Does the iPhone Look So Great Because Everything Else is So Bad?
It's not over yet. I think the iPhone phenomenon will still be talked about for a while. And people keep on finding new perspectives to approach it. Here is an interesting one from Fast Company (again).
When was the last time a car made anyone’s spirits soar? GM just had their worst June in nine years. And it’s not like the foreign automakers are bringing any turbo-charge of excitement to their showrooms, either. BMW, Mercedes, Lexus and Audio make perfectly fine vehicles, but there are only predictable, incremental improvements from model year to model year. The only semblance of consumer intensity – for hybrid vehicles – is fueled by politics, not engineering.
Why is so much of the consumer economy so boring? In large part, marketers talk about creating a culture of innovation, but then either isolate the truly original ideas, Guantanamo-style, or subject them to death-by-PowerPoint and death by research. It’s easy to look at the iPhone and then reverse-engineer the arguments that would have killed it off at damn near any other company:
- “Consumers will reject a keyboard they can’t feel.”
- “No one will spend that much for a phone.”
- “You can’t expect people to get a new number online.”
- “You can’t succeed working with just one carrier.”
The objections would have gone on and on – almost as long as the lines outside the Apple store last week. C’mon now, Steve Jobs is good, but he shouldn’t be lapping the rest of the American consumer economy.
Link
Labels: Design, Discontent, Reflection
