Marco Arment, in his recent post Apple has lost the functional high ground: “But the software quality has fallen so much in the last few years that I’m deeply concerned for its future. I’m typing this on a computer whose existence I didn’t even think would be possible yet, but it runs an OS with […]

Continue Reading: Does Apple care any more?

Rob Go of NextView Ventures makes a great point: saying “It’s been tried before” is a bad excuse to dismiss a product or startup. Rob says: “I’ve said those words before as well, both directly to entrepreneurs as well as in our internal conversations about companies. But I’m convinced that “it’s been tried before” is […]

Continue Reading: Great idea, poorly designed

The Biggest Lesson I Learned as an Apple Designer is a thoughtful piece that pushes back on the standard advice given out today of creating an MVP (minimum viable product) and learning as you go. It comes from a former Apple designer, Mark Kawano (who also wrote about Apple’s design culture), and suggests that MVPs […]

Continue Reading: Why Apple doesn’t do MVPs

From this interview with Jonathan Ive on Apple’s design process: “One of the values of things I learned absolutely directly from Steve was the whole issue of focus. What are we focusing on: focus on product. I wish I could do a better job in communicating this truth here, which is when you really are […]

Continue Reading: Focusing on product

A fascinating tidbit about Apple’s culture from ex-Apple senior designer Mark Kawano in this interview with Fast.co Design. “It’s actually the engineering culture, and the way the organization is structured to appreciate and support design," Kawano said. "Everybody there is thinking about UX and design, not just the designers. And that’s what makes everything about […]

Continue Reading: On Apple’s design culture

I think it’s really easy for anybody to say “we care about quality” or “quality is job #1”. In fact, I just wrote it twice…it’s very easy to do. But actually executing on quality is extremely difficult as quality takes time and care. And it’s hard to argue for something that takes time when all […]

Continue Reading: Jony Ive on quality

From the Steve Jobs lost video comes his thoughts on product design: You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these […]

Continue Reading: Steve Jobs on product design

Seth Godin makes an important observation: “Organizations that do nothing but measure the numbers rarely create breakthroughs.” I think he’s right. While it is critical to measure KPIs (key performance indicators) and that measurement is how you become successful, it’s not enough to keep you successful over the long term. If all you do is […]

Continue Reading: Beware the local maximum of creativity

Great post by Zach Holman of Github: You Won’t Regret Positive Feedback: I think our industry does feedback really poorly. I sure as hell do. My first impulse whenever I see a comp is to shit on it. Honestly. Even if it looks great. Especially if it looks great. We instinctively want to pick apart […]

Continue Reading: Two goals of giving feedback

Two pieces on disruption vs. innovation.

Continue Reading: Weekend reading: Disruption vs. Innovation