Jordan Berkowitz

Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing →

If it’s not obviously from my tweets and postings here, I’m an Apple fanboy. I generally love their products and believe that their focus is on creating the best possible experiences for their users. It’s clearly not altruism, but you have to appreciate a business that has succeeded at being wildly profitable and continued to evolve our understanding “computers.”

Earlier this weekend, a few people I follow on Twitter were discussing this article from Wired in April of 2002. Think back to that time. Palm was the preeminent player in hand-helds. A completely redesigned iMac, with a pivoting flat panel display, was revealed at Macworld. AOL and Netscape filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft over web browser incompatibilities. FireWire was introduced.

Things were a little different.

Most importantly, the web, while a strong presence, was still in its infancy. It was a pivotal time for the web with a series of competing technologies vying for preeminence. Furthermore, Microsoft was intently focussed on owning the web.

When I read this interview with Steve Jobs, I’m reminded of his vision. Say what you will about his management style, monomaniacal control issues, and idiosyncrasies … he sees trends in technology well before they have become critical aspects of life. The thing that also strikes me is that he sees the challenges that lay ahead of him. He’s advocating for an open web. At the time he wisely wanted to focus on a ubiquitous server/client architecture with minimal client side requirements. He wanted to drive adoption and knew that things needed to be as simple as they could be.

If I had one aspiration of a Jobsian nature, it would be the 10 year view. I see in weeks and months, a year or two in the right situations. Looking at the horizon and seeing your destination long before it’s in view is a skill of masters and demands respect. Being able to lay down the road, fending off the competition and naysayers, all while delivering great products and experiences also helps!

Tagged with steve jobs, apple,

Posted at 10:46 AM 31 May 2010

WANT. Marshmallow Mforcer Semi-Automatic Pistol →

Posted at 3:59 PM 28 May 2010

Make a Chart Day #9

It’s the 9th Make a Chart Day and I’m excited to be hosting it!

The rules are simple:

Make a chart
Tweet it and @ me and/or include #makeachartday
Come back here to check out the chartiness

Let the games begin!

JohnKochmanski

me

tabone

clayparkerjones & aarondignan

Posted at 11:24 AM 28 May 2010

Opera ripping on the Google Chrome Speed Test. Hilarious.

Posted at 11:03 AM 28 May 2010

Want. iPad DODOcase →

DODOcase

Posted at 5:03 PM 27 May 2010

An amazing video on the evolution of empathy in civilization. Check out all of the other awesome RSAnimate videos here.

Posted at 12:15 PM 27 May 2010

The iPad Evolution

iPad

When the iPad was first announced, I, like many people, was underwhelmed. I thought I wanted an everything device that was the literal intersection of a phone and a laptop. Portable, long battery life, audio/video chat enabled, light, and seemingly able to do everything that those devices could do. I was wrong on multiple fronts.

While there are certain aspects of the user experience that are odd or confusing to me, over all the iPad is one of the most intuitive devices I have ever seen. Apple may be a little zealous in their commercial, but the statement “you already know how to use it” is fairly spot on.

Additionally, I do find myself wanting a more capable OS rather than a scaled up iPhone OS v3, but I’m patient enough to wait until the Fall for those improvements. Truth be told, I think this is one of those places where Apple’s extreme product development philosophy has handicapped them because of the isolation between the iPad dev team and the iPhone OS dev team. Clearly the iPad was developed for the current OS and not with v4 in mind. If that had been the case, the iPhone OS team would have intimate knowledge of the iPad and we wouldn’t be seeing a 3-4 month lag on iPhone OS 4 being rolled out on the iPad.

All that aside, the truly signifiant accomplishment here is the creation of a device that is useful in ways that I didn’t realize I needed. Furthermore, the iPad isn’t a big phone or a keyboardless computer; it’s a unique device that clearly has a place in the hardware hierarchy.

I’m going to spend more time in the future discussing apps, integration, and the like, but for now I want to end on one final point … this isn’t a computing revolution … it’s evolution and this is why it’s working so well. Revolutions break down walls. They require people to rethink their understanding of the way things work. This takes time, effort, and support from many different people and entities. Evolutions, on the other hand, can be surprising but often just make sense. The iPad does just that.

This post has 2 notes

Tagged with iPad,

Posted at 10:57 AM 27 May 2010