Back to the future
A while ago I did a back to basics entry on how I had moved from a perfectly good Nokia 6600 to a older, more elegant and better looking 8850. According to Josh Rubin's Coolhunting blog I am not alone, in fact there is a website called Retrofone to cater for people like me.
Why? Because I believe that there is a sweet spot when technology has a certain level of sophistication and performance when it is at its most usable. As things become more complex and sophisticated they become less user friendly, go wrong more often and no longer provides an elegant solution to customer needs. It starts to lack quality. Don't believe me? Think about this :
A while ago I did a back to basics entry on how I had moved from a perfectly good Nokia 6600 to a older, more elegant and better looking 8850. According to Josh Rubin's Coolhunting blog I am not alone, in fact there is a website called Retrofone to cater for people like me.
Why? Because I believe that there is a sweet spot when technology has a certain level of sophistication and performance when it is at its most usable. As things become more complex and sophisticated they become less user friendly, go wrong more often and no longer provides an elegant solution to customer needs. It starts to lack quality. Don't believe me? Think about this :
- I can write a letter as fast on my old 12 year old Mac desktop running Word 5.1 as I can using Office X on a much more powerful iBook
- I can only email as fast as I did when I used Netscape Communicator on the Mac back in '98, yet my computer is at least eight times more powerful
- I am still only as organised using my Palm Tungsten 3 as I was when I had a Palm Vx, but the Vx really did fit in my pocket and caused me half as much grief
The iPod is currently in the sweet spot with the iTunes Music Store, Google is there with their search engine and Amazon with their e-commerce site.
