As I JetBlue’d for the first time today (not bad at all!) across the country, I kept seeing a TV ad for Vista that made me smile.
It was showing Minority Report amazing interfaces and such, all that had nothing to do with Vista. In small print at the bottom it said “simulation”. Right after this ad, the latest Apple iMac ads would come on…. which just showed the product.
All Apple has to really do in its ads is show their work, as it is naturally compelling. Microsoft has to make up some bizarre show that has nothing to do with the real product.
This ties into a conversation I was having with someone recently about how Apple is a leader. They build top notch apps on their platform, inspiring the developer community.
Microsoft builds Notepad ;) (This is of course a touch unfair… TextEdit is only a bit better?).
You could say the same thing with languages and APIs. What do your APIs inspire? java.util.Date inspired pain. Many other Java libs inspired over engineering. PHP inspires throwing every practical need in as a function.
It is definitely a good rule to think about who your users/developers are…. and ask yourself how you are inspiring to work with you.
