Generalism

<holds head in hands>

http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/10/sonys-rolly-speakerbot-on-video/

<big sigh>

Oh Sony. Sony Sony Sony. When will you EVER learn. I work for a small sofware company. We’re a team, we make a fantastic product, and our sales growth has been 40% year on year for the last 4 years. How do we do it? We look after our customers. We listen to them. We work with them. We invite them home to meet our mums. Our customers ARE our business.

And yet, even in your darkest hour, you continue to forget, ignore, or conveniently avoid that ONE, SIMPLE truth.

First there was ATRAC. The horribly constricted, DRM’d-up-to-the-hilt music format. That no-one used. And was universally panned. And that you STILL continued to stick to when everyone else had moved onto mp3’s. You wanna know why Apple won the music player game? Because they listened to what the customer wanted, and you didn’t. You had the market sewn up - the Tape Walkman, the CD walkman, a kick-arse mp3 player should have made you bjillions. Note the term “mp3 player” not “music player” or “sony walkman”, because the game changed; when music became digital rather than physical, it _became_ “mp3″. I did emit a rather derisery chuckle recently when I saw that you’d decided to drop the ATRAC format, but oh man, only 10 _YEARS_ too late.

So I read an article this morning about the Sony PSP, a very cool little handheld computer that again could have been HUGE. Customers wanted a small, cool handheld that they could tweak and adjust and play around with the software internals of. You know they wanted this - you’ve spend the better half of the last 5 years and lord knows how many software updates and patches trying to stop them. The article states that you’ve now “banned” all mention of the term “homebrew” on internal forums. First of all, how you think you can “ban” discussions is beyond me, of course they’ll just go underground and you’ll lose valuable insight into how people are thinking (not least upping the warm and cosey big brother feel, and encouraging people to avoid talking about any potentially groundbreaking thinking on internal forums. Constraining Corporation 1 - invaluable information flow 0). But secondly, if people want to do it, okay, you don’t need to advertise it, but just let them get on with it. You let people do what they want with your hardware, MAN are you gonna sell bucket loads! Heck, even _I_ may have gone and bought one (oh, and if the battery didn’t only last about 3 seconds). You’re in the game of selling hardware, not controlling people. Sell hardware for goodness sake and let people have their fun with it. Maybe if you started paying some attention to such things, you wouldn’t be losing so many wars; the TV war, and the console war, and the handheld war, and the mp3 player war and, and, and…

…and please please please don’t get me started on the whole rootkit debacle…

gah.

It’s no secret to those that know me that I’m a massive fan of World of Warcraft, an online fantasy game played by 9 million worldwide. I’ve grown up with video games, I’ve even helped write a few, and I still have a couple of ZXSpectrums up in the loft with a copy of Spellbound on tape, just in case real nostalgia takes its grip.

And I’ve met some really good people in this social game called Warcraft. In fact it’s because of these people that I’ve been going back to it, time after time, for nearly two years now. They make it something special to return to, something personal, and terribly addictive. All this waxing leads me to an entertaining article on BBC news relating to online relationships, and how games can give insights into a potential mate that normal life apparently can’t do. Please do give it a perusal. T’is an interesting little ditty and no mistake.

One of the things I like to do, and have done for many years both professionally and personally, is to keep up to date with technology. I read about it, use it, sometimes even buy it. And I guess after a period of time doing anything, one gets a nose for what’s right and what’s wrong. So I must confess, it didn’t come as a complete surprise when I came across this news article this morning.

Now Palm used to be at the forefront of Smartphone technology; their Treo line of smartphones were cutting edge once upon a time, and nothing could come close. Then something slipped. And jiggled. And came loose. The next minute we turn around and find that they’re just not doing so well any more.

When I first saw Palm’s new Foleo device I just couldn’t figure it out; we’re living in a world where every company is focusing on smaller, faster, and more integrated technologies; we want less to carry in our pockets; eventually we will not even need our wallets for day-to-day transactions. So why why why create something the size of a laptop, that you have to carry around in a bag, that is supposed to supplement your smartphone, and in fact has little use without it? Sure, throw around some ideas behind the scenes and experiment, but really, Palm, when did it ever make sense to consider releasing this to the market? (I have voices in my ears yelling “Groupthink!”, but we’ll ignore them for the time being)

My concern is less about the demise of a product that seems just plain wrong, but more about a company that so obviously had such smart thinking in the past, thinking that the Foleo could ever be a success. And with Apple on the ever-up, due to make even more announcements today, and Palm seemingly relegated to producing me-too’s and throwing money at junk, I just don’t see any direction for the company that used to be “the one to watch”, other than through the Exit doors. Such a shame.