update right after installation, as such:

sudo port selfupdate

Unfortunately, this resulted in the same error. A little too much googling led me to discover that PeerGuardian 2 is blocking the rsync ports used by the installation. So…if you are seeing these errors, and you have installed PeerGuardian, simply disable PeerGuardian while you run “sudo port selfupdate”, and all should be fine.

(Side note, also helpful: “sudo port -d sync” updates the port list and provides some debug information)

People don't like change

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:39:05 -0500

People don't like change:

Not even kids.

"Yes, these frictionless tools make it so anyone can say anything about any topic, but these tools..."

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:44:43 -0500

“Yes, these frictionless tools make it so anyone can say anything about any topic, but these tools are built with you in mind and I do mean you. Imagine if Twitter forced you to follow certain people. What if Facebook randomly added folks to your friends list? You know what you’d have? The evening news. Random stories from folks you don’t know and probably don’t trust.”

- Rands

60,000 a day?

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:30:25 -0500

60,000 a day?:

According to MobileCrunch, Android is shipping on 60,000 “handsets” a day. Thats 21.9 million a year…up from 6 million devices in 2009.

I wonder if “handsets” is correct? Or does the number include other devices like the Nook? How many of these other devices are there?

It’s such a large jump that I have to wonder if there was a misquote, or if it will continue? From what I have seen, android doesn’t feel simple enough for Average Joe….so how?

Facebook Login

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:25:55 -0500

Facebook Login:

Anyone who makes things on the internet needs to keep this at top of mind — it goes hand in hand with “Would/Could my mom ever use this?”

On iPads, Grandmas and Game-changing

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:47:06 -0500

On iPads, Grandmas and Game-changing:

To me, the most striking thing about the iPad launch has been how many ‘techies’ are overlooking the big picture. Rob Foster gets it.

"I can’t listen to Pandora on it while I browse the web."

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:07:40 -0500

““I can’t listen to Pandora on it while I browse the web.””

- Are you listening to Pandora right now?

The iPad Big Picture

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:02:22 -0500

The iPad Big Picture:

“Apple doesn’t talk much about the technical details of the iPhone. They never talk about CPU speed or the name of the chip being used. They don’t tell you how much RAM is in there. Part of their vision for moving computers from technical culture to popular culture is about getting away from defining these things by their technical specs. So the prominent talk about A4 is telling. This is something they want us to notice.”

Textbooks (iPad)

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:11:00 -0500

Textbooks only received a 5 second mention today during the Stevenote. Thanks to the McGraw-Hill CEO on CNBC yesterday?

(update, insiders say this is the case: http://venturebeat.com/2010/01/27/mcgraw-ipad/)

Should Apple do Free Trials?

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:09:36 -0500

A good friend of mine just posted an interesting idea — apple should give 30-day, free macbook pro trials. This got me thinking a bit, first because the idea of the delight response curve is quite an interesting one, and second because, I wonder what other strategies could be employed to achieve a similar goal (namely, allowing consumers to experience the Zone of Delight).

The Delight Response Curve

I think Apple understands this curve worlds better than anyone else in the consumer electronics industry today. Corey alludes to this in discussing OS X, but we see it in every product they bring to market.

Looking down from 30,000 feet, iPhones, android phones, blackberrys, or windows mobile phones all accomplish the same high level things. They allow you to communicate, browse the internet on the go, listen to music, and most importantly, are extendable by third parties. As you get closer to the ground, say at 1,000 feet, you begin to see some of the distinctions — each of them perform some things better than others (Android or BBerry are better for email, iPhone is better at playing music, windows phones are better at…?) But when you get to 0 feet, and you get a taste of how truly simple Apple makes everything feel in every interaction — well, thats how you move from “merely satisfied” to the “zone of delight.”

Retail Stores

The challenge with being in the “Zone of Delight” is that for consumers to ‘get it’, they really need to spend some time with the product. It’s not something that can be perceived in a side-by-side comparison chart (try as they may).

Apple’s solution to this problem has been the creation of Apple Retail Stores. Head into an apple store, and you get to fully experience their products — no commissioned sales people pressuring you into a purchase, no silly limitations on what you can do on the machines, no continuous repeat demo videos or constrained demo applications.

This strategy appears to be working — the first store opened on May 19th of 2001, and in 2009 the ~250 stores had combined sales of $6.7 billion, earning roughly $4000 per square foot and 15% of revenue (compare this to Tiffany’s $2666/sf, or Best Buy’s $930/sf).

Halo (& Friend?) Effect

In 2005, I was a (ack!) Microsoft guy. I had built my first company on Microsoft technologies (I was naively woo’d by the .NET marketing), and I was oh so proud of my fancy Windows Media Center computer. I was so infatuated with it that I overlooked the many, many, many sacrifices I was forced to make when using these products. While they were great when they worked, they rarely worked. A driver would act up on my TV Tuner. Some DRM snafu would happen, and my music would all stop playing. Some videos would play, while others would require a new codec. Installation of this codec would render the original videos unplayable.

Sometime early in that year, my brother had bought his first MP3 player. It was a creative something or other, and the experience was miserable. After some return snafu’s, he decided he would give the iPod photo a shot, and showed it to me as soon as he got it. I toyed with it for about 5 minutes before I got in my car and drove to the closest store that would sell me one. Within 6 months or so, we both had MacBook Pros, and I have not purchased a Microsoft product since.

Try now! Money Back Guarantee!

So, all that said — what about Corey’s plan to offer 30-day free trials? On the one hand, I don’t argue that a large number of the people who participate would find their way into the delightful zone. On the other hand, Apple has a very, very pristine brand — one that they have worked extremely hard to build. In fact, the most recent estimate I can find says the Apple brand alone is worth over $15 billion.

What images come to mind when you hear “30 day free trial”?

I don’t know about you, but I’m still finding those AOL disks around my house — and they aren’t exactly conjuring up fond memories. So while the tactic itself would likely be effective, the unintended consequences would be costly, and in my opinion outweigh the other gains.

What can be done?

Instead of a 30 day free trial, Apple should focus on identifying strategies similar to the Apple store concept (this might be as simple as opening more stores, and faster). Or perhaps extending into other consumer electronics markets, with the goal of forming a large base from which the halo can extend. The iPod worked well on me, and I know more than a few people that have had a similar experience after buying their iPhone.

What consumer electronics devices are currently residing in the “Zone of Pain”? This might show us where they are headed next. As a former Comcast DVR subscriber, I can see why the Apple TV was created — maybe this device will finally get a worthy upgrade? Car electronics are often in this zone — but the required partnerships don’t pair well with Apple’s cult of secrecy.

All that said — this assumes that the end game is to sell more traditional desktop & laptop computers. With the impending tablet release, some of us are wondering if they are just hoping to redefine the category altogether.

NBComcast

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:43:06 -0500

NBComcast:

Mr. Roberts had long wanted to control not just the pipes into people’s homes, but the television shows and movies that flow over them. But since 2004, when he sought and failed to buy the Walt Disney Company, the media industry’s economics had cratered. Broadcast television was suffering through ratings declines, and a falloff in DVD sales had dented profits in Hollywood. But cable channels, of which NBC Universal has many, were flourishing.

I am pretty confident that regulators will ensure that Comcast has to play fair with other cable providers, and direct competitors like DirecTV.

The scary part is — what will this do to derail the shift to what so many of us want, a-la-cart programming. Will Hulu, Apple, Amazon On-Demand, etc still be able to re-sell the shows (or in Hulu’s case, give them away)?

I hope this doesn’t go through, but this would make it seem it’s all but a certainty:

Mr. Immelt, after attending the state dinner last month at the White House, flew to Paris to persuade Vivendi to complete the deal. An agreement was reached over the weekend after he offered to pay Vivendi $2 billion even if the Comcast deal collapsed.

Bummer

“The application Finder can’t be opened.” Ahh...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:38:00 -0500

“The application Finder can’t be opened.”

Ahh Snow Leopard

martingordon: This ad (and the others in the series) is notable...

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:02:15 -0400

martingordon:

This ad (and the others in the series) is notable for two things:

Steve Carell before 40 Year Old Virgin and The Office.

“There’s a FedEx for that.” Sound familiar?

Fed Ex, “Hogan” (via jnarciso13)