Influencer: Square

Influenced: Kudos Payments

I’m not a sports guy.
I love going to live games in big stadiums but following football, baseball and basketball on a day-to-day basis is not my bag. My sports are technology and design and Apple is my team. I love when they win.
Apple wins when they create awesome products I love to use, products better than any other company can make.
Apple wins when they show the world that while consumer electronics products are impossible without the brilliance of enginners, you need designers to make them so fun and intuitive to use, you don’t even a need a manual.
I won’t lie, though. Apple also wins when they kick Microsoft’s ass. It was a great, symbolic moment last year when it was announced that Apple was worth more than Microsoft in market capitalization. It also feels good to know how successful the iPhone has become, especially after Steve Ballmer laughed at it in 2007. Oh, Steve. You big, bald dummy. Hold on while I do my touchdown dance in your face.
Apple wins when they own a small fraction of the mobile market, but taking home two-thirds of the profits. It adds insult to injury when they take all this money in the face of all their competitors copying the smartphone paradigm they established with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Hey guys, you’re copying my team and you’re still losing (They still don’t understand Design is not skin deep).
Speaking of shamelessly copying, it seems Samsung never bothered to make their own playbook, they decided to just copy Apple’s.
But I have to be honest – I’m really tired of writing about Apple.
I want to write about other amazing competitors. It’s fun when your team wins, but it’s even better when they win against a worthy adversary. Would you rather watch your favorite football team score touchdown after touchdown, against a team with a horrible defense? Sure, the first few are fun, but it gets old. What’s great is competition. Real competition.
What’s great is when your team wins, but in the last 5 seconds of the game. Triple overtime. Sudden death. Winning against a rival who fights until the end and who you can look at and say, ‘We might have beat you, but you played awesome.’
In the last few years, there have been very few moments where it looked as though a company besides Apple was going to start making consumer electronic devices people would love to use.
The first one I got excited about was the Palm Pre and webOS. Jon Rubenstein left Apple as senior VP of the iPod devision in 2007 to join Palm. When he unveiled the Palm Pre running webOS in 2009, the Apple DNA was obvious, but webOS was fresh brought a unique perspective to mobile operating systems. ‘Yes,’ I said to myself. ‘Apple has some real competition.’
Then HP bought Palm in 2010 and things got bumpy. The Pre was a solid smartphone but when the time came for HP to create a tablet to compete with the iPad, it wasn’t all it could have been. I wanted to love the TouchPad, but it was clear HP blew it. Then HP’s CEO, Leo Apotheker, gets ousted by HP’s board of directors Now it’s not even clear if HP wants to play the mobile computing game anymore.
Then there was news RIM was launching a tablet called the Playbook. The preview videos made it look as though RIM had executed things well. Oh, but then they shipped it without an email client. Not to mention providing no good way to get content on to or off of the device.
Sigh.
Earlier this month, Amazon enveiled their new lineup of Kindles, including the top-of-the-line Kindle Fire. The Fire uses a custom build of Android, has a color, multi-touch screen and an integrated marketplace to buy applications and movies and books and music. And a web browser which caches frequently visited sites for faster loading. Yes! Now we’re talking!
Then I got my hands on the Fire and was let down. Like the HP Touchpad, so close, but so very, very far from winning.
Now, most recently, John Paczkowski over at AllThingsD reports that Apple, with help from Sharp, is cooking up some Apple TVs — actual televisions — not what Apple TV is in it’s current incarnation.
It’s the logical next step for Apple’s goal of a fully-integrated entertainment ecosystem. These plans are not surprising. The question really is, why wouldn’t Apple redesign the television experience?
This is exciting news. Imagine a television experience that doesn’t involve convoluted remote controls and overly complex on-screen menus.
What isn’t exciting is this piece from Paczkowski’s post (my emphasis):

But what form it will take remains a mystery — one that the entire TV industry is evidently eager to solve. “Based on our discussions, interestingly other TV manufacturers have begun a scrambling search to identify what iTV will be and do,” says Misek. “They hope to avoid the fate of other industries and manufacturers who were caught flat footed by Apple.”
What would be great is if these other TV manufacturers weren’t ‘scrambling’ to cobble together something half-assed, but had a clear vision for a fun and intuitive television experience. Something they personally would love to use in their own homes.
It brings to mind a great quote by Steve Jobs (in his biography by Walter Isaacson):
The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft don’t really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally loved music. We made the iPod for ourselves, and when you’re doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you’re not going to cheese out. If you don’t love something, your not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.
History keeps repeating itself and it’s getting annoying. Apple introduces a new product, the industry reacts, they copy, but by the time they turn their enormous ships in the right direction, it’s too late.
Repeat ad infinitum.
It’s getting old.

Frank Bruni of the New York Times weighed in this weekend on another arena of American life where form has overtaken substance. From the article:

Is all of this hot air [disingenuous political ads, quote mining, etc.] part of a broader climate of unprincipled hucksterism? As a country we’ve shifted emphasis from goods to services, manufacturing to marketing, and everyone natters on about the importance of brand rather than the quality of product — about the sell rather than the substance.

It’s not every day you see Fugazi featured on the homepage of NYTimes.com:

From the article:

Less known was that the band fastidiously recorded almost every concert. After letting audio tapes for more than 800 shows languish in a closet for years, Fugazi has begun putting them all on its Web site, with the first batch of 130 shows going up next Thursday.

In keeping with its commercial principles of low prices and trust in fans, the shows’ suggested price is $5 each, with a sliding scale of $1 to $100, for the cheap or the philanthropic.

Badass.
I loved Fugazi growing up. Still do.
*If you you’re confused about the title of this post, try this.

Stand up and declare your independence from corporate chains, mass-produced products, and uninspired junk. #ShopIndie this holiday season to experience the satisfaction of owning a unique item, made with love and attention, direct from the artist themselves.

via Big Cartel

This is what happens when a 1950’s hot rod has sex with an espresso machine:

It’s the Kees Van Der Westen Mirage Veloce.
via Chromeography

via The Day After You Die

Marco Arment tried out the Kindle Fire and loves it:

I expected the Kindle Fire to be a compelling iPad alternative, but I can’t call it delightful, fun, or pleasant to use. Quite the opposite, actually: using the Fire is frustrating and unpleasant, and it feels like work.

For most people, every other computer in their life feels like work, and they don’t need another one.

It’s not an iPad competitor or alternative. It’s not the same kind of device at all. And, whatever it is, it’s a bad version of it.

That’s probably all you need to know about the Kindle Fire. Below is a detailed account of the issues I ran into, but I won’t take offense if you’re burnt out on long Kindle Fire reviews and stop here.

One of my coworkers happened to bring his new Fire in to the office yesterday and I got to do a little test drive and I came to a similar conclusion as Marco. The device is just meh. It’s ok. It does the job. There’s nothing delightful about the device. Aside from smooth scrolling on the content ‘carousel’ on the main screen, everything else on the device is choppy.
The Kindle Fire is mediocre in every aspect, from Human Experience to motion and transitions.
As with the HP Touchpad, I was hoping for a real contender to the iPad. But like the Touchpad, the execution is poor.

via iwdrm

In a world where products are out as soon as they’re in, where communicating without wires doesn’t come without strings, and even our accessories need accessories, we need simple tools. A book that helps us look inside because we are overloaded outside.

There are three reasons why most people, although they have tried, won’t keep a diary:
1. Not every day is very eventful.
2. It actually takes a lot of discipline to write.
3. In retrospect, many find what they have written embarrassing.

via Taschen

HP Launches Redesigned Envy 15 and 17:

Honestly. What the fuck.
It’s almost too ridiculous to do an influencer/influenced comparison.