Engineering Driven vs. Community Driven (was Re: Ugliness)

hank williams hank777 at gmail.com
Mon Apr 28 22:25:42 CEST 2008


On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 3:57 PM, Crane, Matthew <mcrane03 at harris.com> wrote:

>  There is nothing incredible about apple's electrical, software, or
> mechanical engineering.  IMHO..
>
> The marketing/buzz machine is incredible though.
>

I presume that you have never worked on a team that has built a successful
mainstream consumer product, because if you did, you certainly would not be
able to dismiss their success in this manner. Making things that sell has
very little to do with advertising. "hype" does not just come from nowhere,
as if from the heavens. If crappy products could win based on good
advertising, all that would be required was money and clearly that is not
nearly enough (see Microsoft Vista).

The bottom line is that best selling tech gadgets, software, and computers
sell to primarily tech savvy people because they like them. They like them,
because the designers and developers have figured out how to make broadly
appealing products. That is hard. If you are suggesting otherwise without
actually having a resume that suggests you have done so yourself, you really
don't have much of an argument.

Hank


>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org [mailto:
> community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org] *On Behalf Of *hank williams
> *Sent:* Monday, April 28, 2008 1:52 PM
> *To:* List for Openmoko community discussion
> *Subject:* Re: Engineering Driven vs. Community Driven (was Re: Ugliness)
>
>
>   If this is primarily a developer platform, why are there so many intense
> > opinions about such superficial things as color and marketing anyways?
> >
>
> In today's world, there is *very* little daylight between marketing and
> engineering. They are of a piece. The product design, the feature set, and
> yes even the physical form factor are all both engineering issues as well as
> marketing issues. Apple is a prime example of this. The beauty of the design
> of their products is all about marketing, but could not be achieved without
> incredible engineering on the electrical, software, and mechanical
> engineering fronts. So I don't think, particularly for a phone, you can
> separate these issues.
>
> Hank
>
> --
> blog: whydoeseverythingsuck.com
>
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>


-- 
blog: whydoeseverythingsuck.com
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