Quotulatiousness

July 26, 2010

The unwillingness to disbelieve

Filed under: China, Economics, India, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:03

Mike Elgan debunks the latest “mind-crogglingly cheap computer for the masses” announcement:

“India unveils $35 computer for students,” says CNN.com. “India unveils prototype for $35 touch-screen computer,” reports BBC News. “India to provide $35 computing device to students,” says BusinessWeek.

Wow! That’s great! Too bad it will never exist. That this announcement is reported straight and without even a hint of skepticism is incomprehensible to me.

[. . .]

India itself doesn’t build touch screens. They would have to be imported from China or Taiwan. The current price for this component alone exceeds $35. Like touch screens, most solar panels are also built in China. But even the cheapest ones powerful enough to charge a tablet battery are more expensive to manufacture than $35.

Plus you need to pay for the 2GB of RAM, the case and the rest of the computer electronics. Even if you factor in Moore’s Law and assume the absolute cheapest rock-bottom junk components, a solar touch tablet with 2GB of RAM cannot be built anytime soon for less than $100.

More to the point, no country in the world can build a cheaper computer than China can. The entire tech sector in China is optimized for ultra-low-cost manufacturing. All the engineering brilliance in India can’t change that.

There’s also the point that government bureaucracies and university engineering departments are not designed for or experienced in the mass production techniques that any of these “ultra-cheap but powerful” computing initiatives all require. Have you ever heard of a government that could keep their hands (and political priorities) out of the critical decision of where this wonder device would be assembled, tested, packed, and distributed? The “industrial policy” wonks would need to get intensely involved in such a decision and the location would have to meet diverse electoral and financial requirements (note that the economics of the project won’t even make the top five priorities in the process).

Awarding the contract to just one area would be unthinkable: the benefits must be seen to be helping areas that elected the current government and emphatically not going to opposition ridings. The horsetrading over that alone would consume any possible price advantage such a scheme might have over ordinary computers and software bought commercially.

July 15, 2010

Apple to hold news conference on iPhone 4 today

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:42

BBC News reports that Apple has called a surprise news conference:

The company has refused to give details about whether the event will address reception problems that some users have reported with the phone, launched just last month.

Apple has faced mounting criticism from analysts and consumers over its handling of the issue.

Industry watchers said the firm was in danger of damaging its “rock star” reputation over how poorly it had dealt with what would normally be a minor problem.

“It seems there has been a real crisis of leadership here,” said Patrick Kereley, senior digital strategist for Levick Strategic Communications which deals in crisis managment and reputation protection.

“There are so many conflicting reports about this issue and a lot of confusion in the marketplace. They need a plan of attack. Today’s companies have to react quickly before chatter on Facebook or Twitter turns into news headlines as is the case here,”

Of course, blaming the problem on Facebook and Twitter users isn’t particularly appropriate: there is a problem with the iPhone 4 and even the most pro-Apple folks are noticing it and complaining. Apple has reacted very badly to their most enthusiastic customers, and (for a change) appears to be damaging their reputation. Now that they’re no longer seen as underdogs, the haughty and uninformative response won’t work.

July 8, 2010

How Apple created and maintains a “shiny tech” reputation

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:50

Trevor Pott manages to deter a newly evangelized Apple fan:

The event sticks out for me because the user was not impressed by the iPhone because it was Apple, or the phone was hip. Rather it was because at a tradeshow they caught a colleague watching the Canucks getting beat on an iPhone. The concept of being able to stream video on a cellular network had never occurred to them before this. They saw it first on an Apple, it was evangelised by an ardent fan, and thus Apple “invented” it.

In this way Apple has “invented” everything of use in mainstream computing. From being the only computer for design, to inventing the MP3 player, smartphone, tablet computer, video conferencing and now, apparently, 3G streaming. When introduced to non-Apple alternatives, the people crying loudly for Apple gear seem shocked that it already existed in a previous form. The lesson I took from this is that users don’t care about the technology. With the exception of a few loudmouths on the internet, nobody cares that this was made by Apple, Sony, Microsoft or anyone else.

Users care about what a product can do. They care about how easily that product can do it. Users care about looks, but not as much as ease of use, good documentation, presentation of features and fantastic marketing. What’s more, good businessmen care about these things too; this is what makes their company tick, and what makes them money.

There’s a reason why a lot of successful technology folks try to sell “solutions” rather than products: it’s a much better way of addressing the users’ actual needs (even if it means you don’t recommend the glitzy, whizzy, shiny new Apple iThing). If you can de-mesmerize them long enough to actually address their needs instead of their wants, you’ll be doing them a much better service.

June 28, 2010

Marketing secrets revealed

Filed under: Humour, Randomness, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:16

An absolutely brilliant post at The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs tells you all about the reality of marketing:

It’s a pretty safe assumption that if you’re reading this blog, you’ve seen “The Matrix.” And you may or may not remember the scene where a kid explains to Neo that the trick to bending a spoon with your mind is simply to remember that, “There is no spoon.”

So it is with marketing. One thing I learned very early in life, thanks to intentional overuse of psychedelic drugs, is that there is no reality. As a guy at the commune once put it: “The reality is, there is no reality.”

So some guy says his iPhone 4 is having reception issues. I say there is no reception issue. Now it’s his reality against my reality. Which one of us is living in the real reality?

There’s a two-part answer: 1, there is no real reality, and 2, it doesn’t matter.

The only thing that matters is which reality our customers will choose to adopt as their own.

[. . .]

What I realized many years ago — and honestly, it still amazes me — is that most people are so unsure of themselves that they will think whatever we tell them to think.

So we tell people that this new phone is not just an incremental upgrade, but rather is the biggest breakthrough since the original iPhone in 2007. We say it’s incredible, amazing, awesome, mind-blowing, overwhelming, magical, revolutionary. We use these words over and over.

It’s all patently ridiculous, of course. But people believe it.

H/T to Chris Anderson for the link.

June 24, 2010

Tempest in a wine glass

Filed under: Europe, Law, Wine — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:47

The most recent issue of OntarioWineReview included a snippet from an article originally published in Decanter on the outcome of a legal tussle between Reidel and Eisch over the term “breathable glass”:

Austrian glassmaker Riedel has declared victory in its lawsuit against its rival Eisch Glasskultur over false claims for breathable glass.

Riedel, Nachtmann and Spiegelau filed suit in Munich, Germany alleging that Eisch’s advertisement boasting ‘breathable glass’ constituted false advertising.

On 19 January the two parties agreed to settle after Eisch’s claim that its ‘breathable’ glasses were made using a secret process that ‘opens bouquet and aromas within 2 to 4 minutes’ was not supported in court.

The court ordered Eisch to cease claiming its glass is ‘Breathable’ or ‘Opens bouquet and aromas within 2 to 4 minutes’, or face penalties of up to €250,000, or imprisonment of up to six months for senior directors.

A few years ago, Elizabeth and I bought a set of the Eisch “breathable glass” wineglasses and actually tested them. I doubted the claim, as I couldn’t think of a way that glass could be altered to allow air to pass through that would not also change other characteristics like clarity. Later that evening, we sat down with our friend Brendan and tried to determine if there was any difference between the “breathable” and ordinary glasses.

It may just have been our willingness to believe, but we each thought the wine in the breathable glass was better than the same wine in an ordinary wine glass. That being said, we didn’t think the degree of improvement was enough to justify replacing all our Riedel glasses.

Apple’s latest media circus

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:24

I’ve been accused of being an Apple fanboy because I have an iPhone 3G (that which was shiny and new barely two years ago is already considered steam-powered and antique). Stephen Fry has a review up on his site, which starts with this summary not of the iPhone 4, but of the reaction to the release:

The hooplah that surrounds the release of a new Apple product is enough to make many otherwise calm and balanced adults froth and jigger. That some froth with excited happiness and others with outraged contempt is almost irrelevant, it is the intensity of the response that is so fascinating. For the angry frothers all are fair game for their fury — the newspapers, the blogosphere, the BBC and most certainly people like me for acting, in their eyes, as slavish Apple PR operatives. Why should these iPads and iPhones be front page news when, the frothers froth, there are plenty of other manufacturers out there making products that are as good, if not better, for less money? And isn’t there something creepy about Apple’s cultiness and the closed ecosystem of their apps and stores? The anti-Applers see pretension and folly everywhere and they want the world to know it. The enthusiastic frothers don’t really mind, they just want to get their hands on what they perceive as hugely desirable objects that make them happy. The two sides will never agree, the whole thing has become an ideological stand-off: the anti-Apple side has too much pride invested in their point of view to be able to unbend, while Apple lovers have too much money invested in their toys to back down. It is an absorbing phenomenon and one which seems to get hotter every week.

The iPhone 4 isn’t available in Canada yet, and I suspect won’t be taken up with quite the same vigour displayed in its US debut: unlike American customers who signed up for two years with AT&T, Canadian customers of Rogers had to take a three-year contract. None of them will be at their end-of-contract when the new iPhone is released here. It will take some of the demand away, compared to the US market . . . but certainly not enough to make the release a flop.

April 22, 2010

The iPad is “the ultimate Steve Jobs device”

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:05

I’m still quite happy with my iPhone, although I’ll pay attention when the next annual hardware refresh is released. I don’t quite “get” the attraction of the iPad, but perhaps it’s because I’m not typically swayed by glamour. Eric Raymond is amazed, but not at the device itself. He’s amazed at how closesly it approaches the Platonic ideal of a Steve Jobs device:

The iPad is the ultimate Steve Jobs device — so hypnotic that not only do people buy one without knowing what it’s good for, they keep feeling like they ought to use it even when they have better alternatives for everything it does. It’s a triumph of style over substance, cool over utility, form over actual function. The viral YouTube videos of cats and two-years-olds playing with it speak truth in their unsurpassable combination of draw-you-in cuteness with utter pointlessness. It’s the perfect lust object of postmodern consumerism, irresistibly attractive but empty — you know you’ve been played by the marketing and design but you don’t care because your complicity in the game is part of the point.

This has to be Steve Jobs’s last hurrah. I predict this not because he is aging and deathly ill, but because he can’t possibly top this. It is the ne plus ultra of where he has been going ever since the Mac in 1984, with his ever-more obsessive focus on the signifiers of product-design attractiveness. And it’s going to make Apple a huge crapload of money, no question.

Sorta related, from BoingBoing:

March 9, 2010

It’s pesticide-free . . . but don’t call it “organic”

Filed under: Economics, USA, Wine — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 17:43

Organic wine, in theory, should be better quality than non-organic wine because the lack of pesticides requires much more manual labour in the vineyard to produce useful grapes. If you have to put in all that extra effort just to get sufficient grapes at harvest, it’s prudent to treat the resulting wine with care and further attention (otherwise, you’re wasting all that effort up front to grow the grapes in the first place). But, after all that (at least in California), don’t put the word organic on the label:

“You’ve heard of the French paradox?” quipped Delmas, associate professor of management at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and the UCLA Anderson School of Management. “Well, this is the American version. You’d expect anything with an eco-label to command a higher price, but that’s just not the case with California wine.”

[. . .]

So long as they didn’t carry eco-labels, these wines commanded a 13-percent higher price than conventionally produced wines of the same varietal, appellation and year. Their ratings on Wine Specator’s 100-point scale, in which wines tend to range between the mid-50s and high 90s, were also higher. Wines made from organically grown grapes averaged one point higher than their conventionally produced counterparts.

While the higher Wine Spectator scores still prevailed when producers slapped eco-labels on their bottles, the financial rewards for going to the trouble of making certified wine evaporated. The “made from organically grown grapes” label not only wiped out the price premium for using certified grapes but actually drove prices 7 percent below those for conventionally produced wines, the researchers found.

[. . .]

“Organic wine earned its bad reputation in the ’70s and ’80s,” Grant said. “Considered ‘hippie wine,’ it tended to turn to vinegar more quickly than non-organic wine. This negative association still lingers.”

Even today, the absence of sulfites reduces the shelf-life of organic wines, making them less stable, the researchers said.

I’m afraid my experience of “organic” wine is similar: the ones I’ve tried haven’t been very good, mostly due to rapid aging (the wine was already well past its best when others from the same region/same vintage were still improving). I certainly don’t pay extra if I notice an “organic” label, and I’m likely to avoid such a wine in favour of a non-organic option where possible.

January 27, 2010

Apple’s latest . . . marketing mis-step

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:53

AdRants has a bit of fun with Apple’s choice of name for its latest rapture-of-the-nerds tech device:

Apple Introduces New Feminine Protection Product: The iPad

According to an explosion of tweets following Steve Jobs’ announcement of the iPad, the device’s new name isn’t going over so well:

– For now the iPad’s really exciting, but wait until they release the iTampon

– iPad: You only need to plug it in once a month

– Wow – its the iPad. Wonder if it comes in 2 sizes (maxi and mini)

– I guess it’s Apple’s “time of the month”

– The Apple iPad: for all your heavy (work) flow days

– Our little iPod has hit womanhood

– To recap: the iPad will come with an iRag (to keep it clean) + some iBruprofen (to keep it working smoothly) + iWings (protection plan)

H/T to Virginia Postrel, who wrote “And so the jokes begin…Apple needs more female marketers”.

Update: Francis Turner sent a link to the official announcement photo.

More serious coverage of the new product from The Register.

December 16, 2009

How do you deal with unwanted automated calls?

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:20

The phone rang a minute ago, with the long-distance ring. When I picked it up, I got a pre-recorded message starting with “This is an important message about your credit card account. We have attempted to contact you . . .” I’m sure most of you in the GTA get similar calls on a regular basis.

I just hung up, but I wonder if there’s a better way of dealing with this sort of harassment (it’s never a company you already have dealings with). If I just left the phone off the hook and let the recorded message play out, would I tie up more of their resources? Might I even get a human waiting on the other end after I didn’t hang up on the automated portion of the call?

Is the petty revenge (however theoretical it might be) worthwhile? After all, they used misleading information (“my” credit card) to try to get my attention. Is it fair play to reverse the gambit and pretend they’ve got a chance of getting my business?

December 9, 2009

Hyping space travel

Filed under: Space, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:09

Colby Cosh finds the marketing hype from Virgin Galactic to be more than a little over the top:

I continue to be awestruck at Sir Richard Branson’s gift for hype. On Monday he rolled out Virgin Galactic’s “SpaceShipTwo”, dutifully described by Wired magazine as “the first commercial spacecraft” and “the first commercial spaceship”. This must be galling for the folks at the spaceflight research firm SpaceX. In July of this year, to little fanfare, they successfully put a Malaysian satellite into low earth orbit using a privately designed and built unmanned rocket, the Falcon 1. This is definitely commerce, and RazakSat is definitely up there in space, bleeping away in Malay. Surely everything else is Bransonian semantics?

SpaceShipTwo, despite the name, is an airplane — a very sophisticated and impressive airplane, designed to make brief suborbital hops after being carried aloft by another airplane. Branson’s hundreds of more-money-than-they-know-what-to-do-with customers are buying the aviation experience of a lifetime, one that nobody returns from unmoved. But it will be an aviation experience. “Space” is defined in custom, international law, and Virgin marketing literature as “high enough that airplanes mostly don’t work anymore”. To get there as an airplane passenger, by virtue of a few seconds of rocket boost tacked onto a conventional flight, seems a little like a technical cheat — the equivalent of trying to join the Mile High Club by oneself in the john.

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