All students of the computer industry have heard of Bill Lowe, the leader of an IBM Boca Raton facility that launched the IBM PC. That launch was a signal event in computing. It catalyzed growth in the small systems market. William C. LoweI had the great pleasure to interview Bill a few years ago for …
The two Apples: consumer responsiveness and unresponsiveness
Here is why I love Apple. You go into a retail store or talk to a consumer representative on the phone and you get very responsive service. They are helpful and more often than not leave you far better off than you expected going in. I have been able to walk into an Apple store …
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The motivations of Amazon reviewers
There is a very interesting Planet Money podcast about Amazon reviewers. The podcast focusses on top reviewers. These are people who are at the top of Amazon's own reviewer rankings. They get there by writing lots of reviews and also on the quality of their reviews measured in part by whether consumers found the reviews helpful. The podcast …
Free content supply and the slavery charge
In a New York Times piece entitled "Slaves of the Internet, Unite!" writer, Tim Kreider, revisits a theme common amongst writers -- particular writers now of my age-vintage -- that they do not like being asked to contribute pieces for free. His argument is two-fold. First, why isn't it a breach of appropriate social norms to …
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Will ad-avoidance kill content?
Writing in the New Yorker, Tim Wu argues that ad-avoidance will always be present but won't necessarily be a disaster for media industries. The individual benefits are obvious. But is avoiding ads responsible or sustainable? It makes the advertising industry nervous, and many in the content industry, joined by some academics, see ad-avoiders as content-killers. The …
Is the iPad 2 the greatest tech product ever?
Two days ago, Apple announced this year's line up of iPads. The new iPads are 64 bit, have Retina display screens and are light (well the iPad Mini is a little heavier but it is not bigger and does have a better screen). This was all expected. What was unexpected was that Apple did not …
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HealthCare.gov really is the purest political failure
While the US was distracted in its negotiations over whether to have a government, the health insurance exchange, HealthCare.gov, launched. It was beset by technical issues. Put simply, it couldn't handle the load. This isn't surprising. The right way to design a site like this is for robustness in on-going use -- that is, for …
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HBR Responds and I React
The HBR saga continues today with HBR responding both in the Financial Times and to me personally about some of the issues that have been raised this week. To recap, here are links to: My initial post My clarification My Financial Times article The HBR response in the Financial Times today was written by the …
Clarifying the issues with Harvard Business Review
My post last week on Harvard Business School Publishing's pricing rules for Harvard Business Review articles used for teaching managed to grab lots of attention. That was, of course, my hope given my use of the 'evil' tag. While that seemed like a bold claim, sometimes you need to draw emotion to get everyone focussed. …
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Once there was a tree … Shel Silverstein's estate and publishers
... and this time the tree wasn't happy. There was this boy, San Diego State University professor Joseph Thomas, who wanted to use some branches of the tree to build a biography of Shel Silverstein. Now even though in this case, the tree could still live on happily with all of its branches and all …
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Digitopoly 