Comments on: Gigahertz? No! What Matters Is the User Experience

By: Ralph Haygood

Ralph Haygood — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 22:46:44 +0000

“Not a day goes by without an app developer boasting of the number of times his app has been downloaded — but since downloads don’t translate into automatic usage, the real number worth sharing would be active daily users or some sort of an engagement metric.” I heartily agree, and I have a suggestion: get together with your frenemies at TechCrunch and agree that neither of you will publish any more total downloads or signups numbers – henceforth, you insist on engagement metrics. If both GigaOm and TechCrunch declared and did as much, I suspect you’d eventually bring most of the rest of tech media with you. And the world would be better for it.

By: AK

AK — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:36:45 +0000

It’s all about achieving “complete harmony”. I’m thinking of an analogy here, if I may. I was watching the NBA playoffs many years ago when one of the analysts said that 5 great players don’t necessarily make a great team but rather 5 players playing great together. It’s all about the combination. It’s the same with tech.

By: rasheshjethi

rasheshjethi — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:35:37 +0000

Om,
Great way to articulate the value of “outside in” marketing !
I do think there is a segment of the population, say some “enterprise buyers” who still look at traditional metrics to compare and decide, and hence you will still find companies trying to out-hertz one another until the broader buying behavior changes, or the cloud becomes a truly ubiquitous utility. But as a consumer (even a tech-savvy one, I daresay) the devices and services that provide the best experience and ease of use are the ones that I spend my hard-earned money on..the details under the hood are increasingly just irrelevant fine print!

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:04:44 +0000

One of the reasons why more people are getting Android phones these days, more than any other phones, is that Android gives people choices on their user experience. People can chose different Android phone forms- all touch screen / sliding keyboard / LTE / prepaid / Sense / Blur / or none / MilSpec / etc. etc. Not wanting to be locked into one man’s view of the world (the same man with a very dirty data center)more people are choosing their own individual user experience.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:30:18 +0000

I think to an average person – everything works better is more important than dual-core. And as I said, they are talking specs to a very thin slice of the market – a very very very thin. As an iPad owner, I didn’t really care much for dual core – what I want is something that just works without too much drama and manages to make me happy as an owner of the device. For others it could be another device, but for me, when it comes to tablets, it is the iPad.

Anyway thanks for your comments.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:26:57 +0000

Ronald,

What a quant idea – an original product that stands on its own merit ;-)

As always fun to read your thoughts/comments.

By: ronald

ronald — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:48:57 +0000

So the question will be:
How will this influence me2.

With metric it’s easy to “beat” the competition without mentioning them. Without it a product might just be perceived as a cheap copy cat.
In other words products have to stand on their own, which hopefully will become even true for SW.

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:43:31 +0000

Not TOO much in the ads; you’re right that they don’t bother getting into detailed specs in their ads. Take for example the main ‘ad’ copy, which says, “Thinner. Lighter. Faster.” But they DO mention improved power. Just not in stark numbers.

Moving on, right at the main iPad area (http://www.apple.com/ipad/) one of the top two feature-boxes states “dual-core A5 chip”. OK, so they don’t say 1Ghz, but they do say dual-core. And neither does anyone care about the label “A5″ any more than they do “1Ghz”. But it is the *exact same* rhetorical device: surely an A5 must be better than an A4 (it’s one number higher!), a chip some people may have heard of. More to my original point, though– it’s not just better, but it’s “Fast. Times Two.” (the dual-core nature is something they seemed to place at a high level of importance).

They don’t need to mention numbers, because due to an astonishingly clever marketing department, they can get away with saying things like, “Multitasking is smoother… everything just works better.”

…And the improved dual-core processor was mentioned heavily in the iPad2 keynote as well. As we know, the keynote is the single most important piece of marketing collateral they have. Far more important than an “ad”.

I’m not disagreeing that they know their audience. Their audience is fine with “It just works better.” But I disagree that they don’t refer to the technology itself and its improvements. The A5. Dual-core, faster times two.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:54:40 +0000

Lucian

See my reply to the first comment. It answers your question.

On the iPhone 3G or 4G issue — the point is that an end user doesn’t care what is inside, if it is faster chip. What matters is that the “user experience” is smooth and not slow. For that they need a newer device.

On the iPhone 3G, there is a lot of my friends who are still using that phone and are perfectly happy with it — well as happy as one can be using AT&T network.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:51:43 +0000

Dan, succinctly put.