“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore… The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” – Steven Jobs Before I deal with the Steve’sters comment above let me give my quickie on Macworld. I went up to San Francisco on Wednesday to check out the wonderful world of Apple….. I have been to exactly two editions of Macworld, that, on top of my one visit to Comdex years ago, and one soiree thru Vegas for NAB two years ago. I’d have to say that comparing the three, Macworld is rather underwhelming. Especially for someone like me whose seen a lot of hardware over the years. And I think, that in fact, its a good thing. Seems to me nowadays that all the fun in Apple is wrapped up in software and therefore there really isn’t a shitload to see at Macworld. That being said, Mac Air is pretty schweet, I’d have been happier with a slightly smaller form factor as I suspect it might be a bit large for my shoulder bag, but then that is just me. I think it will make a pretty good box for the traveller who has to have a laptop in addition to their iPhone 
. Next on my list was was the Modbook from Axiotron, they modify a Macbook so that it has tablet functionality, its pretty nice though I suspect that a true Apple version of this would be less of a hack. I also checked out the Etymotic booth. Their H2 headset for the iPhone is nice, sounds just about as good as my e4’s and costs about half. Hmmmm… Time Capsule seems pretty neat but for the most part this is NAS with an Apple flavor on it.Still, given that I use Time Machine, I suspect I may have to score one of these in the not too distant future. So there you have it. I’ll continue to vote with my wallet for Apple. However… this year’s Macworld… well it was gonna be pretty hard to follow the iPhone release earlier this year. Regarding Steve’s comment about reading, well sadly, he might be right, at least in his circle of friends 
. It does seem a shame that all of this tech progress is not affording us the chance to take time out of our days sit down, read, and contemplate things. I’ll go get my lottery ticket now before I forget. Soooooo, maybe before Steve’s next public outing, lets make sure he gets a copy of Charles Barkley’s “I am not a role model” commercial and remembers to view it before he speaks publicly. The last thing we need in this country is less literacy from the technorati…..
Ho Hum… Macworld 2008
What does branding mean anymore (at least in Hi Tech)
This past Christmas I bought my wife an iPhone and as things turned out, got one myself. After Christmas I started wondering if the same phone had been offered by someone else whether or not I would have bought it. After some deliberation I concluded that odds are I would not have bought the iPhone if it had been made by someone other than Apple. Now let me say straight off that I am and have been a longtime Apple supporter (read customer) so that fact has to be accounted for. I still wonder however, why it is that if someone else had made the same functionally equivalent device I wouldn’t have bought it from them.You guessed it, Apple has managed to instill “brand” loyalty in me. In my case, I have believed or been brainwashed to believe that Apple Computers, and over the last 5 or 6 years Apple consumer electronic devices are better than those produced by other companies. At least in terms of laying my money down for something. Are Apple products better than others. Well in some cases yes, in others maybe not, but my experience, and that is what counts to me is that they have been consistently good for me….
Before I go on, let me share what my definition of “brand” is. I believe a “brand” to be a an image or set of concepts or both which represent or try to represent the positive experience a person has when they acquire/use a product from a particular company. For instance, to me, for the longest time, Levi’s were the only jeans I bought, they made a good product, and continued to do so over the years until recently. The brand to me was that they were well made jeans which seemed to be be with/on me during memorable times in my life, they were fun, and nice to wear
What I am stumped on is the question of what “brand” means for the rush of web 2.0 companies (and 3.0 and 4.0) that are currently out on the internet. Companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Tech Meme, Valleywag etc… and the ones which follow these companies down the road. How will they generate true brand loyalty ?
I ask this because in the last company I worked for,I became aware of how important branding seems to be, almost to the extent whereby the exercise of branding becomes disconnected from the products the brand is supposed to be linked to.
This must be even more difficult when a company’s deliverable is a search result, or a web page, or some internet service as opposed to something tangible. Also, because development on the web happens so much more quickly than in the oconomies it would almost seem that there is not enough time to generate any loyalty to a “brand” and therefore what results is what we currently have on the web.A mad dash to always have the next latest web service or feature, or worse still, acquire it via a merger which then potentially dilutes the acquired brand. It’s funny, I was about to use the example of Myspace being acquired by Fox and then realized that Myspace was not really a brand.
Maybe its the service provided by the likes of a Myspace which is the brand on the web these days.
My head hurts…. I am done
Why am I here
Well before I explain why I have gotten on the blog bandwagon, let me first admit that posting for the first time today coincident with Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is not exactly the entrance I had desired. I hope I am not alone in wondering what we (the royal we across the planet) have become, and how profound it is to me that an individual and/or individuals find it necessary to actually kill someone else as opposed to working things out w/o killing them. I worry for my daughter, who is now 4, and what the world will look like when she is an adult. I guess we all need to grab an oar and help propel the ship in a better directionFor those of us stateside, I hope we are not all smugly clucking that such a thing… ooops, wasn’t JFK assassinated… I have decided to blog so as to contribute a voice to the conversation whose topic centers around how technology has and has not delivered the goods culturally. How have the arts, and related endeavors benefitted or not suffered because of the constant frantic cadence driving technology forward. What has or will this cost us…. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I have worked long enough in the industry to have some opinions, maybe some suggestions for correcting things and/or new directions…In the meantime, until I post again, take care-Paul