Comments on: Lessons from Apple on Advertising and Aesthetics

By: Khürt Williams

Khürt Williams — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:22:12 +0000

I have found that FaceTime may not work behind some corporate firewalls even if the use can access web sites. My wife and I have tried several times from my office to home but it has always failed. It works very well from places that have open Wi-Fi.

By: Jeff Koromi

Jeff Koromi — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:24:06 +0000

Eh. Droid is aimed at the male segment, so advertising it with babies and married couples and stuff like that would kill brand loyalty at this point. It’s supposed to be ‘cool’ and ‘badass’ – not heart-warming.

I mean, if the Droid commercials had babies in it, I honestly wouldn’t have one. Crap advertising like that makes me angry (almost as much as babies do). I have the Droid because it’s a good phone that honestly does kick ass. Even the industrial design of the phone gets that idea across.

By: Garmon Estes

Garmon Estes — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 03:59:06 +0000

Aesthetics- yes
Advertising- Not so much

1 part Steve’s Reality Distortion Field combined with 2 parts information cascade= must have this new iPad, iPhone,or idontreallycarewhatitisbutiknowineedonenow

By: Eli DeOliveira

Eli DeOliveira — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:01:02 +0000

Sorry, but I disagree. So what can you say about this amazing and universally acclaimed “YOU” HTC campaign?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lUkF1vVudA

By: Eugene Huo

Eugene Huo — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:55:39 +0000

How do we feel about Apple making FaceTime an “Open Industry Standard”? What does that mean exactly?

Will we see Android phones with FaceTime? BlackBerries?

When I had a BlackBerry i noticed that people were very attached to BlackBerry Messenger, but you could only communicate with other BlackBerry users. It kind of bummed me out that I couldn’t just chat with anyone. Maybe Apple is trying to avoid FaceTime just being an iPhone only thing, and countering the “closed” accusations by having a few things to point to that are “open”.

By: Matt Rooney

Matt Rooney — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:42:10 +0000

@tenley: Thanks for that, i guess i wrote before looking it up

By: tenley

tenley — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:05:58 +0000

@Matt Rooney
“@Savocado: You do understand that this is live, two-way video chat, and not just the capture and playback of video files, yeah? As far as im aware, thats pretty unprecedented for the device class.”

It is precedented. It’s been around in Europe for quite some time in different mobile devices. Further more, it’s already there on the Evo 4G that launched recently via the Qik app. It’s also been in Windows Mobile in various forms. I do not deny that Apple might get more traction out of it than the other iterations, but it is precedented.

By: timelady

timelady — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:35:19 +0000

I will simply answer with my response that i blogged before you wrote this post – prescient, or just that we in open source, mac, the whole tech shebang, are asking, pondering about this stuff – or should be!

Why Open Source needs Apple – and so does the rest of the industry…

(Not trawling for reads, but why repost it in entirety here?)

By: Lellius Rose

Lellius Rose — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:28:21 +0000

“Droid does. Does what? Show, don’t tell.”

But if they showed it actually doing what it does, you’d see that it’s nothing more than a pretty-good facsimile of the #1 smart phone for humans.

By: Matt Rooney

Matt Rooney — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:03:34 +0000

@casper: I wont defend it. It needs attention and improvement. Im not gonna pretend like everything apple does is right.

Granted, as a UX professional ill admit to being a bit biased towards the cause of Good User Experience, but IMO we have a very bad habit of giving a pass to computers and anything related – focusing on their power, their featureset, the raw numbers as a holdover from when these devices were considered to be arcane and complex and only understood by those of us who were “good at computers.”

I argue from the user experience angle, because Apple puts UX forward as a foundation principle in their products, and markets from that position. Some other companies/orgs also seem to get this and are making strides – Ubuntu seems to find something about their desktop experience to improve with each release. Ultimately some of us keep wanting to evaluate things like the iphone as a *computer*, where in reality the fact its a computer is incidental to what it does and what it is expected to do.

UX is hard – its easier to go with the logic and cold, quantifiable reality of tech specs than the much much fuzzier and harder to pin down Good Experience. To use an analogy: “what the meal lacks in flavor, it makes up for in portion size.” And sometimes, you just need to be full, but most of the time you want your meal to taste good too.