Tag Archives: Apple

Thomas Brand, writ­ing about the impor­tance of set­ting the right expec­ta­tions:

 The most valu­able part of set­ting expec­ta­tions is telling the truth, even if the truth means you don’t know, but are will­ing to find out. I am much more likely to remain a cus­tomer of com­pa­nies that treat me with respect by set­ting expec­ta­tions, and stick­ing to their word.

So true. Trying to set a false expec­ta­tion or try­ing to cover up that you don’t actu­ally know the answer may have short-term ben­e­fits, but in the end the cus­tomer will find out the truth. If you’re up front and hon­est with them from the start things work out much better.

This post from Marco Arment, about a less-than-stellar expe­ri­ence his grand­par­ents had at an Apple Store, is such an impor­tant les­son to learn:

 It wouldn’t be the first time a tech­nol­ogy expert lacked empa­thy for a cus­tomer, or made bad assump­tions about what would be fast and easy for the cus­tomer to do on his own — espe­cially when decid­ing to per­form an easy, pre­dictable, cure-all “restore”.

Reminds me of some­thing I wrote ear­lier this year about ask­ing ques­tions and avoid­ing assump­tions. Spending the time to do some­thing right mat­ters much more than doing it quickly.

Target The Forward Fringe:

But when Apple announced the Retina MacBook Pro at WWDC, revamp­ing all of my apps and my web site jumped to the top of my list of priorities…

Why? Because HiDPI cus­tomers may be a fringe group, but they are a forward-facing fringe. They rep­re­sent the users of the future, and the more we cater to them now, the more deeply embed­ded our prod­ucts and designs will be in their cul­ture. The future culture.

Tap Left Margin -> Next Page; my favorite fea­ture of the iPad. This means I can com­fort­ably read while drink­ing tea and not worry about which hand holds my iPad.

The major­ity of the time I’m read­ing a book I just want to go for­ward. It always felt clumsy to swipe with my left thumb. Advancing with just a tap means the device never breaks my flow.

We are fas­ci­nated by our giants and this fas­ci­na­tion moti­vates us to learn. This is good. But we con­tin­u­ally for­get every story in this world is unique. We can’t cherry pick the con­ve­nient ele­ments of one suc­cess­ful life and graft it into our own, expect­ing the same results. Had da Vinci or Ford been born today, they might have ended up jan­i­tors or car sales­men. And a school teacher or gar­dener from their times, born today, might have trans­formed the world. We don’t want to see suc­cess as frag­ile or cir­cum­stan­tial, but the slight­est touch of chance in the lives of any great man or woman, and we’d never know their names.

Scott Berkun — The Jobsian fal­lacy.

Evangelism is word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing. It’s the best kind of mar­ket­ing because it’s hon­est and per­sonal. We don’t pay atten­tion to tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials and mag­a­zine ads because we don’t trust them. We do, how­ever, trust our friends rec­om­mend­ing some­thing to us.

And so, com­pa­nies want their cus­tomers to tell their friends about the prod­uct. But try as you may, you can’t force peo­ple to talk about your prod­uct, which means that the next best thing is to try and get peo­ple to at least use it.

Shawn Blanc — You Can’t Buy Word of Mouth.