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The article doesn't directly mention this point, but my opinion is you need to take care of your power users since they tend to be influencers in their own circ

The article doesn't directly mention this point, but my opinion is you need to take care of your power users since they tend to be influencers in their own circles. Often they're the tech-savvy member of the family/friendship/work colleague circle, and they steer other non-power users to their preferred products, which over time gain popularity. Signal is a great example of this. Please look after your power users! Maintaining their trust is critical.

ubermonkey 6y ago
I think this is an underrated aspect of the enormous success of early OS X with technical people. Before, the Mac was a big deal in graphics and other areas like that, but didn't really have an inroad to people who wanted to code. Shifting to OSX created a platform with all the power of Linux under the hood, but with access to the COTS tools that many people prefer/need. I was part of this. In the early 21st century, I was doing lots of LAMP stack work, and you could just install everything locally on your Mac, build and test locally, and then rsync up to the test server for broader evaluation. I think this was partly inadvertent, but Apple doesn't do anything accidentally. So all of a sudden, you'd go to tech confs for things like Ruby or Python, and see a roomful of glowing Apple logos. Because deliberately or not, the platform respected the power user. People are upset now b/c they fear the iOS-ification of what we now call MacOS. I'm not convinced it's happening in any meaningful sense (I can still build and run whatever I want), but it's probably worth watching. Any move away from the "perfect hybrid" that OSX was in, say, 2002, is scary/unwelcome, even if the moves are things that are probably good ideas for normal people, and easily circumvented for power users (like a default restriction to signed code).
- SomeHacker44 6y ago
  I just wanted to say, IMO, "nailed it." This is why I moved to Mac OS X in 2004, and why I began de-Appling my life in 2019 (for WSL). Too many anti-features across all Apple hardware and software, not to mention killing good software like Aperture.
- cperciva 6y ago
  Shifting to OSX created a platform with all the power of Linux under the hood Even better: It had all the power of BSD under the hood.
  - ubermonkey 6y ago
    Heh. I knew someone would pick that nit.
gear54rus 6y ago
There is also a counterpoint: power users are typically smarter and therefore less likely to be affected by your marketing BS and therefore harder to extract money from. So retaining them is not worth the effort.
- alpaca128 6y ago
  That may be true, but someone has to develop the apps for your platform. Developers, tech bloggers, reviewers, streamers are often power users and influence a lot of consumers. And maybe they don't care about Apple spending 30 minutes to brag about how their Macbook just got 0.2mm thinner. But they might still consider the purchase if it doesn't come with a touchbar and another broken keyboard.
csydas 6y ago
The so called power users, like any other, have many facets. Sometimes they're quite cooperative and indeed, they push edge cases that other users simply don't, advance powerful workflows using your tooling you never thought of, etc. But they can also be down-right arrogant and self-centered ;) I think the scale of influence the article is talking about is bigger than personal circles and is focusing more on huge user bases. The power users I deal with daily are a mixed bunch; some are very earnest in their pursuit of using our product to its fullest extent, which is great; they open themselves up to risk by pushing new features their limits, and we're willing to work with them as they continue to invest further into us. This is great because in this scenario we have the same end goals, so it works out and it's a good investment for everyone involved. For some power users though, as soon as our goals deviate and we're no longer looking in the same direction for a given feature/product, it's like a really bad break up, and quite a few do not like to take it silently or easily. I have some that have been threatening to leave the product for 3+ years because we've elected not to invest resources further into a specific feature (low demand, market is turning away from this feature, the investment is simply too great at this point to justify the cost). But they never leave, for reasons I'm not going to speculate on. The way that our power users act regarding such decisions is frankly borderline harassment at times; spamming forum posts, harassing our support team with endless cases just to complain about a feature they know we don't have, it can eat up a lot of time. The power users insist they are right, and that our decision is 'a huge mistake we just don't understand', and they continue to remind us of this -- it's hard to not consider the attitudes arrogant, and the language used to describe themselves feels a bit too self-congratulatory. Frankly speaking I don't like the tone of the article even if I agree with some of its points as it sounds too much like the bad users mentioned above. So as with all things, it's best with moderation and constant doses of reality. Without these checks, it's easy to get a very bad relationship set up and such relationships take a lot to advance to a more stable position.
- vulcan01 6y ago
  > because we've elected not to invest resources further into a specific feature (low demand, market is turning away from this feature, the investment is simply too great at this point to justify the cost) Just curious, what happens if you tell them why you've chosen not to invest in the feature they want?

ubermonkey 6y ago

I think this is an underrated aspect of the enormous success of early OS X with technical people. Before, the Mac was a big deal in graphics and other areas like that, but didn't really have an inroad to people who wanted to code. Shifting to OSX created a platform with all the power of Linux under the hood, but with access to the COTS tools that many people prefer/need. I was part of this. In the early 21st century, I was doing lots of LAMP stack work, and you could just install everything locally on your Mac, build and test locally, and then rsync up to the test server for broader evaluation. I think this was partly inadvertent, but Apple doesn't do anything accidentally. So all of a sudden, you'd go to tech confs for things like Ruby or Python, and see a roomful of glowing Apple logos. Because deliberately or not, the platform respected the power user. People are upset now b/c they fear the iOS-ification of what we now call MacOS. I'm not convinced it's happening in any meaningful sense (I can still build and run whatever I want), but it's probably worth watching. Any move away from the "perfect hybrid" that OSX was in, say, 2002, is scary/unwelcome, even if the moves are things that are probably good ideas for normal people, and easily circumvented for power users (like a default restriction to signed code).

SomeHacker44 6y ago
I just wanted to say, IMO, "nailed it." This is why I moved to Mac OS X in 2004, and why I began de-Appling my life in 2019 (for WSL). Too many anti-features across all Apple hardware and software, not to mention killing good software like Aperture.
cperciva 6y ago
Shifting to OSX created a platform with all the power of Linux under the hood Even better: It had all the power of BSD under the hood.
- ubermonkey 6y ago
  Heh. I knew someone would pick that nit.

gear54rus 6y ago

There is also a counterpoint: power users are typically smarter and therefore less likely to be affected by your marketing BS and therefore harder to extract money from. So retaining them is not worth the effort.

alpaca128 6y ago
That may be true, but someone has to develop the apps for your platform. Developers, tech bloggers, reviewers, streamers are often power users and influence a lot of consumers. And maybe they don't care about Apple spending 30 minutes to brag about how their Macbook just got 0.2mm thinner. But they might still consider the purchase if it doesn't come with a touchbar and another broken keyboard.

csydas 6y ago

The so called power users, like any other, have many facets. Sometimes they're quite cooperative and indeed, they push edge cases that other users simply don't, advance powerful workflows using your tooling you never thought of, etc. But they can also be down-right arrogant and self-centered ;) I think the scale of influence the article is talking about is bigger than personal circles and is focusing more on huge user bases. The power users I deal with daily are a mixed bunch; some are very earnest in their pursuit of using our product to its fullest extent, which is great; they open themselves up to risk by pushing new features their limits, and we're willing to work with them as they continue to invest further into us. This is great because in this scenario we have the same end goals, so it works out and it's a good investment for everyone involved. For some power users though, as soon as our goals deviate and we're no longer looking in the same direction for a given feature/product, it's like a really bad break up, and quite a few do not like to take it silently or easily. I have some that have been threatening to leave the product for 3+ years because we've elected not to invest resources further into a specific feature (low demand, market is turning away from this feature, the investment is simply too great at this point to justify the cost). But they never leave, for reasons I'm not going to speculate on. The way that our power users act regarding such decisions is frankly borderline harassment at times; spamming forum posts, harassing our support team with endless cases just to complain about a feature they know we don't have, it can eat up a lot of time. The power users insist they are right, and that our decision is 'a huge mistake we just don't understand', and they continue to remind us of this -- it's hard to not consider the attitudes arrogant, and the language used to describe themselves feels a bit too self-congratulatory. Frankly speaking I don't like the tone of the article even if I agree with some of its points as it sounds too much like the bad users mentioned above. So as with all things, it's best with moderation and constant doses of reality. Without these checks, it's easy to get a very bad relationship set up and such relationships take a lot to advance to a more stable position.

vulcan01 6y ago
> because we've elected not to invest resources further into a specific feature (low demand, market is turning away from this feature, the investment is simply too great at this point to justify the cost) Just curious, what happens if you tell them why you've chosen not to invest in the feature they want?