Orbiting the Giant Hairball

Just finished this book that Rich Running lent to me. An excellent read. I went out to try and buy a copy and used ones are running in the $40 to $50 dollar range. Not bad for a book that at one point could be purchased on Amazon for $15.

Chapter 19

Orville Wright did not have a pilot's license.

That's the whole chapter. Its the shortest chapter, but it gives you a bit of the feel of the book. For me it was a fun and insightful read. Highly recommended. (posted to another blog page on 3/300/2005)

keep going

Other companies had already tried to make a hard disk drive music player. Why did Apple get it right?

We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise and the software expertise, including iTunes. One of the biggest insights we have was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless.

What was the design lesson of the iPod?

Look at the design of a lot of consumer products—they're really complicated surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.

Steven Levy, "Good for the Soul -- Q&A: Jobs on iPod's Cultural Impact," Newsweek - MSNBC.com, 16 Oct 2006.