A different experience

One of the things that is readily observable when I'm on the road at trade shows is the built in defense that the attendees have for marketing claims for products and services, especially in the email filtering space.

Everyone unanimously agrees that you don't trust performance claims by the manufacturer. Period. So much so, that when I joke about it, everyone smiles and nods. Really, everyone does.

Gee, why is that? Perhaps for the previous 5 or 6 years anti-spam companies have been overstating claims of what they're product does? No? Could that be the case? (anyone catch my sarcasm here?) ;-)

I'm not a sales guy. Yeah yeah, I'm out selling, but I'm a technology guy who's being an evangelist about my product. My enthusiasm is genuine, I look people in the eye when I talk to them and I'm open and honest about the product and our competitors.

My goal every time I get the opportunity to talk to someone is to have a conversation about the product, not stand on my soap box and just talk. I want to engage them in a productive conversation and my goal isn't to get them to order a unit on the spot. My goal is that sometime during our conversation, I earn their trust. And in turn, trust MailFoundry to handle they're most sensitive and valuable communications asset, their email. If I don't earn they're trust, I don't believe that we've earned the opportunity to have them as a customer.

As the fall schedule comes to a close in the next two weeks, I'll be examining how effective our efforts were for building end customer product demand and how the shows themselves performed and what we'll do in 2008.

One thing is certain, the more I get out and engage people, and put a face on the name of the company, the more successful we are. Mind you - this isn't about me. Not at all. This is about a different experience with a manufacturer. They're real people. So are we. We let them interact with us as people, not a anonymous customers to a faceless corporation. The product we produce is not the only thing that's a different experience.

The company itself should be a different experience.

Is your company just like everyone else? How do your customers really see you? What are you doing to shape and influence their experience?

Shutterbug

If you read my blog you know I'm a huge Google Maps fan. While returning to my hotel room this afternoon in Portland I happened to strike up a conversation with the person next to me and much to my surprise, she's a road crew tech for the company that does all the pictures you see in Google Maps. Very cool! Bummer that her car mate was stricken with stomach flu, but that's life on the road I guess.

The picture here is the Portland Convention Center in Google Maps which is where the show is this week.

Whaaaaah!

Fred posts this morning that his brand image of Apple is "fear and loathing" and that this is "...not a great brand image"

Fred writes, "I am afraid to upgrade to a new version of iTunes because it might make my music and video unusable or it might brick my iPhone."

As for bricking Fred's iPhone - Fred, you've unlocked your iPhone and are using it with TMobile. Any problems stemming from that are YOUR problem, not Apple's. I've blogged about this in the past and forecasted that folks like Fred would whine about this.

"I have a brand new iPhone sitting right next to me on my desk that I can't figure out how to unlock and jailbreak now that it comes pre-loaded with 1.1.2 firmware. So it just sits there on my desk making me hate Apple more every day"

Again, this is Apple's problem?! Cripes man, get a grip! My beloved Treo doesn't work in Europe. Is that Palm's problem? Sprint's? What am I going to to, hate Palm?! I'm the idiot that bought the phone KNOWING that this was an issue. You bought an iPhone knowing that in order to use it the way YOU want to use it, you need to jailbreak it. And because you can't either 1) figure out how to do that, or 2) have the balls to run the jailbreak code for fear it will brick the iPhone, that's Apple's problem??

But wait, the best is yet to come...

"Apple is an old school company. Instead of forcing Verizon to open up like Google does, they make a sick consumer unfriendly deal with AT&T here in the states and then proceed to replicate it around the world. Thank god there are governments in other parts of the world that are willing to stand up for the rights of the consumer."

Uh, Fred, what "rights"??

Dude! I bought this killer 30mpg Mercedes R class and can you believe that they FORCE me to put diesel fuel in it?!! I mean, WTF! What about my rights!! I want to run unleaded premium gas in my car! And did you look inside?! There's no 8 track player?!? How will I play all my Seals and Croft 8 Tracks?!? Please, someone call the government and make them fix they're product!!

Ok, perhaps that was a little bit much, but its essentially the same as Fred's whine. Why people feel the need to turn to the government to fix things is beyond me.

Hmm, Market Forces 101 : If a product in the marketplace doesn't serve the market, then another product will come along to fill the void and serve the market better. If not, then perhaps this is something Fred needs to jump into, given he has the financial capability and he's an astute consumer in the marketplace.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of Apple's decision to marry the iPhone with AT&T. I think its a horrible decision that is holding back the growth of the iPhone in the US and while I (and Fred) don't agree with Apple's strategy, we can both just go pound sand and blog about it, whine about it and even throw ourselves on the floor and have a full out tantrum about it. What did I do about it? I gave my iPhone back and went back to my Treo.

Fred, I, as a consumer, have a right - and that right is my choice.

Not "choice" as in government should force them to provide me with a choice, but the power to choose.

I choose not to use an iPhone 'cause I didn't like a lot of things about it. And just because I don't like things about it doesn't give me the right to make Apple change. They can do what they want. Its their company, not mine. And no government in the world should have the right to force Apple to do anything about its products. Market forces will do that.

Fred's a smart guy. But why he believes he (and the rest of us) needs a government tit to suckle off of is beyond me. Perhaps he wasn't breast fed enough as a child? I have no freakin' idea.

Slow Company

The upcoming issue of Fast Company has a cover article that explores the exposure and possible downside of Apple's current position in the marketplace.

The writer is critical of Apple's ability to stay on top because, "In an age of convergence and simplification, customers are ever more insistent that computers, phones, TV, and music systems work together."

No, GEEKS are insistent that their products exhibit this type of behavior. The mass market is flocking to Apple because they're products WORK.

He continues, "Winning outright is a very tall order, of course. It means coming up with a self-contained system so beautifully functional that a critical mass of consumers are willing to enter that world and never leave."

Uh, dude - isn't that what Apple's done with the iPod?? Someone needs to hit this guy with a clue-by-four. And hard!

Not yet done, " But when you get down to it, the Apple phenomenon is as much about fashion as it is about technology. You might say that Steve Jobs is the Marc Jacobs of computers (minus the heroin), betting the house his products will be, season after season, cooler than anyone else’s. Yet fashion is, by definition, fickle. Lose the buzz, and you’ve got trouble. And for the first time in years, there are signs that Apple is not infallible and that Jobs’s reservoir of goodwill with his followers is not bottomless."

Apple's success is based on products that WORK, that also happen to look good. Other companies can make good looking products (ie. a nice looking Windows machine) but in the end, its still FLAWED and is doomed to exist along with crappier looking, but functionally equal products.

The "buzz" with Apple is form combined with function. That's the secret sauce. No real secret there mind you.

I looked and I don't see where Apple claimed to be infallible. If anything, they're the master of learning from their mistakes almost on a small business level, but with the ability to execute globally as the multi-billion dollar company that they are.

I know its cool to be a renegade, and in this case, to bash Apple. But the intellect here is about on par with a headline about Peary's conquest of the North Pole by saying, "Peary has no place else to go but south!"

Yeah, bloody brilliant insight.

Blast from the past

I was working on my MacBook Pro this weekend and stumbled across this picture from WAAAYYYYY back. Hmmm, lets see what's in the photo :

- My Apple ][e with my custom EFRom for, er, software security engineering testing. Yeah, that's what those were for. (I still have this machine in storage)
- 12" Amdek monitor. That thing killed!
- Applecat modem (those who know, well, you know)
- Sider 10MB hard drive - 27 lusty volumes of jet turbine sounding ProDOS goodness. (lower right of pic with the AT&T logo on it)
- My good friend (another David) driving - hell of a coder, now easily one of the best plastic surgeons in the country.
- 4:06 AM - another late night coding in the winter of 1985 at boarding school.
- note the print outs in front of David and the pen in his hand. Yeah, those were the days.
- See the blue handset on the monitor? Well, that was the handset off of the Applecat which was also wired into the payphone in the dorm basement. Somewhat problematic if I forgot to disconnect the line and the payphone rang with an incoming call...
- Oh, just noticed the Apple joystick next to the Sider in the lower right corner.

I don't even want to guess the music we were listening to that night. LOL

Ok, I think my geek rating just went up a few points. (sigh)

Apple's "Hobby" product

Steve has always said that the AppleTV product was more of a hobby than a full fledged product. This has lead to a lot of confusion in the marketplace, since if you've ever used it, its feature rich and works pretty damn well for a hobby product.

The reason its a hobby is that Apple didn't know really where this product would fall in terms of customer usage in the entertainment stack and with a household with iMac's and MacBooks's with video content on them. Its a really cool device, but its kinda riding the fence because it requires you to load or stream to it from another computer or laptop.

Now the time has come for AppleTV to move to version 2.0 and find its true place in the entertainment media spectrum. The largest addition to the platform will be the ability to directly access the iTunes store for ordering, downloading and streaming content ON DEMAND. The verdict is still out on its DVR capabilities and existing AppleTV's will be firmware upgradable for these new features.

Expect to see the new device this January at MacWorld and at CES.

Geek!

Go ahead. Take the geek test. I dare ya.

How'd ya do?

I'm happy to report that I'm ONLY 61% geek.