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326

Living Room / Re: Question to Everyone: Setting aside the technical meaning, does Donationware...

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 25, 2011, 03:41 PM »

The starting point for answering this question is that there is no standardized definition of these terms, so any answer to your question is going to be just one person's opinion.

I think if one wanted to come up with a useful distinction from the terms, "pay what you want" implies that you MUST pay something.  Whereas donationware seems to entertain the possibility that users may choose to donate nothing.

-mouser (September 25, 2011, 04:09 AM)

Yep. This thread is exactly to get opinions. I don't see what's wrong with this considering the power of words.

Example: wraith808, just hinted that it may not be the words at all but the registration. The opinion could then become a usability test (for those who can pull that thing of) in the future

Yep. No amount of effort is going to make "pay what you like" or "donationware" into the magical incantations that's still being strived for.

-nudone (September 25, 2011, 09:00 AM)

I think that depends on magical. People want to consider Apple magical for example and yet there were many magical concepts like Yahoo and MySpace that were toppled down by the magical Google and Facebook. There just hasn't been as magical of a white magic as Apple and of course it wasn't until Grand Mage Steve Jobs got fired that the magic seemed to be starting to lose it's luster until his return and eventual retirement.

I think magic happens when people tests words, usability, concepts and dig further into where that magic is coming from. Not just through answers but execution. The sage Orwell once warned that the dark arts called propaganda would be wielding the magic called "Politics in the English Language" and every so often whether it's a personal or major disaster, we see a burst of magical phenomena where people donate and then like a rare natural phenomenon they go back to their extraordinary lives.

For my own bias though, I think magical education is more important than magical discovery. If people can be convinced that there's a Law of Attraction, I'd like to find out if we can find a way to convince people of a Law of Smart and Strategic Donations that actually matter.

327

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Ultimate Mega Hoops 2 (Free Flash Game Mini-Review)

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 25, 2011, 02:55 PM »

Don't worry about it. Even the subjot developer said they don't consider it a big deal.

It's why I didn't want an image. Sometimes there are interfaces that you just have to feel rather than expect to look at.

...and sometimes it's not the complete package of a game but the potential plus current mechanics of the game that counts overall which in turn adds to the enjoyment. It also doesn't help that I'm not very good at communicating but there are games where a review can only give clues as to what makes a game special.

If you've never played many flash game basketball games, something like this having potential makes no sense. If you're a graphics kind of guy, something like the granny may make it feel like an ugly mini-game. If you simply expected a decent basketball game, something like it getting the mechanics right won't make up for the lack of dynamics and aesthetics. Let's not even start to consider that many flash gamers prefer more arcade-like games and many people playing basketball video games prefer arcade style basketball games more than sims.

It's a combination of that + what it could be + what basketball really is + the appeal of a flash basketball game finally getting closer to a sim because of a gameplay mechanic that can make the difference between one person liking it and another person feeling it's nothing special...I think.

Another thing going for me is that I remember the potential of games like these two:



http://www.romnation...Yosen-Kanzenhan.html



http://www.emuparadi...l_(J)/54494#Download

These were very flawed games and wouldn't be considered sim-like by many of today's gamers but the mechanics were far ahead of the time and the blocking mechanism mimics the flash game except it was more button mashing and hard to pull off where as this game fixes part of the dribble mechanics and is one of the first flash basketball games to match the feel of a full follow through shot that just feels like the shot was smooth but at the same time have a dynamic where you feel like you barely got the shot over the defender to make it rattle in and out.

Just to give people who have played the next gen bball sims but not these games, some of the highlights are:

-The flash game above when it comes to shooting and blocking. If you're the defender you control the timing of a block and depending on how good you are and who is blocking (say a center), you can do a full Dwight Howard like block or just tip the ball where your height determines whether your "fingers" touch the ball and changes the angle.

-Boxing out mechanics. We're not talking about when a shot is made and some animation kicks. We're talking about a full button, Dennis-Rodman-like 90s battle for position where you have to battle for position first and only then grab the rebound.

-True getting past the man - Even sims nowadays try to play a guessing game with the crossovers. If the animation kicks in and the person has a high enough stat, they get past their men. In the above two games, you have to guess the direction of the defender. If you don't, the ball can get stolen/increased chance of travelling/increased chance of setting up the defending blocker to rotate or even a charge although I can't remember if this latter mechanic was in these games.

-True passing lanes: In real basketball, passing lanes are gambles. If you steal that, you can't be in front of your man. In today's basketball sims, they're just a matter of hitting turbo.

-Finally, a sim where position is very very important: Real basketball games may not have the hoop moving, but it might as well be both due to the pace of the NBA and because intelligent people are taught to stay in front of their man at all times. It's what makes the pump fake a very powerful mechanic. In basketball sims, plays are not as important except when initiating screens and pick and rolls unless you put animations that kick in for better players. This means is that if you are playing as Earl Boykins in the NBA shooting over a taller person, this flash game has a far more realistic shooting mechanic than any flash basketball games I've played and any other next gen sims I've played. Finally as a video game player, a mechanic that allows video game skills to simulate real basketball strategy rather than whatever mechanic/dynamic a sim game wants to fit you into.

For comparison:

This is apparently a next gen mod of the same characters in that link:

Notice that despite the pretty graphics and animations, there's a lack of emotion and too much emphasis on shooting.

Even the passes seem to only be difficult when the double team animation kicks in.

This is the gameplay of the first link (gameplay starts @3:10)

This is a much faster preview of the gameplay in the same game but the players are already fatigued hence the character portraits look like zombies:

Couldn't find a youtube for the Saturn version so here's a screenshot.

328

Living Room / Question to Everyone: Setting aside the technical meaning, does Donationware...

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 25, 2011, 12:57 AM »

...differ from Pay What You Want?

Just wondering if there's a psychological effect one word has over another or whether it's just me.

I personally feel that pay what you want is stronger because it's in my head more that it's free but at the same time, I feel like donationware makes me want to pay attention more to the actual merit of the software - almost as if micro-skimming it for something innovative in order to find a reason within me to donate.

I don't have enough money to throw around though to really test whether these emotions fall the same way once I actually have to view the billing form.

329

Mini-Reviews by Members / Ultimate Mega Hoops 2 (Free Flash Game Mini-Review)

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 24, 2011, 09:49 PM »

http://www.ultimatea...ltimate-mega-hoops-2

This game is licensed by the subjot founder (see link) so I apologize if I just sound like a shill now.

Actually flash game reviews is something that I always wanted to do but they can be troublesome because often times someone else have made them already or you can't really anticipate the depth of each game and you're better off getting your impression off a Kongregate comments section just to witness everything from the game's bugs to it's loadings to everything else.

In the case of this game, what makes this special is that it's both a game that has no reviews from DDGoogling it but at the same time, it deserves a review simply for breaking the mold of flash games.

At first the premise of the game seems simple. Just click the link and you'll see. 1 mouse click required.

As the levels become higher though...then you see the innovation. The game may be a pure shooting game but it's a shooting game that truly feels like a basketball game in the sense that moving your mouse feels like a true crossover. The game really has that retro-feel of games of old where the mechanics are simple but something just keeps luring you back to it.

Graphics can be improved but if you're like me and you have been plagued by many inferior sports based flash games especially for the bball genre, this game really shines a positive light on the future of flash basketball games. Concept wise, only my lack of knowledge on how to develop flash games keeps me from ripping this game off to create a true basketball game for flash w/ roster and all that.

330

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: NewsBin Pro $35.00 -> $10.00 *lifetime subscription*

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 24, 2011, 08:11 PM »

Oh yeah, thanks but it's not really the program that's the problem. Really even for free torrents I have this issue.

Since emule has been unreliable and with the proliferation of file sharing sites, it's been hard to figure out when a file is really going to be rare. You see it and think it's going to slowly increase in seeds and then suddenly you have a rare warez/book file w/ only a couple of seeds even if you took a month seeding it. Really makes it hard to be a decent sharer since unless it gets abandoned or it's a private site - there's lots of hoops with re-seeding and requests.

With usenet not really a seeding service, things get even more hectic. Do you or don't you? Especially w/ limited internet speed and HD space.

331

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: NewsBin Pro $35.00 -> $10.00 *lifetime subscription*

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 24, 2011, 07:31 PM »

Damn, I missed this. So setting aside the power of usenet, is there any magic bullet/rare warez right now that should make me pay for the discount? That's always my fear for pay to download, never know where the sun might set.

I'm mostly looking for books/e-books. Not really asking for a warez list though. Just wondering if there is currently an item that would make paying now, worth it. Wouldn't want to pay and then spend months trying to look for something to acquire.

332

General Software Discussion / Re: notetaker that uses the filesystem and has powerful search?

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 24, 2011, 03:22 PM »

urlwolf have you checked these software underneath the Wikipedia article?

https://secure.wikim...t_of_current_editors

These have all the ones I know although my initial interpretation of filesystem turned out different from yours.

333

Living Room / Designing Flash Games for Fun and Profit aka FGL

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 24, 2011, 12:10 PM »

http://www.escapistm...s-for-Fun-and-Profit

Yet there is money to be made designing Flash games. Sometimes there's a great deal of it, says Chris Hughes, a former Flash game developer and a co-founder of FlashGameLicense.com.

While Flash games may not make money from game sales, they can generate a lot of web traffic. The greater the web traffic, the more money hosting websites can charge for advertisements on their site. Portal sites are willing to share their advertising money with designers, because a single top-tier game can generate more than 100 million plays, Hughes says. Additionally, according to an industry report, about forty percent of internet users worldwide play Flash games..

Hughes has been using FlashGameLicense, or FGL, to connect designers with sponsor host sites - and money - since 2007. Flash developers can showcase their games on the site; host sites can preview games and bid on them. If a game sells, FGL takes a small cut. To date, the company has brokered nearly 6,000 deals and given $8.6 million to developers.

For their money, sponsors typically get the developers to include the sponsors' name, logo, and website in the game; that way, when a game inevitably spreads around the internet, there's a figurative and literal link back to the sponsor's site. Developers keep the rights to their game and intellectual property. There can be additional features to a deal: a sponsor may ask for exclusive rights for a period of time, share a small amount of advertising revenue, or offer additional money if a game does well, but most money typically changes hands through sponsorship.

As for developers, the amount of money they makes varies tremendously, both due to the terms of the deal and the success of the game. At FGL, one or two games a month - roughly the top one percent - might sell for between $20,000 and $30,000, and a similar number of games might sell for half that amount. The average price for a game sold is closer to two or three thousand dollars, but many games sell for much more - or significantly less - than that price, Hughes says.

334

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Some behaviour productivity-like questions (maybe you guys can answer them)

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 24, 2011, 10:14 AM »

I'm absolutely shocked that you'd say that in a tech based forum. This is child's play compared to almost any tech based discussion I've ever heard especially when it dwindles down to programming.

I dare you right now to go search the entire Reddit Programming or Hacker News front pages and see if you can spot a much clearer discussion.  

335

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Some behaviour productivity-like questions (maybe you guys can answer them)

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 23, 2011, 08:05 PM »

This link isn't a direct topic about productivity but I thought we could also get the ball rolling on a somewhat unorthodox direction that is often ignored which is plain human nature.

http://www.thefreema...conomics-needs-smut/

It says that the value to a person of any good or service, water for example, is the usefulness (subjective utility) of the last unit of it she obtains.

Do you guys & gals agree or disagree?

Now I don't claim to understand economics but to me this quote simply means that if I was an athlete who got injured and had to rehab myself, it would easier for me to get back in shape. Not just because of my lifestyle but because of my subjective value. (Which I think should not be interpreted as analysis of my subjective habits but truly about our own individual intrinsic value.)

In contrast, if I was an unathletic unproductive person, it would depend on how my past actions have accumulated to determine my present destiny in the absence of a system aimed at improving my productivity.

If she’s dying of thirst in the desert, the last or marginal liter of water probably (though not necessarily) has very high value to her because it is likely the first and only liter she commands and so would be useful in satisfying her most urgent want – presumably to sustain her life for another hour or so.  A second liter would also be very useful in this sense, though it would satisfy a want a little less highly ranked than the first and so less subjectively valuable to her.  And so on.

This applies more to basic economics but I feel this is notable in that it defies the common usage of "prioritization" that we all have come to expect from productivity software despite the fact that, at least to me, the above makes more sense. It made more sense back when I was a child and it makes more sense then what we have today in productivity lingo.

Back in civilization, water would probably have much less value to her because she would have a lot of water at her fingertips (sometimes literally); so another liter of it would be useful only in satisfying a want that is very low on her scale of wants.

Finally, does anyone feel that the above highlights why human needs are important or does it just sound like something that's too obvious?

I mean it's one thing to look at this from an economic or motivational perspective, I think for productivity systems in particular this area is still a vast uncharted concept in terms of systems trying to claim it can reproduce this phenomenon outside of bonking your head repeatedly on the "turn this into a habit NOW NOW NOW" sign.

Then there's this food for thought:

Note something else important here: Value is not something disembodied; it depends on the end to which a particular person puts the good or service, be it water or labor.

The rest of the history lesson for those who'd rather not waste time clicking the link (skip this if you want):

The Labor Theory of Value

In time, SMUT-based economics replaced the edifice of classical economics, which was based on the so-called labor theory of value. In it’s simplest terms, the labor theory of value, or LTV, states that the value of any good or service depends on the amount of labor that goes into its production.  While it makes some intuitive sense – the more labor we put into something the more valuable the output seems to be – it encounters all sorts of problems. For example, if the LTV is true, spending four hours digging a hole and then spending another four hours filling it back up would be worth eight labor hours of value.  It should therefore trade for, say, a wooden table that took eight hours of labor to manufacture.  But I’m guessing that it would be to very hard find anyone willing to trade the latter for the former, although as P.T. Barnum is credited with saying there’s a sucker born every minute. Also, putting in a lot of hours in a job that doesn’t produce anything useful, such as building houses when housing demand is slack, doesn’t make those houses more valuable.  In fact, it makes houses in general less valuable.  No, we would work hard building houses only if we expected those houses when they’re finished to be subjectively valuable enough (to us or someone else) to cover the (subjective) costs of their manufacture.

Rejecting SMUT

The macroeconomics of mainstream pundits is essentially a rejection of SMUT.  Although not exactly the same, it’s still a throwback to the discredited labor theory of value.  Let me explain. In simple terms, their theory says gross domestic product (Y) consists of three aggregate variables:  private consumption spending (C), private investment by businesses (I), and government spending (G).  This gives the widely used formula for the entire macroeconomy as Y = C + I + G. The problem, according to simple Keynesian macrotheory (and that seems to be the predominant version guiding public intellectuals these days), is that Y is in the doldrums because the private sector, C + I, just isn’t growing.  So it’s up to government to increase spending to raise G and stimulate Y. (Actually, according to the data, C has been doing pretty well since the beginning of 2010.  See the Robert Higgs’s analysis of the data in “One More Time: Consumption Spending HAS Already Recovered.”) Now, increasing G is supposed to “create” more jobs.  What kind of jobs are the best to do this “stimulating”?  The answer, according to one Nobel-Prize-winning economist, is that it doesn’t really matter (as this YouTube video strongly suggests): war, natural disasters, fighting space invaders, anything.  Creating jobs, any jobs, is an end in itself.

The Kind of Jobs Matters

From the point of view of SMUT this is all pretty nuts.  Remember, the value of anything, including labor and what it produces, is never disembodied: It is always valuable to someone for something. For instance, unless you at least recognize that value issues from the subjective perception of individuals, the idea of economic efficiency goes out the window.  Economic efficiency depends on benefits being greater than costs, but again it’s never benefits and costs disembodied from purposeful action.  Benefits and costs are always benefits and costs for someone from doing something. Likewise a job is a job for someone to do something.  Building a house or a bridge or a car has to have a value to someone, expressed in terms of a market price someone is able and willing to pay that will cover its cost. Otherwise building it is a pure waste.  Unfortunately, macro-pundits don’t care about efficiency or producing value in this sense.  It’s just jobs, jobs, jobs! Really, it’s the modern equivalent of digging a hole and filling it back up again, the modern version of the LTV, and it’s just as wrong as the old one.

Kevin Carson

Nice explanation of SMUT theory, but I think you’re misstating the classical LTV. The LTV and other classical cost theories of value didn’t attribute inherent or essential value to goods. It was an empirical prediction of the natural equilibrium value to which the price of reproducible goods would gravitate over time. The laws of supply and demand were the actual mechanism by which the process worked. Some political economists stated this explicitly. Others, despite using language that sounded essentialist at times, implicitly assumed supply and demand as the operative mechanism. And of course this long-term process governed by supply and demand included such things as writing off as sunk costs the products of labor which turned out to be socially unnecessary. None other than Marx himself informed Proudhon, in Poverty of Philosophy, that the worker learned after the fact — from the market — whether her labor had been “socially necessary.” As James Buchanan pointed out re Smith’s beaver-and-deer illustration, the illustration assumes that the ratio of exchange tends toward the ratio of embodied labor because both parties are rational utility maximizers. They will make make-or-barter decisions based on whether it takes more labor (say) to acquire deer by hunting them or to acquire the same number of deer by trapping beaver and exchanging for them. It’s more accurate IMO to describe the law of marginal utility as a theoretically elegant model for describing the mechanism by which the classical theory of value operated, rather than a refutation of it. As Jevons himself pointed out, marginal utility varies with the number of units, and the number of units varies over time in response to price signals — so the supply brought to market will fluctuate over time till the utility of the marginal unit to the consumer equals the marginal disutility (effort) of producing it. Price — at any given snapshot of spot conditions in time — will reflect the subjective utility of the marginal unit, without regard to production cost. But once you bring in the factor of time and view marginal utility in terms of a dynamic process, it essentially says the same thing the classicals did. It’s more a complement than a refutation. Sandy Ikeda Kevin: Although I’m familiar with Marx’s “socially necessary” qualification, and I thank you for your clear and thoughtful exposition of it, I would feel very uncomfortable interpreting his LTV as a less-elegant version of marginal utility theory. In any case, one could infer from your interpretation that – further to my point – “pundit-macroeconomics” is not only as bad as Marxian value theory, but actually inferior to it. Kevin Carson Sandy: I don’t think of it as a less-elegant version of SMUT (heh), so much as I think of SMUT as a mechanism for explaining the gross phenomena observed by the classicals. But surely you gotta like this quote from Marx: “The product supplied is not useful in itself. It is the consumer who determines its utility.” Of course Marx mainly made sense when he was channeling his English political economist side. When his left-Hegelian mystic side took over and started talking about species-being and social labor, all bets are off.

Jim Hull

A thought about digging holes and the equation Y = C + I + G “G” comes essentially from taxes on “C” and “I”, so it’s not an extra source of growth to the GDP (“Y”): what G gives to the economy in transfer money, it takes away in the initial taxes from Consumers and Investors. Instead of “plus G”, then, we get “minus G, plus G”, as the government’s efforts cancel themselves out. (This fact is incomprehensible — or inconvenient — to fiscal liberals.) Meanwhile, it costs lots of money to do all this transferring via the Federal bureaucracy. That cost could be called “A”, for “administration”. It’s this “A” component that amounts to digging and filling a hole for eight hours a day. The equation should now read: Y = C + I (- G + G) – A The two Gs cancel out, and you get: Y = C + I – A (There must be a joke in there somewhere about the CIA, but I can’t think of it.) Note that, the larger “G” grows, the larger becomes the hole being dug by “A”.

Just a heads up for those who might miss the parallel between administration and productivity. Personal Administration Anyone? aka Getting Origamized Experiment

On with the comments:

EW

I, too, love the piece. Thanks, Sandy. I’m not a studied economist (yet), however, I am surprised by Mr. Carson’s attempt to characterize the labor theory of value as something more noble and useful than it is… It seems to me that a given product has production cost consisting essentially of labor + material inputs. It may be often be true that labor is the dominant cost factor, or one might view material inputs as reducible to labor. Either way, the basic problem with the LTV would seem to reside in it’s conflation of investment (production cost) with market price (cost to purchase). The LTV-derived “value” is never going to be relevant as a market price, even as a theoretical equilibrium. No matter how much “time” you give it, there is simply no way that digging-a-hole-and-refilling-it is ever going to be worth anything on the market. Of course, in real life no one would try to sell this “service,” and no one except perhaps the government would solicit it. But many realistically conceivable investments and purchases present themselves that are uneconomical in a less obvious manner, and individuals cannot be modeled as perfect “utility maximizers,” or perfect anything else. The LTV has nothing to say about how such subtly uneconomical expenditures are minimized… The SMUT _is_ a refutation of the LTV insofar as it is a complete replacement for it that better models observed behavior. Market-discovered prices manifest as snapshots of the constantly evolving aggregate of consumers’ subjective marginal valuations, which we just observed to bear no systematic relationship to production costs. Often, competition “pushes” prices down to a minimum, which tends to be some profit-motivating amount higher than production cost. Products that don’t fetch at least this price are not sustainable, and are not produced (for long), while products that do continue on the market. This is mere physical necessity, not a validation of the LTV. It seems to me that the LTV is nothing more than a historical mistake, while the SMUT exposes in a very clear manner the mechanism by which the market system discourages uneconomical productions.

Sandy Ikeda

E.W.: Thank you for your comment. I defer, however, to Mr. Carson’s superior knowledge of the LTV. Marx and the Classical Economists did realize that utility is relevant to valuation, but they hadn’t developed the right conceptual tools to solve problems such as the “diamonds-water paradox”(why diamonds, which are less useful than water, fetch higher exchange values). In my essay I used an overly simplified version of LTV to make my point that, I realize now, could have been even better made had I used the more sophisticated version. My wise editor, Sheldon Richman, tried to explain this to me and advised that I drop the LTV section before publication. I should have followed his advise!

Jim Hull: Thank you for your comment. You’re puzzlement with Keynesian macroeconomics is understandable and your solution is creative. Now, I think a Keynesian would say that in normal, non-recessionary times consumers (C) would only spend a portion of every dollar they earn, say $.80, and save (S) the rest. To a Keynesian S is a leakage out of the system and reduces current GDP (Y). If the government (G) taxes consumers $1 it will spend all of it and save none of it, increasing the Keynesian “multiplier” and boosting Y. During a recession like the one we’re experiencing now, consumers are saving an even larger proportion of their income (Bob Higgs in the article I link to above addresses this notion), so that a $1 transfer from C to G will have an even greater multiplier effect; moreover, businesses (I) aren’t investing either so taxing them and spending all the proceeds will also boost Y. There are all kinds of things wrong with this explanation, such as treating savings as unproductive and aggregating C and I to such a high degree, but I believe that’s the logic of the simple model.

336

Living Room / A Religion for the 21st Century!

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 23, 2011, 04:23 PM »

via hokazenoflames' subjot,

http://www.stallmanism.com/

There is no good or evil, only consequences, pleasant or less so.

I'm an atheist - how could Stallmanism work for me?

Stallmanism is a compatible extension of atheism. Atheism is a step on the road to Enlightenment, a rejection of legacy religions, imaginary friends, telepathy, and pixies. Stallmanism takes this a step further and says that we, humans, fully define Heaven and Hell, through the adoption of an appropriate social contract.

Why is the GPL so important?

A True Believer does not question the sacred texts, but if you really insist, it's because the GPL defines an evolving social contract that eliminates friction in the digital society and economy, promotes universal access to knowledge, and thus enables the inevitable emergence of a global human super-consciousness, which Stallmanists recognize as "God".

337

Living Room / Re: Social Media's Hidden Truth

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 23, 2011, 04:16 PM »

Is this some secret business advice I don't know nothing about?

Is mouser and 40hz planning to open a donation barn based on the success of the forums?

@rgdot, I'll join Diaspora once it nails down the best private policy on the entire side of the interwebs.  

338

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Why Trying to be Productive is a Huge Waste of Time

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 23, 2011, 02:45 PM »

Coincidentally someone just posted this on subjot: http://annaholmes.tu...der-warfare-its-math

Not directly related but some highlights are:

Let’s say I was designing a new piece of software to make my life as a writer a little easier. First, I’d program it count how many characters I’d typed out and in what amount of time, in order to document my productivity on any given day. Then I’d ask it to compare words, phrases, sentences and entire paragraphs from one draft to the next, in order to calculate how much of what I’d written had changed…or stayed the same.

This software, which I’ll call Grammar School, would allow me to record, and discover, patterns in my lifestyle choices and compare them to the quantity and quality of my output: What I’d eaten (and when) before I started writing; how many hours of sleep I’d enjoyed the night before; how much caffeine and alcohol I’d imbibed in the 24-48 hours prior. Did I work better with contacts out or glasses on? Had I showered that day? How many emails had come in during my most (and least) productive periods? How many times had I toggled over to Twitter, and how many instant messages had popped up on my screen while I wrote?

If I was feeling really ambitious, I’d incorporate a webcam component into my creation that would be able to monitor and record data as to the size of my pupils (big = excited and stimulated; small = anxious and immobilized) and how many times I had gazed plaintively at my monitor or rolled my eyes at my own inertia.

Would this software help make me a better, more productive writer? I doubt it; as far as I know, the process and craft of writing is not something you can improve on with data collection and analysis. But I’ll probably never find out, because, like so many millions of American women, I have no idea how to program a computer.

...and that's 99% of the battle there I think. Systems give the illusion of being data driven and fuel the desire to analyze.

Even in over-simplified productivity concepts, you got these guys shilling up big rocks and circles and quadrants. They are clues and albeit better clues than normal, rarely "planning in-depth" people get but they are not gifts rained in by God the Santa Claus. Productive people who are already productive can get them to work and it can look and feel wonderful as a trinket but it makes productivity seem and feel more like a religion instead of something that can barely fit in the psuedoscientific category.

To compound this dilemma:

“Coming from a feminist viewpoint, the people who are developing technology are the ones with the power,” says Jennifer Skaggs, a University of Kentucky education researcher and author of the June 2011 paper Making the Blind to See: Balancing STEM Identity With Gender Identity. Skaggs points to the part that female automobile engineers played in designing airbags that did not seriously injure or kill female drivers and passengers, who, along with children, were disproportionately affected by exploding airbags after they were first introduced in the 1970s. As documented in the 2003 book Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, it turns out that automobile development teams, which were usually more than 90% male, were not only overlooking women’s interests, they were using only male crash test dummies.

Most people are what the OutlinerSoftware forum members call CRIMPers. We are in search and get introduced to productivity concepts mostly from a technology trial while pretending there's little wrong with our understanding of the systems when in fact, even books, get the dream wrong or as the Salty Droid blog commentors would say "most of these are selling the unicorn". Unicorns are half real as a horse and a narwal actually exists but they are not supposed to be close to 50% right much less being "dependent" 100% correct concepts. People don't have productivity melt downs, most people have false hope meltdowns. Sugar coating it as productivity is only giving strength to the excuse that flawed methods are not flawed but you are the ones flawed or nobody is flawed and we all live in this happy rainbow waiting for the next Santa Claus to drop down the next God-like and infallible system that feels like raw hell when it severely destroys our inner identity and adds little to our external lives and surrounding.

We have to go back and look into ourselves and see if things like the above two links are really talking about productivity or they are talking management, software redundancy, false hopes, flawed pedagogy, etc. These are the things that not only often break down our systems or tools, they are the ones that often make us be unproductive to begin with.

For example, what drives quotas? The productivity system? The to-do lists? No, it's the philosophy of capturing everything and then trying to make a system fix it when it neither scales or fixes things that well to begin with. Doing it like this is akin to saying you can fill your browsers with bookmarks and it will relieve you of stress and by virtue of that, you will be productive. You won't if those bookmarks are a mess. Especially if you're like me who came from an IE culture where I was mostly ignorant of bookmarks until delicious.

We should stop asking (or believing people who think they are answering them) - why trying to be productive is a huge waste of time and start going back to gathering revelations of why the things we are doing is not only less of a waste of time to us but could also be less of a waste of time for others. At least that's what productivity should get back to. The repackaging of advises and false productivity related problems have sailed. The salesmen may have mostly left elsewhere. Now is a ripe opportunity for the rest of us survivors to fix the pieces.

339

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Why Trying to be Productive is a Huge Waste of Time

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 23, 2011, 02:20 PM »

Addendum to the TS link: Productivity Paradox: How Sony Gets more out of People by Demanding Less

I think the comments underneath the article, while vague (at least to me), is more notable than the actual article but only if you agreed with the article.

At least I think everyone reading this thread hopefully gets that time management is passe even when GTD was written. It was all about energy management and both links hopefully show that this too, is just an old bandwagon that's already waning.

App's link showing this more because I feel strongly that the writer was wrong and this link hopefully shown by the comments on how the idea of energy management is a loop back to just getting managers to act more like councilors rather than fake acting politicians.

In my opinion, productivity shouldn't be secondary. Good luck getting that to work with to-do lists. Productivity should be imaginary and to-do lists should be primary and primary to-do lists often are not involved with dealing with everything. It would be like letting the federal government legislate on drugs or gay marriage. Yes, there should be laws and not everything necessarily have to be left to the state but to-do lists shouldn't be boggled down with things that don't belong to it or it would stop becoming a primary tool and become a secondary tool with the responsibility of being a stressful primary tool in our head.

Anyway, I apologize for interjecting my post now. Really this was a topic I avoided because I could literally rant forever about this but I just happened to read the above link today and I felt GOE section lacks a definitive topic dealing away with both time, focus and energy management as being what personal productivity is supposed to represent.

340

Living Room / Re: Social Media's Hidden Truth

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 23, 2011, 01:34 PM »

Is this some kind of a trap to make me join Google Plus instead? 

341

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 23, 2011, 08:57 AM »

They're free and MS includes them as a courtesy as part of the FS so they don't care about it?

-wraith808

That's one way to look at it but at the same time, again it goes back to not what it is but why it is there and what it means to users.

I wasn't quibbling on the word need.  My point was that need doesn't drive consumption necessarily.

Which is quibbling. I may be misusing the word here. Quibble here to me means closer to lightly (but validly) argue with the word than it is to take the word lightly.

It's why even for simple explanations it can get lengthy.

See it's quibbling if it's just directing what the word is. It's quibbling if it just directs the conversation to something impersonal i.e. "consumption" rather than something personal i.e. "needs by users".

In the other situations that you refer to (dropbox, evernote) it was marketing, also.

Almost everything has marketing but not everything gains their success due to pure marketing.

Have we forgotten that evernote had negative marketing? Even in just reducing complaints, evernote has been poor at that. What evernote had was a focus shift on where they should take their direction. Just think how stupid it would be from a pure marketing perspective to alienate your fanbase and make your application worse.

Even today among new evernote users, you have complaints. The company is not yet heading in a totally right direction. What they have done though is that their focus have given them opportunities to be used in a very under utilized niche that is slowly getting bigger and they are slowly creating the space for Evernote users to simply be Evernote users and not look elsewhere unless Evernote fails them. (Even though it is really failing already in terms of just being a reliable product)

Dropbox is on the opposite spectrum. Marketing + design drove users in but it didn't determine the price people want to pay. You can't also just keep dodging file manager integration. That's actually a feature. It's the feature that made people tolerate the price despite complaints.

People discount marketing, then talk about the church of Jobs/Apple.

...and this is why I used the term quibble. It's a valid argument but come on...

It's like superboyac just replying to my post and acting as if it's a video. Even if people discount marketing and then talk about the church of Jobs, at least consider my words.

You really think my writing a post that long can't even account for the statement of marketing, timing, being at a right place at the right time, celebrity status, etc.?

Even if I am unable to communicate my post, common logic has to apply that if you think I wasn't talking mostly bunk and I wrote it with that length - then it didn't discount marketing.

We can't keep moving the goal post in order to settle the quibble. It's the very reason that leads superboyac and many people to get an over-simplified "just focus on the users" statement.

It's not because there are no developers "ignoring the users" but we get into discussions like this that keeps moving the goal post to an entirely different argument that instead of getting back to the original intent of getting the users closer to donationware/fairware - we just quibble about Apple. No matter how valid it not only kills the spirit of our replies, eats away at what little souls our post have to make the problems of donationware rolling but it turns the philosophy of the thread to your point vs. his point.

At some point, that's what kills it for people like superboyac or others. It's not that they are saying Apple is not innovative/not all about marketing/etc. It's that to care about users at the end of the day has to be talking and analyzing the users. You can't do that if you're focusing on "they're not special". At least unless you're simply satisfied with the current state of donationware or have a different plan and am simply trying to insert a point about Apple which was already been understood.

At the same time, this is why I disagree with superboyac's usage of need and why I want to show that there's clues of duplication beyond Apple. Apple subjects are like religion or browser wars or some popular fuel to the thread that kills the thread and makes it as if everytime someone brings Apple, it's about comparing Apple exactly to a concept. It's too destructive. It kills the possibility that maybe people are bringing Apple as a meta-concept and not as a direct analogy.

The Madonna thing for example. If the ones who could actually duplicate Madonna, all would think Madonna can't be repackaged, rebranded, reduplicated - We would have no Lady Gaga. Albeit not everyone is a fan of Gaga (and I'm not a hardcore fan) but at the end of the day, it was this focus that gave us Gaga instead of the Madonna lites of pop stars in Icky Britney and all the blondes watering down on the slut concept to the teen slut clone with nothing "alternative" to offer except by name and some minor quibble (just like this thread, where Britney can't be duplicated but Christina is the better singer and Mandy Moore is the better actress so so and so is blah blah blah).

At a certain point, needs does not have to equal direct innovation. Innovation does not equal innovation. You want the ultimate debunker, look towards the entire history of the "personal" computer or the internet. Even at the surface level, there was no ideal rainbow nor truly cynical impossibility. It was a bunch of philosophy. A bunch of practicality. A bunch of experiments. A bunch of business model changes. A bunch of supply deployment changes - and yet even today the laptop can be duplicated into the netbook and the netbook can be duplicated into the e-book reader and the e-book reader can be duplicated into the e-ink reader while the e-book reader can head to the smartphone while smartphones get phased out for iphones and then iphones bring back smartphones in vogue and then that vogueness brings in Ipads...it doesn't have to be from a purely technical or specific or direct analogy. At the end of the day, it's just about donationware and talking and changing and pointing out and making analogies to donationware. If it's just about how Apple is so and so then we might as well throw out the entire context of this thread. It's beyond hijacking, it's hijacked hijacking. It's well intentioned people getting to the point but because Apple has to be discussed, we're willing to intentionally block the ball from rolling when it comes to sharing our perspectives about donationware/fairware/well intentioned ware. And once again, what keyword moves away from the actual "need" to be discussed? Users. Yes, users may be related to consumption, marketing ,etc. but the actual term of users gets buried under Apple, Apple, Apple, yes, no, Apple, Apple, Apple, the point is...fairware...donationware...Apple...Apple...Apple...no it can't happen, let's not talk about Apple...let's not talk about Apple...let's not talk about Apple...let's not talk about users...let's talk about donationware/fairware without the users...

342

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 23, 2011, 12:46 AM »

That only applies if you only ignore the software needs of the user.

Part of superboyac's point is that your alternatives is looking at it from categories and often tech categories.

It's not that the free alternatives are not there but the alternatives are not addressing the need.

Marketing can only answer a portion of it. Innovation, focus, usability...there's a lot there that is being missed out.

This is why in the Office Suite, I specifically aimed it at Word. Why is it that marketing couldn't do the same for notepad or wordpad? Not only that, why is it that a relatively marketing ignored OneNote was considered among the most innovative notetakers when it was released. Not only that, when it was released, there were no free or paid alternatives that were exactly like it. Even today I'm still not sure if there is one though the hype has died down in favor of Android/Iphone apps.

This doesn't mean the above are extremely good examples but the point is, your point does not conflict with superboyac's points. It only does so if we quibble on what "needs" truly mean. Not when it has actually entered the consciousness of the consumer. It also belies the fact that marketing can't solve anything. Google Wave had the marketing. Had the initial hype. It was killed off eventually.

It would be both an insult to marketing and to users to say that they are only being convinced. Part of it is perception but the key to perception is always to recover that perception and to recover that perception, especially for software, you have to engage both outside the software (the hype, buzz, etc.) then once it dies down you still have to have a feature that the user wants (the initial ui, the obvious feature) and then finally you have to have not only the long lasting combination of both that slowly turns the wanting user into a needy user but then you have to do so every update or find a way where people are just getting used to their ownership/perceived ownership of a product being updated and then continue to churn their interest.

Only when that circle of cult-like effect has been begun can you get to the proverbial "convince people that they need it" effect. (Key word in begin, as Apple is a good example of a brand that continues weaving it as opposed to just settling on the surface + beating the marketing through pure quantity of marketing/ad style exposure and linear upgrades.)

...and to get to that stage especially in competitive arenas, the actual software need has to be focused elsewhere while on the tech surface seeming like it's merely a "category" when in actually it's a different "intended" category. Sort of like movies. The difference between big budgeted well marketed movies that succeeds is often times those that failed simply tried to believe they are convincing people that the movie is a movie of this kind. The ones who often succeeded so much though were actually ones that can be argued as mainly aiming at a different actual need/want.

Example:

I'm not claiming he intended this but when you actually look at the effect of the Nolan Batman movies versus that of movies trying to be superhero movies, his movies fit that bill but what Nolan was actually offering at the time of Batman Begins was a decent departure from the perceived comedic Batman movies. Basically instead of focusing on the want/pseudoneed for a superhero movie, he focused on the pseudoneed for a decent Batman film and instead of adding the want on the feature, he added it to the casts and thus he didn't need to create the want after it's released. The need he focused on combined with the want of the consumer mixed to become a fulfilled want that seemingly wasn't there that further helped the marketing blow up the movie beyond what it is which further increased interest and not only profit hence producing a different type of convinced want that was so in demand that it became close to a celebration within it's circles. A celebration that in turn can be rationalized as a justified need for getting back superhero films into being profitable.

The Dark Knight was another example that had the Joker failed, it was just Batman in a bad voice in a generic summer film. Had the Dark Knight tried to fill the want/pseudoneed for a sequel to BB, it would have been the same disappointment. Because it didn't and focused on the want of a BB sequel but worked on the need for a next generation villain that caught everyone off guard - the Dark Knight became somewhat of a controversial classic and broke new grounds for a superhero film.

You could say, well Batman is unclonable but what about Iron Man? Many people felt like Jon Favreau was handed a movie that couldn't fail but it was just as much that Iron Man succeeded along with Batman despite being an entirely different film because Iron Man tried to be a technological masterpiece rather than a superhero movie. How did it do this? By not focusing on the actual quality of the movie or the storytelling but on focusing on a supposed need for making fans proud of the great casting and great special effects. You could argue that this was the obvious route to take but still, considering how lacking the Iron Man is and yet comparing it to how much it was praised? It's still somewhat of a trend setter in that it's still considered one of the better superhero movies. Most importantly is though is how it answered Why it did this like this. Had it been a more traditional superhero origins film, it would have associated itself with BB and because it was competing with the Dark Knight - being associated as BB Iron Man would have made the actual post-feel of the movie seemed inferior, dated or somewhat off in a bad way. Instead it was somewhat lacking yet garnered more praises even from those who criticize it.

All these are controversial of course but the superhero films are one of the most head scratching movie genres to get correctly. The ones who truly succeed at the box office often are stereotyped as ones who went away from the plotlines or feel of the comics when at the same time, the genres who try to be more of a comic also often get accused of ruining the characters it tried to represent where as these movies are seen doing justice to it's movie interpretation of the heroes - even though that's what comic book fans often are critical about before a well done film trailer hypes them out of it. It almost like no one truly gets it until they get it. Even for the recent blockbuster movies nowadays, read the critical reviews and watch the actual film, they are very lacking but in their lacking they become more highly praised. The ones with more traditional content and movie pacing are often the ones that are seen as very bad.

It's one of the most weird categories to nail down for movie makers and it's a genre whose alternatives can be considered aplenty but despite better technologies, it's also a genre that seems to keep falling on it's head especially for ambitious projects. Yet why is that? The answer is controversial but for me, like software design, one strong hint is this focus on actual needs. (Using superboyac's terms, not mine.) An actual need that is a mix of wants turned needs turned wants turned pseudo need turned brand success turned brand need turned brand convincing turned effective brand convincing because at the point it took place it had a loyal fanbase already and was trending turned brand again turned credit being given to charisma, marketing, intangible "personality" of the actual dev/maker/company/etc. post success turned the mythology for it's success. (I'm not trying to say your words should have been more specific though - just that it's a different kind of procedurial "need" - at least to my observation. One that can be credited to x company having intangible mojo, timing, un-duplicable something and yet something that has also been shown to be duplicable in small spurts that follows a certain focus on a specific direction not unseen even for the most ignorant consumers as often they are the ones who pick it up, and one that when it succeeds often seems to mess up the clones who try to follow it's categories that range from features to specs to usability but never seeming to capture that moment. I still don't want to just call it working on the users' needs [too simple; too many failed/middle range business fulfilling that but never getting past a certain exposure; too implicative of the idea that the customer knows what they want] but that's the term superboyac used.)

343

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 22, 2011, 10:40 PM »

There are no *needs* in terms of software then, by that definition.  Show me a software package that there are no alternatives for that aren't incredibly niche so that the market is very small.

-wraith808

This is not directed at me so I'm not sure superboyac agrees but to me these stand out:

Dropbox is middle on the road but in terms of it vs. it's alternatives - it's the only one that attacked it not from file storage but from file manager integration. This allowed them to ask for a higher price.

Evernote is still very early but when they shifted their design, it not only built their brand but now they have the most hardware partners for their niche + target audience and depending on how the demand evolves due to these new gadgets, they could still get away with an Evernote Suite or an Evernote branded hardware. Alternative wise, it's more of a negative. No notetaker/clipper as slow and as bad and as broken as this has gotten the model quite as right and have built a community quite as exposed as them.

Depending on where you side, MS Office Suite has never been challenged until Google did it and both cases were notable because they sidestepped the core Suite issue. Even if you side with the fact that these are major brands with their advertising, Google has had to attack the need of cloud storage rather than Office Suite to bypass this and MS had the intelligence to make things like MS Word the dominant need beyond even their own product in Wordpad/Notepad and almost everyone still see alternatives as the MS word interface and only nowadays with the Ribbon had MS attempted to eat away at Google's growing userbase. Even right now with arguably better alternatives like Zoho and Google losing somewhat in terms of focus, they have been constantly redefining and re-upgrading the spot where the want comes that it becomes close to a need.

The problem with speaking in niche though currently is that startups and this tablet transition skewers the opportunity somewhat. Instapaper for example may not be notable. It may be niche. Problem is, they have been one of the more well known niche service that killed social bookmarking and so now how do competitors compete in that space especially if the better product couldn't set forth a space because people are used to the Instapaper interface? There's a lot of these different mold-like developments right now that skewers what "need" really is and yet if you look at the direction of Apple - that's the direction they took too to get to where they are today. By platform building, they were both recreating their space and they are also giving everyone this space to compete within their space and right now it's not quite a need but long term, you're going to see a shift from software needs via hardware requirement needs, micro-payment like applications, less brand names and more brand platforms, and DLC, and it's going to redefine the need and whoever is the most strategic/ambitious  - the smaller niche pie is going to be the new big market on top of whether it's Apple or Google or if the old guard in MS releasing that next Windows platform.

Look at it this way - for the most part of the proliferation of the pseudo need space of many concepts, there was a concept that created the profits. Apple constantly got that wrong. Being more niche than you would think they are. But they also built it good enough. Unorthodox enough. Then they start releasing Ipods and then they move towards the Ipad store and suddenly just like newspapers whom became about yellow journalism, human interest, biased news reporting and sensationalism (all making news more profitable and watchable): software right now is heading more and more towards that different landscape. A landscape where need is closer to the profit way than the competitive battle to gain a better slice of the pie like what happens with the freeware/Open Source/freemium/subscription upgrades/etc model of the past/current. A landscape that, even now, is slowing making you lose out  - not because you currently have software needs but because you lack the hardware. Something that as it evolves would slowly turn into a software need much like Apple has done but this time within truer software space as opposed to the run about Apple has had because Apple originated more from a hardware setting with a more primitive history than the current scenario where everyone almost has hardware but they don't quite have the right hardware but the right hardware is gaining both popularity and closed gardens that makes it important for the need to be there.

344

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 22, 2011, 07:19 PM »

Perhaps it's the only company in the world that does hold such status.

Google, Facebook, Nokia, HP, Blackberry, cheap Chinese commodities (the latter not so much the status but the privilege)

It's not the sort of thing you can plan for in business.

It's not a direct comparison but I thought instapaper, Dropbox, the many white space of popular blogs, Angry Birds, Evernote/Springpad, Instagram, Twitter - all have something very Apple to them.

Not that I'm claiming these concepts all took and mainly planned to mimic Apple's business model but from an end user standpoint, there's enough usability feel to them that just like gamification, one can extrapolate something Apple-like in these things that are the cause for their popularity. Even going so far as fitting the sizzle to create a pop psych book laying out how you could duplicate partial Apple "magic" from looking at the similar patterns these examples provide to some of Apple's hardware/software designs/feature route.

345

General Software Discussion / Re: notetaker that uses the filesystem and has powerful search?

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 22, 2011, 06:37 PM »

Hmm...thanks. I had no idea scrivener works with the filesystem or do you mean it's like Word and it saves itself to a separate doc extension?

346

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 22, 2011, 06:34 PM »

Lol, no problem. It's weird to hear you say that. Often times I'm the one called/implied this way in conversations and it's the first time I found myself hearing someone say they're on the side of that fence, it's really a weird feeling. Thanks for the convo though.

347

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 22, 2011, 05:43 PM »

To each his own I guess. I do feel you're a bit selling me short (and in turn selling your own point short) by taking my post as if I've only posted a video in reply but you have made your point previously and I have made mine so I don't think there's any need to quibble about it.

348

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Swim Lanes: Interesting new topic at OutlinerSoftware.com

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 22, 2011, 05:40 PM »

http://www.outliners...m/topics/viewt/3168/

Hello,
does anyone know an outliner capable of organize an outline with topics and subtopics in swimlanes?
There is a german software “Normfall Manager” that supports a “Relationsmodul” (relations module).

It is intended to support lawyers and judges.

Each litigious item gets its block (topic) in the vertical axis and each party gets its “lane” in vertical axis. Then you can add further lanes for evidence, conclusion etc.

And there are topics that span multiple lanes.
(See a picture at http://www.normfall....-relationsmodul.html)

Thanks in advance for any clues!
Bernhard

-Bernhard

It's really annoying though that I don't know German. The concept seems like something that could encompass my planned productivity system although at the same time - I kind of hope this is as Alexander says simply a corkboard as it would kill me right now if this software turns out to be the missing link.

From the images and my limited comprehension of German, Normfall Manager’s swimlanes approach looks quite similar to the ‘corkboard’ feature encountered in several programs aimed at writers, like Writer’s Cafe.

Other examples: Outline4D http://www.screenpla...p-77-outline-4d.aspx and http://www.learnoutline4d.com/ Supernotecard http://www.mindola.com/supernotecard/ and more recently Writing Outliner http://writingoutliner.com/

The advantage of Normfall Manager is that there are also other ways to organise the material, that work complementarily to the swimlanes. So the question is whether the swimlanes are enough.

-Alexander Dellaynis

349

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 22, 2011, 05:09 PM »

No, it's not unpleasant at all. I wholly agree with your premise.

I think if there's any disagreement, it's the line of words that you may feel semantic but I feel is due to my failure to commnicate well:

You are criticizing the fact that Apple customers care about the look of their stuff.

-superboyac

I think if it were this simple it wouldn't make sense for me to bring it up. At least I hope we both been talking enough here that we often read about what each other is saying.

I'm a casual user so especially for me I love and support aesthetics and if I was only criticizing Apple users for wanting something pretty, I wouldn't have written that long of a post just to showcase this simple point.

I hope this clears up any misunderstanding but I'll just go down denying this trail for the sake of clarity:

You are saying that looks are not important

Nope. Not at all. It wouldn't match many of my posts in this topic - would not match the personality I've shown throughout DC.

and the features, functionality, flexibility, etc. is what matters

I'd go farther and say all these falls under looks too. You can't get usability if you ignore looks and think features, functionality and flexibility does not overlap with looks.

So as a businessman, if your perspective is one of criticism of the people who you want money from, how in the world are you going to get them to willingly pay for your thing?

Assuming equal resources and equal knowledge (or at least equal luck), use that criticism to create an alternative appealing product and once you get the thing down, look to see if you can steal some of your competitior's customers by adopting those things that they really want back into your product.

This is what all of us pc guys say about the Apple people.  What we are really saying is "we like our way better, and you are stupid for liking your thing".  And it's perfectly fine to have strong opinions and to argue and stuff.  But if you want to sell stuff, don't argue with your customers.

On the contrary, Steve Jobs is famous for making unpopular decisions. This video is not against his own customer but hopefully you get the idea.

A GREAT businessman will be able to instill a great desire in his customers to want the exact thing he is providing.

I disagree. You have to keep updating. Keep moving. More so than just making a company run.

A great businessman does not settle for what makes a good businessman though semantic this may seem especially coming from someone who has no business but IMO in the words of Jobs, strategy is different from ideology. You can't instill anything if you don't keep taking your customer into a place of not only sales but also loyalty and experience.

We keep wanting to tell the Apple people how stupid they are, how wrong they are, how Apple is tricking them to overpay.

I agree although ironically I'm not one of them. Sometimes you just have to say something that sounds anti-Apple even though it really isn't, you know?

Finally:

Obviously the Apple people know about PC's and they have made up their mind and chosen Apple over PC.

I still agree but I just think you need to stretch this out. Apple people don't know PCs. PC people don't know PCs. That's the beauty of it - especially for those who can do something about it.

350

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 22, 2011, 04:05 PM »

It's because we started out by just considering what we wanted instead of figuring out what people actually need.

-superboyac

To be fair though most Apple products don't create on the need but extend the needs to a want.

as you said:

people NEED computers that are STUPID EASY to use.  Did Apple create that need?  Maybe, which would make it even more genius.  But usually, companies address an existing need.  If you're so good that you can not only invent a need, AND you're capable of fulfilling that need, then you're just a cash cow.

If Apple is a generic company then that could apply but Apple w/ Steve Jobs isn't. Apple created a need then they revamp it into a want and then they have a model to transfer that want into a need. A need that often later helps them in their future endeavors.

Take the Ipod. It was arguably a need/want hybrid (or the need you are referring to) but then once Apple fulfilled that need, it started "updating" into a want. (The term I'm using for want)

Finally once it updated a "want", it redefined the "need". (The term I'm using for need.)

How did it do so? Once the Ipod fulfilled music, it attacked cuteness/portability/touch where as the competitors failed to quickly adopt to cuteness/portability/touch. Some even made the mistake of going for the audiophile market. Meanwhile Apple also used the Ipod to extend the brand where as others simply filled the marketplace with many products.

It's what makes Apple separate from many other companies. It's not that people don't develop needs, see skwire's software for example (that both fulfills a need but is easy enough for people who feel software is complicated to jump into). Anuran specifically could also have easily gone viral if the blogosphere wanted to give it the time of the day.

It didn't though not because of a lack of need but because it was simply part of skwire or DC's apps. It wasn't a business planned software that would slowly evolve itself into moving from PC to Ipad to Iphone to Android to Tech blogs...it was just an object that fulfills a need.

Apple on the other hand releases a good product and then instead of treating products as products, it's marketing strategy is not only based on the product nor the brand but to use the product to jump start the brand to make the next Steve Job's presentation high in hype for Steve Jobs to then hype the next product and for the next product to follow suit with another great need until it circles around it's customers like a cult and redefines their wants into needs turning Apple into a brand that "gets" the need when it really doesn't.

Example, I learned first hand this was a lie when I finally went to an app store and showed my parent the OSX demo and guess what? They couldn't get this. So much for: "people NEED computers that are STUPID EASY to use."

Albeit it's a poor example but almost everytime I interact with an Apple user (which isn't much so it's no good for an anecdote but still left me w/ an impression) they all come off to me like people who are actually people who NEED computers that are STUPID Pretty to use. Pretty and also deluxe feeling.

Almost everytime, I could ever actually meet an Apple user, they really seem to love how OSX looks. Even for group anecdotes, you often see Mac users complain that this application does not look correctly in a Mac. It's always look. That's not about ease. That's about design. Compare that to Windows or even Linux. Even those who customized these OSs to look pretty may use it because of a certain practicality or ease. With Apple, ease often seems baggaged with pretty. Not pretty as in pretty for most everyone but pretty as in like fashionable clothes where many don't like it but the person or the culture explaining it makes it seem like it's the raddest design with all the comfort in mind.

You could almost over-simplify Apple's success to the blogosphere. Apple is akin to a blog like Techcrunch that never sold out. It was easy/pretty/wonderful/fulfilling a need only because it constantly updated it's identity like many of the popular blogs. Over time this meant that more and more people went to it, knew the personal writers, ate up the numerous Twitter articles until Techcrunch became a pretty enough thing to sell even though from a straight criticism of it's fulfillment, it didn't really even fulfill the ultimate need for gossip or tech news. It was simply something that gained a following and continuously understood that it needs to keep feeding itself a certain way to become a certain celebrity product that it's users would extrapolate reasons for why it did great. Yet it's a house of cards that could easily fall into mediocrity just as when Steve Jobs first left Apple when it starts geting marketing upgrades wrong.