Jeff Chausse
Digital Strategy + Design
Take my iPhone, Please!
Actually, no, don’t take it. The way my professional life is now, with its emails and meetings and whatnot, my iPhone is practically an extension of my body. But with serious competitors starting to make their way on the scene – notably Google Android and Palm’s new Pre, I could envision a device that might make me trade in my iPhone. If anyone out there were to fix these glaring holes in iPhone functionality, I know at least one person who would beat down the path to their door. None of these things are ridiculous pie-in-the-sky ideas. Every one is 100% feasible.
- Turn-by-turn GPS functionality. Why don’t we have this yet? Apple explicitly excludes developers from creating these apps in their SDK agreement, but why? Some think it’s due to liability issues (though obviously these are not impossible to work around, otherwise the millions of navigation devices out there would not exist. Its not for lack of interest in development – Garmin, Magellan, and TomTom have all gone on the record as saying they’d be interested. I’m guessing it’s their SDK restriction is really a smokescreen for shoddy technology. The few times I’ve tried to use the Maps application to guide me around the city on foot, it was incredibly slow and inaccurate. Whatever the excuse, Apple already lost this battle, as plenty of devices have decent built-in GPS.
- System-wide voice input. This would be godsend for those of us who try to stay connected to information on the road. I do a lot of thinking and get a lot of email while I’m driving to work, and while I probably should just hang tight until I get to the office, I occasionally really need to send something out. Apps like Vlingo and the Google app do a great (well, good) job of translating voice to text, but I want that functionality baked into the Mail app, Contacts, and anything else that takes text input. Sure, I’d have to retype some mistranslated words hear and their, but it beats typing a two paragraph email when I should have my eyes on the road.
- MMS support. Yeah, it’s a pretty weak technology, but please, Apple, stop preventing my wife from sending me cute 30 second videos of my kid from her non-iPhone phone.
- Video recording. I’m pretty sure the lack of video recording on the iPhone is a case of Apple’s attitude of “if you can do something amazing, don’t do anything at all”. They know the built-in camera would be lousy for video (yet far better than most mobile phones), so they just won’t let you even try. So, to complement my comment in #3: Please, Apple, stop preventing me from sending my wife 30 second videos of my kid from my iPhone phone.
- Cursor keys. OK, the little magnifying glass thing is cute and sometimes useful. But if I notice something I mistyped two words ago, just let me whack an “arrow key” to get over there instead of fiddling with that cursor which never quite ends up where I want it (I mistyped the word Ill yesterday – which meant I had to click the screen TO THE PIXEL to get it to the right spot).
- Way better email. The lack of search, filters, or any way to find stuff in your email other than “swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe…”. was excusable before Exchange support, but now that Apple is implicitly attempting to deliver “enterprise” email, it’s ridiculous.
- Background apps. The “one-app-at-a-time” nature of the iPhone tends to rile up some people a lot more than me, but I’ll tell you when it does drive me nuts – when I’m listening to Pandora or Simplify Media, and want to quickly check my email. Apple has good reasons for designing the iPhone OS this way but, I think, like it or not, they’ll be dragged kicking and screaming by competitors into supporting a multitasking model.
Now, before Palm, or RIM, or Google get all smug about being able to deliver on these 6 things, this hypothetical phone must also get right the 1,000 things that iPhone HAS gotten right, that no one else has. So, I think my iPhone will be in my pocket for a long time to come.
RockBand.com and The #1 Rule in Marketing
I’m attempting to come back from an extended blogging hiatus (I’ve been Twittering up a storm, though…) , and I feel like I should say something profound. You can be the judge on the profundity of this post, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret: what I consider the most important rule in marketing.
It’s something I picked up from Kathy Sierra, who used to run an incredibly inspiring blog called “Creating Passionate Users“, then disappeared for a while from public life due to some unfortunate circumstances, and recently reappeared as a very active Twitterer. Anyway, the rule – which is paraphrased from some of Kathy’s ideas is this:
Don’t tell people how much YOU kick ass. Tell them how you can make THEM kick ass.
This maxim drove a lot of the thinking behind the new RockBand.com launched last year. I don’t feel the goal of our site is to tell you how great Rock Band is. It’s already a worldwide phenomenon, and the gaming press does a pretty good job of getting the word out on the features and quality of the game. No, the point of RockBand.com is this:
How can we make you – the Rock Band player – kick more ass?
There are a few examples of this on the site. The first is our “Zine” section – and, specifically, our “52 Weeks to Rock” series of articles. This content has absolutely nothing to do with the game! But we know that, as a Rock Band fan, you love good music, you might want to play music for real, you know that WE have accomplished rock musicians on staff, and we’re going to share our experiences with you to help you kick rock and roll ass.
Our Music section features writeups on the songs in the Rock Band games. We could have just rehashed song reviews from another site. Instead, we have Brett Milano, a well-established ace rock journalist (and killer RB drum player), write up background info on each track – giving you insights into the artists you can’t get anywhere else. Why? Because we want you to be the guy (or girl) with all the good tidbits about that hot new (or classic) band. When you’re talking to your friends about that latest DLC track, we want you to (you guessed it) kick conversational ass.
Rock Band is not just another game. And Harmonix is not just another game company. We’re a bunch of passionate music fans – who really know our stuff – trying to bring a new social phenomenon into the world. In the coming year (and years), you’re going to see a lot happening on our website driving home the point that playing Rock Band isn’t just a fun thing to do to pass time, it can truly improve your life – socially, artistically, and – who knows – maybe even financially. Rock Band is for music gamers who want to KICK ASS!