We don't need roads

It’s becoming more obvious that specs don’t matter these days, or at least that what really matters is harder to compare. People who need product recommendations will only find experts writing for other experts. Nobody knows what RAM is or what 802.11n means. They care about ease of use, time-to-Facebook and how long will the battery last.

I asked some regular people to tell me about their favorite or least-favorite device and explain me why.

My father on its iPhone 4:

The iPhone is a Swiss army knife that amazes me everyday with its intuitive features.

My sister Sarah on her Sony Xperia mini:

I chose it instead of an iPhone because it’s smaller and thus fits well in my pocket. I don’t know how to start a new paragraph when writing an email but for texting, making calls and Google things, it’s fine. It also takes great pictures.

My sister Sarah on her 7.1 megapixel Olympus camera (that’s actually how she refers to it):

My phone takes better pictures. Don’t buy it.

My sister Sarah on her MacBook Pro:

Just like any other Mac, it doesn’t crash and doesn’t get viruses.

My mom on her iPhone:

I been using it for a few years. It replaced the huge mess in my purse. If you run all day, just get one.

My friend Louis on his Eee PC:

Don’t buy that. After only a month, the battery is dead, it’s extremely slow, event while editing text. Yes, it’s lightweight and pretty cheap, but you should spend a little more to get a laptop that does the bare minimum.

I remember clearly my father recommending the iPad to his sister:

It’s easy to use, you don’t need to charge it very often, it’s light and small and you can do everything with it and it’s always connected to the Internet. Perfect for when you go on vacation.

Now, look how Best Buy describes a top-selling laptop to regular people. Below are the main product features:

VISION Technology by AMD / AMD Quad-Core A8-3500M Accelerated Processor with AMD Radeon HD 6620G discrete-class graphics / 8GB DDR3 SDRAM / Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive / 15.6” LED high-definition display / 640GB hard drive (5400 rpm) / AMD Radeon HD 6620G graphics / Built-in high-speed wireless LAN (802.11b/g/n) / Built-in 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN

Nobody talks about how how open their operating system is or the lack of Flash support. I’m stating the obvious here, but we’ll get there eventually. People needs tech reviews by people.

Mary Rose Cook in The Setup:

There are three reasons to use emacs. One, it is available on a lot of platforms. Two, it can be used for almost any task. Three, it is very customisable.

It’s interesting how these are the exact same reasons I go back to TextMate every time I start using another editor:

1. I don’t care about other platforms, I want something that feels integrated to OS X.
2. I like TextMate because it does one thing and does it well.
3. I believe in many cases, customizability is giving the user a way to fix flaws. TextMate is already almost perfect out of the box.

(The quote is taken a little bit out of context: she only uses Emacs for the third reason, and then goes on how ridiculous are the default settings and how to change them.)

This is the new Droid Razr commercial:

Unless you’re a supervillain, why on Earth would you be interested in a flying blade that slices everything standing in its way?

I was just reading a thread on Quora where somebody asks why do people think that Apple’s success is due to making good products, and I believe one part of the answer is that Apple actually makes good products but doesn’t stop here. They know how to prove their products are good and they do it well in every commercial without trickery, showing the actual product in use.

Look how different the last iPhone commercial is, and tell me which one of these two videos is more convincing:

Who knows, maybe the Droid Razr is a very good product, but Verizon doesn’t want us to find out.