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The trouble with this analysis is that the 1.0 iPod wasn't "rudimentary", it was simple. Likewise the original iPhone, which was so rudimentary that a year late
by irons 16y ago
The trouble with this analysis is that the 1.0 iPod wasn't "rudimentary", it was simple. Likewise the original iPhone, which was so rudimentary that a year later, the only competitive devices looked just like it.
If you're going to ship a great product and then improve on it at a terrifying pace, then yes, your original version is going to look dated pretty quickly. But using Apple as his exemplar gives weirdly short shrift to the incidental detail of first shipping a great product, regardless of how it looks in hindsight.
- px 16y agoI think rudimentary is a good descriptor in this instance. It can mean "being in the earliest stages of development" or "basic; minimal"
- irons 16y agoNo product which cleans its competitors' clocks from the word go can be fairly described as rudimentary, regardless of the competitive landscape a decade later. If the motion picture cameras Chaplin was using ninety years ago seem rudimentary now, it's because our context is different. At the time, they were bleeding edge. I sympathize with trying to motivate people to ship sooner and faster, but he's painting his examples as if they weren't world-beating hits, which only took time to go from solidly profitable to gargantuanly profitable.
- photomatt 16y agoIn the original essay I used the word "basic" there which is probably closer to what I meant. Simple, but not simplistic.
- cduruk 16y agoI might be missing the timeline but wasn't it until iPod worked with Windows that it really took off?