There’s not really any need to add to the outpouring of comment regarding Steve Jobs’ resignation as CEO of Apple, but it has offered a chance to revisit some of the more sage advice Jobs has offered over the years.
Here’s my favourite:
” When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use plywood on the back. Even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it”.
Beautifully put. All those looking for a way out of the current economic uncertainty, take note
People are annoying. Really annoying. You have this really great idea for a new product and a clear vision for how people will use it. Then bang, they decide no, they want to use it in a different way. Or sometimes, not at all. Or more often, they take time to work out how they are going to use it. Someone has to show them (now that’s original). Take a not so new technology (ebooks) and a user sample of one (me). I’ve been involved with ebooks for ten years and always got how people in academia and the professions could really benefit from ditching those huge lumps of dead trees. But as people always told me, “I will always want my paperback on the beach”. Given that I’m not a professor, a lawyer or an architect, I didn’t buy many ebooks myself.
Now, purely by chance, I’ve found how to use ebooks: on my smartphone and in snippets. When I’ve got a spare few minutes because the train is late or I’m early, I can just flip open my phone and start reading. I have a faddish attachment to books about Chinese history at the moment and they’re super easy to pick up and put down: a dynasty a day, so to speak. It’s a perfect way to fill in time or keep myself occupied at Baristas.
Which gets me thinking. How do you collect up all these real life user stories and use cases? How do you watch them rise and fall; evolve over time? How do you tell others about these user stories, because people don’t always work them out for themselves. Ideas?
Actually, that isn’t what the Daily Mail said. But it’s pretty close. An article in the Mail Online yesterday decried the fact that British parents spend more on private schools than any of their European counterparts. Their conclusion was that parents were only doing this because the aforementioned parents thought our state system was so poor.
Personally, I think it’s time we recognised this sort of nonsense for what it is. The last time I looked, the UK was a market economy and if private companies or organisations provide a quality product or service, then people are free to choose it. It’s not a sign of failure, it’s a sign of the strength of choice in our education system.