My Course in Insanity

I used to think that I was a normal, relatively sane adult male. That's insane. The fact that I thought that I had figured out much in the way of life's workings was a terribly biased view of life.
  Nothing is ever the same once you have a child, for this rose colored film of naivete is wiped away with the grace of a high speed windshield wiper blade. It was once there, but is no longer and you cannot account for where it went. It's like waking up from a free falling dream by violently jolting yourself awake upon your bed. One minute you're in dremland, the next you're not.
   The development of patience, although always considered a virtue, is now a survival tool without which I would willingly go sign in at MHMR. Yeah, so I've had a real personal incentive plan going for the proactive development of patience. Not that that's Always enough, but it helps.
   I had always thought that I had somehow avoided the 'crazy' gene that seems to get passed out now and again in that long line at the genetic checkout counter, but I'm certainly not taking that for granted anymore. Laugh if you must, I would be if I were you.
   Ahhh....Hhhmm. The School of Parental Hard Knocks. Maybe I could develop a program. Yeah, well once I graduate I mean. Haha.

  

 Age comes naturally. You have to work for Wisdom.

Very Funny Take on Palm Pre Advertizing

Via: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs

   Funny. Enjoy....


And another thing about Palm running ads about us

Listen up, Palm marketing people. If you've just launched your big breakthrough product, and the only way you can explain that product to people is to run ads comparing it to another product -- well, you've pretty much already lost, haven't you?

I mean it's marketing 101. Do you remember what the ads for the original iPhone looked like? You remember seeing anything in those ads about the BlackBerry or the Treo? No. It was a whole new thing -- 
sui generis
, as the French say. It had to be. If all we could do was to make a slightly less shitty BlackBerry, and offer it for a few bucks less than what RIM was charging, we would not have bothered to make the product. Honest.

I'll let you in on a little secret about Palm's real weakness. Palm got a lot of credit for hiring Ruby and other Apple people, like it was some big coup to steal them away. But the truth is this was the worst thing they could do. You know why? Because they're Apple people. They can only think like Apple people. Which means they're going to make Apple products -- or actually Apple clones. And yeah, maybe in some small ways their products will have an edge. Maybe for some brief period of time they'll have some feature that we don't have. But they're clones. The proof of that is right there in their own ads -- the ads that are all about us, and which only help boost our business.

Because the fact is, nobody wants a wannabe Apple. Or a clone Apple. They want a real Apple. Duh, Palm. Duh. But thanks for the free advertising.

Posted by Steve 

at 11:27 AM View CommentsLinks to this post 

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There will be blood


Well the good folks at Palm have decided it wasn't enough to steal our ideas -- now they want to steal our customers too. Which is funny, because for the past two years they've been going around saying that they weren't trying to compete with Apple. Nope, not all. Nothing to do with Apple. Why, their target audience was completely different. Palm wasn't going after iPhone users, they were going after all those people who are using feature phones and haven't yet migrated to the broad, sunlit uplands of the smartphone. Hacks would try to cast this as a "Palm v. Apple" showdown, and the Palm folks would chide them and say they really didn't want to talk about Apple, and they really wished people would stop viewing it that way. Remember all that happy horseshit from Ruby and McNamee? And now, gosh and golly, they're running ads telling early iPhone adopters that they should switch when their two-year contracts run out. Well at least they're now telling the truth. 

A few thoughts on this.

1. If this really is your business plan -- if you figure you can build a company by winning over some tiny percentage of iPhone users who are unhappy enough to switch -- well, I pray for your souls. 

2. Your big point of differentiation is price. You're claiming to be $50 per month cheaper. That's an exaggeration, but let's assume for the sake of argument it's true. Let's think about this. You're trying to lure away Apple users by offering them lower prices. But as you must know, since so many of you used to work at Apple, our users aren't attracted by low prices. In fact, they're put off by them. They don't want cheap. They want premium. They want to pay more than everyone else. It makes them feel special. To put this another way: They don't care if the 2010 Camaro SS can outrun a Mercedes SL550 and costs $30,000 instead of $100,000. They want the Merc. Did you frigtards not learn anything during your time working for me?

3. You're running ads about feeds and speeds (better browser, true multitasking) but the market has moved past that, and the key thing now comes down to "developers, developers, developers," as my good friend Steve Ballmer once said. The iPhone is our castle, but the App Store is our moat. You've got -- what? Thirty apps? Fifty? We add more than that every hour.

But hey. Maybe you'll lure away some of our developers. Maybe you'll lure away some customers too. So this is your business plan: You're going to set up a Camaro car lot across the street from the Mercedes dealer, and put up some bright balloons and streamers and maybe some huge signs about how your cuh-raaaazy prices can't be beat! Oh, and maybe some kind of big inflatable dog or something. And a bouncy castle for the kids! Free hot dogs! Girls with big hair, wearing shiny shorts and tiny T-shirts! A year's worth of free gas!

Sent from my iPhone

Renting movies thru iTunes from your iPhone

This is a very fun way to go. We did it for the first time last night. We watched 'Taken' with Liam Neeson. Excellent experience. Terrific playback. It's cheaper to rent ($3.99) than cable pay-per-view flicks  AND you have the ability to watch it within a 30 day time period. Once you start watching it the rental expires in 24 hrs., but you have the ability to wait and watch it later. The 'clock' doesn't start ticking until you Begin the feature.
     They also have an excellent selection of flicks. You can't rent all of them; some are just for sale, however most Are rentable.
     The only drawback that I saw was the amt. of time needed for download. This feature was an 1 1/2 hrs. and it took 45 min. to download, but hey, it's pretty nifty that you can do this from your phone---Easily.
     We downloaded to phone, then put it on the Apple Universal Dock w/ AV cable and watched it.
     Very fun and inexpensive. We'll do that again, I imagine. If you have an iPhone and haven't tried this..You should. Another reason to love the iPhone. (No this isn't a paid advertisement. Dock and AV cable not incl.)

Jewels Inside

Rolling out the papyrus.
  Digging down deep in the sediment that is myself.
  Wondering what will become of this pile of memories that is myself accumulated?
  Born out in mixed layers of approval / disapproval. Human attributes. Human traits.
  Where do we find Real Satisfaction, Real Fullfilment?
  It's hard to know what is what until the bottom falls out.
  Where are the Jewels?
  Not where you thought all this time. Not where you were led to believe they were. It's part of the Journey ----- sniffing out the falsehoods.
  If you get your needs satisfied in one direction, you may never realize that that way is false unless it proves itself to you by failing your expectations. In this way we discover where the True Gems are located. It is perhaps true that we would never have discovered that without the unfolding of events that we considered painful or dissapointing. It's through all kinds of events pleasurable and painful that Truths are unearthed. The painful ones are just more poignant.
  "Idiocy is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result." --A. Einstein