The New Road

Doing the heavy lifting

Ok, first things first, Star Trek 2.0 on G4 rocks. I love it. Second, anyone who saw Sulu shirtless with a sabre in the closing Trek credits knew he was gay. Done deal.

Anyway, on to the heavy lifting thing. My Mom asked my why the iPod was and is so succesful. My answer was that they created an entire lifecycle around the device from having a giant repository of tunes, to buying it, downloading it, syncing it to the device, all in one tidy software and hardware package. Plus it does the podcasting stuff, and the community stuff so that poeple can trade their mix information on line, and review the albums and tunes. Basically you buy the thing, install some stuff, and as long as you play by their rules, which most people are very happy to do, you are the king. You say, "I want this", your credit card gets charged and the tunes are on the device. Other MP3 players only went part of the way, and good products go all the way, even when doing that is really daunting.

Take another example, TiVo. Forgetting for a moment that they have never made money. Let's just think about the product. They could have just done a digital VCR, and that would have been amazing. But they did the tough job of getting the schedule information. In the very first release, no less! And with that information I can say, "Get me Battlestar Galactica" and the next thing I know it will do all the work for me and get me all the Battlestar I want, no matter how complex that is. The product makes me feel like a king. I give it orders and it executes them faithfully and serves my needs. It does the heavy lifting and that's why it's a success.

That heavy lifting is the hallmark of all great products. Face it, we are lazy. So when something takes an ounce of effort on our parts and turns that into a pound of result, that's going to do well.