7 ms·

Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

112 points by shioyama 15y ago

losethos 15y ago
Cheer-up Japan... maybe. One time, Chavez was bitching and blaming the US. God said, "Japan industrious." He has praised industriousness, on occassion. I'm not sure about the earthquake. Some things are blessings in disguise... or maybe He had some issue... or maybe, just inevitable. Once, I thought He said Japan was His favorite country. It might change from time to time. Let's play, "Country shitlist!" God says... oh_come_on ridiculous quit_it I'll_get_right_on_it commanded I_was_just_thinking (God's laughing) You'll learn not to take God too seriously--just enjoy His company is what He really wants. He doesn't really like people running-off and overreacting, I think. I tease Him by picking the set of words that go in His mouth. God says... Is_that_so heads_I_win_tails_you_lose think_you_could_do_better high_mucky_muck if_and_only_if incoming envy oops not_a_chance_in_hell humility employer vermin pow epic_fail Zzzzzzzz let's_roll fake Malaysia Microsoft roses_are_red I_forgot now_you_tell_me One_finger_salute cowardice Brazil North_Korea I_didn't_see_that and_then_what I_could_be_wrong adultery overflow in_a_galaxy_far_far_away who_are_you_to_judge I'm_thrilled I'm_busy theft I'm_God_who_the_hell_are_you LOL I_have_an_idea Saudi_Arabia chill_out India cosmetics I'm_thrilled Uzbekistan I_donno take_the_day_off Hasta Terry catastrophe overflow "Malaise" is a sickness. Usually, I treat "roses are red" is slang for "poetry". In this case, might be communism. If it seems confusing, that's normal. Just enjoy His company. Perhaps, I like to hang-out with God witha a God's eye view and talk about the World. This passage kinda cracks-me-up. God was hanging-out on the porch with Satan, bullshitting. ----------------- Job 1 Prologue 1 In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. 2 He had seven sons and three daughters, 3 and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East. 4 His sons used to hold feasts in their homes on their birthdays, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom. 6 One day the angels[a] came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan[b] also came with them. 7 The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” 8 Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” 9 “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. 10 “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. 11 But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” 12 The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” ------------ I think that passage is funny. Don't play me like that. I'll swear to Your face! ROFLMAO God says... failure_is_not_an_option ha obviously could_it_be___Satan Somalia population ipod dang_it what_do_you_want slumin don't_even_think_about_it ordinarily application beep_beep how_about_that Madagascar endure Singapore flat gambling He said Somolia (figuratively) wants ipods (figuratively, etc). He's mad and they would have to endure Singapore-like discipline. God says (random passage) ---------- C:\TEXT\BIBLE.TXT ey said, We cannot, until all the flocks be gathered together, and till they roll the stone from the well's mouth; then we water the sheep. 29:9 And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep; for she kept them. 29:10 And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother. 29:1 ---------- Mostly a dud. Let's find-out why the earthquake in Japan. Haiti seemed obvious. (I'm awful) By the way, He said to build hotels in Haiti. Carter might be all over that. God says (random passage) ----------- C:\TEXT\BIBLE.TXT And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. 31:11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts. 31:12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho. 31:13 And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to --------- You have to make it fit. I think this is about rioting -- any other interpretation doesn't fit. It's also about scum... who loot. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+14&version=NIV http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+14... I'm pretty-good at interpreting.
russell 15y ago
He says the problem is design by focus groups. Consumers know exactly what they want, but when a company produces it, they go buy something else more interesting. I've tried using focus groups back in the last century. It doesnt produce anything useful, except when you are looking for flaws in your product.
- nobody314159 15y ago
  Nonsense - if it wasn't for focus groups we wouldn't have been able to launch our new car with improved whip holder!
  - arkitaip 15y ago
    Well, that's better than our focus group; they just want faster horses.
    - nobody314159 15y ago
      Ours insisted on backwards compatibility
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  The problem is that so often users will express their desires not in the most distilled form, they will typically express them in the form of some unimplemented solution that they have arrived at via a process of mental satisficing. They don't know how to design software, or hardware, and they damned sure don't know how it works either. But they sure as hell know that if your product would "just" do this one little thing it would help them out. The problem, of course, is that you then end up delegating design to people who lack the expertise. You can end up implementing ridiculous features if you just implement suggestions uncritically. For example, if you sell a sports car that people think should be more powerful they could express that by saying it should have a bigger engine, even though there are many ways to approach that problem (EFI programming, turbo chargers, lighter frame, different gear box, etc.) If you end up doing this a lot you end up with a big ball of mud design-wise as everyone's disparate needs and half-thought-out solutions collides with each other. It takes a lot of effort to take the needs of customers and distill it down into a core set of functions and then tie those functions together in an elegant manner in a cohesive and highly useful design. If you look at a lot of the "also ran" products from any given genre you will notice a trend towards a chaotic implementation of a laundry list of features whereas the market leaders tend to present a more elegant and cohesive design, even sometimes at the expensive of a handful of features.
stupandaus 15y ago
This reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's piece about New Coke in Blink.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Should be required reading for marketeers one would think.
Steko 15y ago
Fairly mundane observations. I liked his point that today's Japanese executives are all corporate drones, salarymen that worked their way up through the system and aren't going to boldly design anything.
- 9999 15y ago
  That's really not fair. Some of them are competent foreigners that get thrown out when they expose yakuza cronyism. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203658804576634792112130906.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020365880457663...
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
teyc 15y ago
What Apple has executed is actualy mass luxury. Its goods are perceived as high value objects, where status is more important than breadth of functionality (more on this later). Perception is very important. For instance, a discount store would stack up items and use cheap-looking layout to create the perception that they are cost cutters. Similarly, a luxury item should be perceived as objet d' art where functionality is clear and straighforward. Viewed from this perspective, an iPod isn't about inbuilt graphic equalizers. It is about frictionless and effortless getting-music-into-your-hands ease. I remembered that even the Queen wanted an iPod. It is obvious one would know how to use one. It is the same with the iPhone. The less the engineers talk about dual-core, split antenna, the more they focus on how users interact with their devices. Even the app store is actually a luxury bling. It signals all the things are are potentially available "at your service" without actually cluttering up your device.
- geon 15y ago
  You mention two very separate points: perception of luxury and ease of use. I agree that Apple are masters of both, but don't think they have anything to do with each other.
  - teyc 15y ago
    On the contrary. Luxury items have a very clear messaging. "The user is sophisticated, and does not want to feel stupid." "The user is King, and does not want to be bothered with the details of how hard the machine has to work to satisfy His whims".
- rayiner 15y ago
  Apple doesn't really market themselves as a luxury brand. Compare a Mac ad to a Lexus ad, for example. What you're describing isn't luxury. Having a product where "functionality is clear and straightforward" isn't luxury, and it isn't art. It's good engineering.
  - jayfuerstenberg 15y ago
    Precisely. For the most part they stripped away the complexity of computers and made the internet a consumer-level technology.
victorbstan 15y ago
Great insight into leadership and product decision making strategies, couched in a velour of discontent with the JP status quo.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
For me the meta insight is that this kind of thinking is a huge deal for startups. So the challenge is that as a team you are putting together something that probably everyone thinks is useless (or at least only marginally useful), and yet to have to stay focussed on the problem(s) you are addressing and take care to address them cleanly and with style. It is actually in those places where others cannot see that some of the best ideas can be brought to fruition. Of course releasing too early can lead to disaster (ask the Color folks on that one, at least I perceived it as a PR disaster).
- rdtsc 15y ago
  > So the challenge is that as a team you are putting together something that probably everyone thinks is useless Isn't selection bias a problem with this thinking? Yes companies that are very successful did something outstanding perhaps, going against the flow, but how much do we know about the number of companies that did stuff everyone thought was useless and it was useless and the whole thing flopped? We hear about the success stories, I want to then also hear about every failed attempt as well, or it not an accurate picture then, is it? To put it in other words, it is a bit like encouraging people to play the lottery by showing images of winners. "Look these guys flipped a coin, talked to their astrologer and now look, they are winners!". But what about the ones that play and lose?
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    Isn't selection bias a problem with this thinking? It may be, although in my experience 9 - 9.5/10 startups, when measured from concept to death, fail to exit. And many of those were pursuing an idea that clearly wasn't as special as they thought it was for what ever reason (could be early, could be silly, could be too complex) But to be a startup you have to accept those odds.
- ericd 15y ago
  There are very few companies whose idea I initially thought was useless that have ended up going big - twitter is one of the only ones on that side of the spectrum. Sure, they may have some issues that need to be overcome, but for the most part, the ones that have gone big have a very obvious core appeal. If everyone thinks it's useless despite understanding the crux of the idea, I think that's a really, really good sign that you need to go back to the drawing board.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- rajat 15y ago
  Jobs did apparently use focus groups; he would show off prototypes to selected friends and watch their reactions. Their reactions would, as you say, inform his ideas about the design.
ilamont 15y ago
Nintendo is an interesting case that may dispel some of the stereotypes about Japanese companies and management styles. First, the company is quite old (1889, I believe). It started out manufacturing playing cards, yet had a pretty remarkable evolution after its post-war CEO (a member of the founding family, surnamed Yamauchi) took over. While it was a top-down organization, Yamauchi recognized and encouraged some out-of-the box and risky thinking. The company at one point was invested in things like hotels and food, but started to develop a new business in the 1970s around video games. Keep in mind that in 1977 video games were not nearly as popular as they are now, and the nearest product line Nintendo had at the time was toys. Famicom/NES was launched in the mid 1980s, at a time when the videogame market was in a slump (this was post-Atari 2600). It turned out to be a massive hit, that really kept Nintendo on top of the console market until Sony came out with the PlayStation. The Wii is another example of an innovative approach to product design. It was not designed by focus groups, as the company was worried about leaks. Rather, the design of the console and controller came from an internal group made up mostly of career Nintendo engineers like Shigeru Miyamoto (of Mario Bros. fame). Yamauchi's successor, Satoru Iwata (himself a former game developer) was also on the team. They recognized that they couldn't win the hardware arms race with Sony and Microsoft, a race that focused on specs and pleasing hardcore gamers. They thought of a different set of users, and not only kids and senior citizens waving around a Wiimote. The team even considered how housewives would react to a new console in the living room, and therefore designed a box that was sleek and stylish, and not much bigger than a stack of DVD boxes. There's a great interview series with the Wii design team, called "Iwata asks". It talks about many of the issues they had to overcome, and the prototyping process. It was published on Nintendo websites all over the world -- I think Iwata wanted to do a little victory lap, and get on record how they came up with the brilliant ideas behind the Wii. You can start reading it here: http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/wii_console/ http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/wii_console/
- dantheman 15y ago
  I think Nintendo's success primarily has to do with them employing one of, if not, the best game designers that has ever lived - Shigeru Miyamoto. By trusting and empowering him they are able to have taste, just as Jobs's taste defined Apple, Miyamoto's defines Nintendo.
TruthPrevails 15y ago
It's the law of nature at play. The infinite cycle of life and death. Old making way for the new. Apple will go weak one day. Some other company will come to the top. This law of nature cannot be challenged. It is inevitable.
flocial 15y ago
I read this article and it was interesting. Sony can still make some beautifully designed products and even beat Apple in certain ways, the Vaio X had similar capabilities to the MacBook Air and still much lighter and well-designed. However, the greater issue is not the "design by committee" problem but the fact that the entire country is simply lost and headless. It's not only business but politics and society in general. The reason why companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google inspire is because they do things with conviction. They are executing on vision. They don't let internal processes become ritualized. Key executives don't stick around long when the fire goes out in their soul, they move on. In Japan, nobody knows what they want to do. Japanese manufacturers feel the heat from Apple AND Samsung, they're scared of China's growing clout yet they can't figure out what they want to do. They can't race to the bottom with an aging population with an acquired taste for high median salaries. They've lost the drive and intellectual fortitude to innovate in all but very limited areas. They don't want to relinquish the "made in Japan" brand, even though the Chinese have shown that with the right management in place, they can make products better and cheaper. I don't know where this paralysis comes from. Maybe the Japanese think all their woes stem from some economic missteps from the bubble era and once these are righted they can happily resume their old formula for success. Maybe over two decades of stagnation and slow decline lead to a death by a thousand cuts along with the false security of high savings. For whatever reason, Japan is simply ill-prepared to compete on any level in the global economy. Perhaps the greatest Achilles heel for Japanese manufacturers is not so much the core hardware technology but their utter disregard for the software that drives so many electronics. If you go to any electronics store in Japan you'd be amazed by the utterly useless features manufacturers try to differentiate themselves with (this camera can take pictures in the dark while shaken vigorously, this one makes your face look pretty, etc.). When the iPhone came out I was one of the skeptics who thought the lack of things like TV reception, RFID cards (used for train passes), the lack of emoji (back then), or the ability to render ketai/mobile web sites wouldn't go down well with customers. However, in the greater scheme of things it didn't matter. Now all the feature phone manufacturers are scuttling decades worth of in-house code to work on Android.
- shioyama 15y ago
  I'm the author/translator of this article. Thanks for your thoughts, which I agree with entirely. I actually think that although the post I translated is interesting, it is in fact missing the point, in a sense. There's a deeper malaise in this country, and although there are bright spots - I'd point to home-grown companies like Cookpad, for example - the overall picture is bleak. However, Japan has a track record of suddenly changing directions when nobody expects it. Many people thought that 3/11 would trigger a change, and were disappointed when it didn't, or at least not to a significant degree. But if you look deeper, things are changing. I'm cautiously optimistic. You really have to be. But it will get worse before it gets better.
6ren 15y ago
> I'm getting sick of these Japanese who love nothing more than to put their country down. Sony and many other Japanese companies once pioneered new products - and Sony was the ideal that Steve Jobs said he aimed for. In fact, it's pro-Japanese. Just not its present state. Christensen (innovator's dilemma guy) thinks that present-day Japan suffers from large companies: the disruptions that are tomorrow's riches start out small and unpredictable. Small is simply not interesting to a big company; unpredictable even less so. In post-war Japan, companies were small: excited about small opportunities; and having little to lose, unafraid of risk. (In contrast, he says, Silicon Valley incumbents often populate their usurpers, such as Fairchild to Intel, when frustrated workers want to exploit something uninteresting to management. This doesn't happen in Japan.) The enigma here is Apple. The largest company in the world, yet acts like a startup in terms of risky new products in unproven new markets that start out small: launching a product without consumer research is risky.
jayfuerstenberg 15y ago
Here in Japan, risk is extremely frowned upon. As a result nothing innovate comes about. Only minor improvements over the existing design. A lot has been written about the cultural views of risk/failure and why nations like the US are kicking butt over Japan and India where you're not allowed to fail. Japan has shown that it can stage a comeback when the nation as a whole can no longer deny it has been defeated and must reinvent itself to move forward. It happened after WWII and will likely happen in another 10 or 20 years if things continue the way they have.
kstenerud 15y ago
The article kind of misses the point. The reason why people are leaving the Japanese phones for the iPhone is because Japanese phone interfaces SUCK BALLS. And they have ALWAYS sucked. I suffered through 5 years of one phone after another being such a terrible user experience that I think it scarred me for life. And don't even get me started with Sony, who replaced the perfectly functioning joypad in their phones (which USED to be the best) with that stupid "sony" sidewheel they spent so much money developing and insisted on putting in every product, whether it made sense or not. The fact remains, emoji ARE important. Easy text input IS important. Being able to pay for stuff at the combini with your phone IS important. It's just that having apps, and a UI that doesn't suck balls is even more important. iPhone took YEARS to penetrate the Japanese market, precisely because it didn't have the features that customers wanted, and they spoke with their wallets, buying the Japanese models. But now that app and smartphone fever has finally landed, people are more willing to compromise. But the point is, they SHOULDN'T have to compromise. That's just Apple deciding what people will use, even if it's the wrong thing. It's taking a little bit of good advice to such an extreme that what appears on the surface "visionary" would upon closer inspection reveal itself as insanity. Hubris has a way of creeping up on you when your power remains unchecked for too long. Yeah, Sony used to be good, but then again they used to make good products. Once their arrogance got the better of them, their products started to suffer. My first Vaio was awesome. Sleek, light, and fast. My last Vaio was practically useless out of the box. It took me 3 HOURS to remove all the crapware they loaded into it, which slowed it down so badly that it was almost unusable. Oh, and it had that stupid useless Sony sidewheel on it, and their incompatible-because-we-said-so memory stick port too. I shudder to think of how the average user would endure with such a monstrosity.
- delackner 15y ago
  This is so true. Example: My iphone died recently, so while waiting for the 4s to come out I used a 3-4 year old Sony Ericson lying around the office. It has so many buzzword features! It even has dedicated media playback buttons on the outside! Yet how do you call someone? It takes 6 button presses. Press down > click on first name > Call > Voice Call/Video Call/PushTalk > No Message/Create Message > Call/Call with ID/Call with no ID/Country code That's insane. It is like no one ever tried to make a phone call with their phone when designing it. Don't get me started on the text editing screen. It is a modal text area that flips between movement within the whole text and movement within the single word you are editing. I love Vim, and I still hate this text entry method. This whole topic has been covered many times before, but its roots are various and you could write a book on the subject of why most firms (both japanese and non) are just so horrible at consumer software interface design. Some people suggest that it is just that the Japanese firms were only really good at hardware, but that rings false. I've seen a lot of really horribly designed Japanese computers and mobile phones before the iPhone came out, even just judging the hardware by itself on simplicity and reliability.
BadassFractal 15y ago
I wonder is part of their failure is from listening to people's reason, such as focusing on the nitty gritty features (see emoji, typing with one hand and so on) rather than on the big picture of the device and how it fits into one's lifestyle. It's known that humans are ultimately emotional beings, they think with their feelings regardless of how rational they believe they are. The iPhone is the ultimate user experience, titillating the senses and the emotions more than any PDA out there with 1000s of convenience features. It's similar to BMW, Steve Jobs' source of inspiration for his marketing strategies. You want the device on a primal level, it's sexy, it's a status symbol, the release of every iPhone is a cultural event, a celebration of incredible UX. I never ever get that emotional involvement when looking at the latest super-souped-up swiss-knife phone from Japan.
bluedanieru 15y ago
One thing he didn't mention that I've noticed is that many Japanese companies, particularly in the consumer electronics space but in other industries as well, maintain completely separate product lines outside Japan vs. what they sell here. This is (or was) especially striking with phones where you simply couldn't buy made-for-Japan mobile phones outside Japan, and likewise you couldn't find non-Japanese phones in Japan. This is why it was such a shock that the iPhone was a success here, and the entire emerging smartphone market caught Docomo and AU completely flat-footed. There is a particularly irritating component of Japanese nationalism which holds that Japanese are unique, as in physiologically unique, among the world's population (down to having different immune systems, in fact). In seems natural for a Japanese company that it would essentially have to act as two companies, one for exported products and another for domestic ones. It's very inefficient. It's also remarkably stupid as the iPhone demonstrates - what sells anywhere else will also sell here, and vice versa (I would always get comments on my phone when I went overseas and had to tell people the model was only available in Japan, to their disappointment). Contrast this with most other large manufacturers where they will have more-or-less the same products globally, with some localization. Actually the solution for Japan is rather obvious and I suspect many know it: stop acting as though you're an alien race crash-landed on planet Earth a thousand years ago. Start treating the global market the same as the domestic one, and Japanese the same as Korean, Swedish, Canadian, whatever. This will be a hard lesson for the Japanese national psyche to digest, and I don't know that they're up for it. It's entirely plausible they'll spend the next 50 years making stunning breakthroughs in the fields of (nursing home) robotics and new delivery mechanisms for god-awful Japanese broadcast television.
- paperwork 15y ago
  So why would an international company have separate product lines like you mention? It is hard to believe that international businessmen would forgo the opportunity to profit abroad, simply because something is made for the local market. Could it be that Japan only products are more experimental, and when the prove successful, they are rolled out to rest of the world?
  - bluedanieru 15y ago
bane 15y ago
I've had a feeling for a long time that Japan (not South Korea or China or other regional countries) is on the verge of a massive cultural shakeup. I can't quite pin it down, but when you peel back the vast homogeneous conformist mass consumer oriented society, there's a really wonderfully quirky, genuinely interesting underground scene that's so vibrant, so full of energy, that it seems like it's about to burst into the mainstream in the same way the beatnick and then hippy movement did in the West. Steve Jobs came out of that movement, who's to say we aren't about to see the birth of the next Steve Jobs in Japan? Only his parents were in a banjo kettle drum band in Osaka that played basement coffee houses and did cosplay on the weekends to super indie Manga series that explores the meaning of identity as a pop star with only digital, manufactured fans. In the States Vietnam was the flashpoint that really caused people to gel around the question authority hippy movement, perhaps some current or future event will cause the same with the Japanese youth.
greggman 15y ago
Did anyone bother to do some fact checking? As far as I can tell Android phones are massively outselling iPhones in Japan. Look at any best selling list for phones In Japan before the 4S shipped. Check again in month once the upgraders have upgraded.

112 points by shioyama 15y ago

Cheer-up Japan... maybe. One time, Chavez was bitching and blaming the US. God said, "Japan industrious." He has praised industriousness, on occassion. I'm not sure about the earthquake. Some things are blessings in disguise... or maybe He had some issue... or maybe, just inevitable. Once, I thought He said Japan was His favorite country. It might change from time to time. Let's play, "Country shitlist!" God says... oh_come_on ridiculous quit_it I'll_get_right_on_it commanded I_was_just_thinking (God's laughing) You'll learn not to take God too seriously--just enjoy His company is what He really wants. He doesn't really like people running-off and overreacting, I think. I tease Him by picking the set of words that go in His mouth. God says... Is_that_so heads_I_win_tails_you_lose think_you_could_do_better high_mucky_muck if_and_only_if incoming envy oops not_a_chance_in_hell humility employer vermin pow epic_fail Zzzzzzzz let's_roll fake Malaysia Microsoft roses_are_red I_forgot now_you_tell_me One_finger_salute cowardice Brazil North_Korea I_didn't_see_that and_then_what I_could_be_wrong adultery overflow in_a_galaxy_far_far_away who_are_you_to_judge I'm_thrilled I'm_busy theft I'm_God_who_the_hell_are_you LOL I_have_an_idea Saudi_Arabia chill_out India cosmetics I'm_thrilled Uzbekistan I_donno take_the_day_off Hasta Terry catastrophe overflow "Malaise" is a sickness. Usually, I treat "roses are red" is slang for "poetry". In this case, might be communism. If it seems confusing, that's normal. Just enjoy His company. Perhaps, I like to hang-out with God witha a God's eye view and talk about the World. This passage kinda cracks-me-up. God was hanging-out on the porch with Satan, bullshitting. ----------------- Job 1 Prologue 1 In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. 2 He had seven sons and three daughters, 3 and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East. 4 His sons used to hold feasts in their homes on their birthdays, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom. 6 One day the angels[a] came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan[b] also came with them. 7 The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” 8 Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” 9 “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. 10 “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. 11 But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” 12 The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” ------------ I think that passage is funny. Don't play me like that. I'll swear to Your face! ROFLMAO God says... failure_is_not_an_option ha obviously could_it_be___Satan Somalia population ipod dang_it what_do_you_want slumin don't_even_think_about_it ordinarily application beep_beep how_about_that Madagascar endure Singapore flat gambling He said Somolia (figuratively) wants ipods (figuratively, etc). He's mad and they would have to endure Singapore-like discipline. God says (random passage) ---------- C:\TEXT\BIBLE.TXT ey said, We cannot, until all the flocks be gathered together, and till they roll the stone from the well's mouth; then we water the sheep. 29:9 And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep; for she kept them. 29:10 And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother. 29:1 ---------- Mostly a dud. Let's find-out why the earthquake in Japan. Haiti seemed obvious. (I'm awful) By the way, He said to build hotels in Haiti. Carter might be all over that. God says (random passage) ----------- C:\TEXT\BIBLE.TXT And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. 31:11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts. 31:12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho. 31:13 And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to --------- You have to make it fit. I think this is about rioting -- any other interpretation doesn't fit. It's also about scum... who loot. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+14&version=NIV http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+14... I'm pretty-good at interpreting.

russell 15y ago

He says the problem is design by focus groups. Consumers know exactly what they want, but when a company produces it, they go buy something else more interesting. I've tried using focus groups back in the last century. It doesnt produce anything useful, except when you are looking for flaws in your product.

nobody314159 15y ago
Nonsense - if it wasn't for focus groups we wouldn't have been able to launch our new car with improved whip holder!
- arkitaip 15y ago
  Well, that's better than our focus group; they just want faster horses.
  - nobody314159 15y ago
    Ours insisted on backwards compatibility
InclinedPlane 15y ago
The problem is that so often users will express their desires not in the most distilled form, they will typically express them in the form of some unimplemented solution that they have arrived at via a process of mental satisficing. They don't know how to design software, or hardware, and they damned sure don't know how it works either. But they sure as hell know that if your product would "just" do this one little thing it would help them out. The problem, of course, is that you then end up delegating design to people who lack the expertise. You can end up implementing ridiculous features if you just implement suggestions uncritically. For example, if you sell a sports car that people think should be more powerful they could express that by saying it should have a bigger engine, even though there are many ways to approach that problem (EFI programming, turbo chargers, lighter frame, different gear box, etc.) If you end up doing this a lot you end up with a big ball of mud design-wise as everyone's disparate needs and half-thought-out solutions collides with each other. It takes a lot of effort to take the needs of customers and distill it down into a core set of functions and then tie those functions together in an elegant manner in a cohesive and highly useful design. If you look at a lot of the "also ran" products from any given genre you will notice a trend towards a chaotic implementation of a laundry list of features whereas the market leaders tend to present a more elegant and cohesive design, even sometimes at the expensive of a handful of features.

stupandaus 15y ago

This reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's piece about New Coke in Blink.

ChuckMcM 15y ago
Should be required reading for marketeers one would think.

Steko 15y ago

Fairly mundane observations. I liked his point that today's Japanese executives are all corporate drones, salarymen that worked their way up through the system and aren't going to boldly design anything.

9999 15y ago
That's really not fair. Some of them are competent foreigners that get thrown out when they expose yakuza cronyism. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203658804576634792112130906.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020365880457663...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

teyc 15y ago

What Apple has executed is actualy mass luxury. Its goods are perceived as high value objects, where status is more important than breadth of functionality (more on this later). Perception is very important. For instance, a discount store would stack up items and use cheap-looking layout to create the perception that they are cost cutters. Similarly, a luxury item should be perceived as objet d' art where functionality is clear and straighforward. Viewed from this perspective, an iPod isn't about inbuilt graphic equalizers. It is about frictionless and effortless getting-music-into-your-hands ease. I remembered that even the Queen wanted an iPod. It is obvious one would know how to use one. It is the same with the iPhone. The less the engineers talk about dual-core, split antenna, the more they focus on how users interact with their devices. Even the app store is actually a luxury bling. It signals all the things are are potentially available "at your service" without actually cluttering up your device.

geon 15y ago
You mention two very separate points: perception of luxury and ease of use. I agree that Apple are masters of both, but don't think they have anything to do with each other.
- teyc 15y ago
  On the contrary. Luxury items have a very clear messaging. "The user is sophisticated, and does not want to feel stupid." "The user is King, and does not want to be bothered with the details of how hard the machine has to work to satisfy His whims".
rayiner 15y ago
Apple doesn't really market themselves as a luxury brand. Compare a Mac ad to a Lexus ad, for example. What you're describing isn't luxury. Having a product where "functionality is clear and straightforward" isn't luxury, and it isn't art. It's good engineering.
- jayfuerstenberg 15y ago
  Precisely. For the most part they stripped away the complexity of computers and made the internet a consumer-level technology.

victorbstan 15y ago

Great insight into leadership and product decision making strategies, couched in a velour of discontent with the JP status quo.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

For me the meta insight is that this kind of thinking is a huge deal for startups. So the challenge is that as a team you are putting together something that probably everyone thinks is useless (or at least only marginally useful), and yet to have to stay focussed on the problem(s) you are addressing and take care to address them cleanly and with style. It is actually in those places where others cannot see that some of the best ideas can be brought to fruition. Of course releasing too early can lead to disaster (ask the Color folks on that one, at least I perceived it as a PR disaster).

rdtsc 15y ago
> So the challenge is that as a team you are putting together something that probably everyone thinks is useless Isn't selection bias a problem with this thinking? Yes companies that are very successful did something outstanding perhaps, going against the flow, but how much do we know about the number of companies that did stuff everyone thought was useless and it was useless and the whole thing flopped? We hear about the success stories, I want to then also hear about every failed attempt as well, or it not an accurate picture then, is it? To put it in other words, it is a bit like encouraging people to play the lottery by showing images of winners. "Look these guys flipped a coin, talked to their astrologer and now look, they are winners!". But what about the ones that play and lose?
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Isn't selection bias a problem with this thinking? It may be, although in my experience 9 - 9.5/10 startups, when measured from concept to death, fail to exit. And many of those were pursuing an idea that clearly wasn't as special as they thought it was for what ever reason (could be early, could be silly, could be too complex) But to be a startup you have to accept those odds.
ericd 15y ago
There are very few companies whose idea I initially thought was useless that have ended up going big - twitter is one of the only ones on that side of the spectrum. Sure, they may have some issues that need to be overcome, but for the most part, the ones that have gone big have a very obvious core appeal. If everyone thinks it's useless despite understanding the crux of the idea, I think that's a really, really good sign that you need to go back to the drawing board.

deleted 15y ago

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rajat 15y ago
Jobs did apparently use focus groups; he would show off prototypes to selected friends and watch their reactions. Their reactions would, as you say, inform his ideas about the design.

ilamont 15y ago

Nintendo is an interesting case that may dispel some of the stereotypes about Japanese companies and management styles. First, the company is quite old (1889, I believe). It started out manufacturing playing cards, yet had a pretty remarkable evolution after its post-war CEO (a member of the founding family, surnamed Yamauchi) took over. While it was a top-down organization, Yamauchi recognized and encouraged some out-of-the box and risky thinking. The company at one point was invested in things like hotels and food, but started to develop a new business in the 1970s around video games. Keep in mind that in 1977 video games were not nearly as popular as they are now, and the nearest product line Nintendo had at the time was toys. Famicom/NES was launched in the mid 1980s, at a time when the videogame market was in a slump (this was post-Atari 2600). It turned out to be a massive hit, that really kept Nintendo on top of the console market until Sony came out with the PlayStation. The Wii is another example of an innovative approach to product design. It was not designed by focus groups, as the company was worried about leaks. Rather, the design of the console and controller came from an internal group made up mostly of career Nintendo engineers like Shigeru Miyamoto (of Mario Bros. fame). Yamauchi's successor, Satoru Iwata (himself a former game developer) was also on the team. They recognized that they couldn't win the hardware arms race with Sony and Microsoft, a race that focused on specs and pleasing hardcore gamers. They thought of a different set of users, and not only kids and senior citizens waving around a Wiimote. The team even considered how housewives would react to a new console in the living room, and therefore designed a box that was sleek and stylish, and not much bigger than a stack of DVD boxes. There's a great interview series with the Wii design team, called "Iwata asks". It talks about many of the issues they had to overcome, and the prototyping process. It was published on Nintendo websites all over the world -- I think Iwata wanted to do a little victory lap, and get on record how they came up with the brilliant ideas behind the Wii. You can start reading it here: http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/wii_console/ http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/wii_console/

dantheman 15y ago
I think Nintendo's success primarily has to do with them employing one of, if not, the best game designers that has ever lived - Shigeru Miyamoto. By trusting and empowering him they are able to have taste, just as Jobs's taste defined Apple, Miyamoto's defines Nintendo.

TruthPrevails 15y ago

It's the law of nature at play. The infinite cycle of life and death. Old making way for the new. Apple will go weak one day. Some other company will come to the top. This law of nature cannot be challenged. It is inevitable.

flocial 15y ago

I read this article and it was interesting. Sony can still make some beautifully designed products and even beat Apple in certain ways, the Vaio X had similar capabilities to the MacBook Air and still much lighter and well-designed. However, the greater issue is not the "design by committee" problem but the fact that the entire country is simply lost and headless. It's not only business but politics and society in general. The reason why companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google inspire is because they do things with conviction. They are executing on vision. They don't let internal processes become ritualized. Key executives don't stick around long when the fire goes out in their soul, they move on. In Japan, nobody knows what they want to do. Japanese manufacturers feel the heat from Apple AND Samsung, they're scared of China's growing clout yet they can't figure out what they want to do. They can't race to the bottom with an aging population with an acquired taste for high median salaries. They've lost the drive and intellectual fortitude to innovate in all but very limited areas. They don't want to relinquish the "made in Japan" brand, even though the Chinese have shown that with the right management in place, they can make products better and cheaper. I don't know where this paralysis comes from. Maybe the Japanese think all their woes stem from some economic missteps from the bubble era and once these are righted they can happily resume their old formula for success. Maybe over two decades of stagnation and slow decline lead to a death by a thousand cuts along with the false security of high savings. For whatever reason, Japan is simply ill-prepared to compete on any level in the global economy. Perhaps the greatest Achilles heel for Japanese manufacturers is not so much the core hardware technology but their utter disregard for the software that drives so many electronics. If you go to any electronics store in Japan you'd be amazed by the utterly useless features manufacturers try to differentiate themselves with (this camera can take pictures in the dark while shaken vigorously, this one makes your face look pretty, etc.). When the iPhone came out I was one of the skeptics who thought the lack of things like TV reception, RFID cards (used for train passes), the lack of emoji (back then), or the ability to render ketai/mobile web sites wouldn't go down well with customers. However, in the greater scheme of things it didn't matter. Now all the feature phone manufacturers are scuttling decades worth of in-house code to work on Android.

shioyama 15y ago
I'm the author/translator of this article. Thanks for your thoughts, which I agree with entirely. I actually think that although the post I translated is interesting, it is in fact missing the point, in a sense. There's a deeper malaise in this country, and although there are bright spots - I'd point to home-grown companies like Cookpad, for example - the overall picture is bleak. However, Japan has a track record of suddenly changing directions when nobody expects it. Many people thought that 3/11 would trigger a change, and were disappointed when it didn't, or at least not to a significant degree. But if you look deeper, things are changing. I'm cautiously optimistic. You really have to be. But it will get worse before it gets better.

6ren 15y ago

> I'm getting sick of these Japanese who love nothing more than to put their country down. Sony and many other Japanese companies once pioneered new products - and Sony was the ideal that Steve Jobs said he aimed for. In fact, it's pro-Japanese. Just not its present state. Christensen (innovator's dilemma guy) thinks that present-day Japan suffers from large companies: the disruptions that are tomorrow's riches start out small and unpredictable. Small is simply not interesting to a big company; unpredictable even less so. In post-war Japan, companies were small: excited about small opportunities; and having little to lose, unafraid of risk. (In contrast, he says, Silicon Valley incumbents often populate their usurpers, such as Fairchild to Intel, when frustrated workers want to exploit something uninteresting to management. This doesn't happen in Japan.) The enigma here is Apple. The largest company in the world, yet acts like a startup in terms of risky new products in unproven new markets that start out small: launching a product without consumer research is risky.

jayfuerstenberg 15y ago

Here in Japan, risk is extremely frowned upon. As a result nothing innovate comes about. Only minor improvements over the existing design. A lot has been written about the cultural views of risk/failure and why nations like the US are kicking butt over Japan and India where you're not allowed to fail. Japan has shown that it can stage a comeback when the nation as a whole can no longer deny it has been defeated and must reinvent itself to move forward. It happened after WWII and will likely happen in another 10 or 20 years if things continue the way they have.

kstenerud 15y ago

The article kind of misses the point. The reason why people are leaving the Japanese phones for the iPhone is because Japanese phone interfaces SUCK BALLS. And they have ALWAYS sucked. I suffered through 5 years of one phone after another being such a terrible user experience that I think it scarred me for life. And don't even get me started with Sony, who replaced the perfectly functioning joypad in their phones (which USED to be the best) with that stupid "sony" sidewheel they spent so much money developing and insisted on putting in every product, whether it made sense or not. The fact remains, emoji ARE important. Easy text input IS important. Being able to pay for stuff at the combini with your phone IS important. It's just that having apps, and a UI that doesn't suck balls is even more important. iPhone took YEARS to penetrate the Japanese market, precisely because it didn't have the features that customers wanted, and they spoke with their wallets, buying the Japanese models. But now that app and smartphone fever has finally landed, people are more willing to compromise. But the point is, they SHOULDN'T have to compromise. That's just Apple deciding what people will use, even if it's the wrong thing. It's taking a little bit of good advice to such an extreme that what appears on the surface "visionary" would upon closer inspection reveal itself as insanity. Hubris has a way of creeping up on you when your power remains unchecked for too long. Yeah, Sony used to be good, but then again they used to make good products. Once their arrogance got the better of them, their products started to suffer. My first Vaio was awesome. Sleek, light, and fast. My last Vaio was practically useless out of the box. It took me 3 HOURS to remove all the crapware they loaded into it, which slowed it down so badly that it was almost unusable. Oh, and it had that stupid useless Sony sidewheel on it, and their incompatible-because-we-said-so memory stick port too. I shudder to think of how the average user would endure with such a monstrosity.

delackner 15y ago
This is so true. Example: My iphone died recently, so while waiting for the 4s to come out I used a 3-4 year old Sony Ericson lying around the office. It has so many buzzword features! It even has dedicated media playback buttons on the outside! Yet how do you call someone? It takes 6 button presses. Press down > click on first name > Call > Voice Call/Video Call/PushTalk > No Message/Create Message > Call/Call with ID/Call with no ID/Country code That's insane. It is like no one ever tried to make a phone call with their phone when designing it. Don't get me started on the text editing screen. It is a modal text area that flips between movement within the whole text and movement within the single word you are editing. I love Vim, and I still hate this text entry method. This whole topic has been covered many times before, but its roots are various and you could write a book on the subject of why most firms (both japanese and non) are just so horrible at consumer software interface design. Some people suggest that it is just that the Japanese firms were only really good at hardware, but that rings false. I've seen a lot of really horribly designed Japanese computers and mobile phones before the iPhone came out, even just judging the hardware by itself on simplicity and reliability.

BadassFractal 15y ago

I wonder is part of their failure is from listening to people's reason, such as focusing on the nitty gritty features (see emoji, typing with one hand and so on) rather than on the big picture of the device and how it fits into one's lifestyle. It's known that humans are ultimately emotional beings, they think with their feelings regardless of how rational they believe they are. The iPhone is the ultimate user experience, titillating the senses and the emotions more than any PDA out there with 1000s of convenience features. It's similar to BMW, Steve Jobs' source of inspiration for his marketing strategies. You want the device on a primal level, it's sexy, it's a status symbol, the release of every iPhone is a cultural event, a celebration of incredible UX. I never ever get that emotional involvement when looking at the latest super-souped-up swiss-knife phone from Japan.

bluedanieru 15y ago

One thing he didn't mention that I've noticed is that many Japanese companies, particularly in the consumer electronics space but in other industries as well, maintain completely separate product lines outside Japan vs. what they sell here. This is (or was) especially striking with phones where you simply couldn't buy made-for-Japan mobile phones outside Japan, and likewise you couldn't find non-Japanese phones in Japan. This is why it was such a shock that the iPhone was a success here, and the entire emerging smartphone market caught Docomo and AU completely flat-footed. There is a particularly irritating component of Japanese nationalism which holds that Japanese are unique, as in physiologically unique, among the world's population (down to having different immune systems, in fact). In seems natural for a Japanese company that it would essentially have to act as two companies, one for exported products and another for domestic ones. It's very inefficient. It's also remarkably stupid as the iPhone demonstrates - what sells anywhere else will also sell here, and vice versa (I would always get comments on my phone when I went overseas and had to tell people the model was only available in Japan, to their disappointment). Contrast this with most other large manufacturers where they will have more-or-less the same products globally, with some localization. Actually the solution for Japan is rather obvious and I suspect many know it: stop acting as though you're an alien race crash-landed on planet Earth a thousand years ago. Start treating the global market the same as the domestic one, and Japanese the same as Korean, Swedish, Canadian, whatever. This will be a hard lesson for the Japanese national psyche to digest, and I don't know that they're up for it. It's entirely plausible they'll spend the next 50 years making stunning breakthroughs in the fields of (nursing home) robotics and new delivery mechanisms for god-awful Japanese broadcast television.

paperwork 15y ago
So why would an international company have separate product lines like you mention? It is hard to believe that international businessmen would forgo the opportunity to profit abroad, simply because something is made for the local market. Could it be that Japan only products are more experimental, and when the prove successful, they are rolled out to rest of the world?
- bluedanieru 15y ago

bane 15y ago

I've had a feeling for a long time that Japan (not South Korea or China or other regional countries) is on the verge of a massive cultural shakeup. I can't quite pin it down, but when you peel back the vast homogeneous conformist mass consumer oriented society, there's a really wonderfully quirky, genuinely interesting underground scene that's so vibrant, so full of energy, that it seems like it's about to burst into the mainstream in the same way the beatnick and then hippy movement did in the West. Steve Jobs came out of that movement, who's to say we aren't about to see the birth of the next Steve Jobs in Japan? Only his parents were in a banjo kettle drum band in Osaka that played basement coffee houses and did cosplay on the weekends to super indie Manga series that explores the meaning of identity as a pop star with only digital, manufactured fans. In the States Vietnam was the flashpoint that really caused people to gel around the question authority hippy movement, perhaps some current or future event will cause the same with the Japanese youth.

greggman 15y ago

Did anyone bother to do some fact checking? As far as I can tell Android phones are massively outselling iPhones in Japan. Look at any best selling list for phones In Japan before the 4S shipped. Check again in month once the upgraders have upgraded.