Ramblings of an Eccentric Soul...

"You don’t have to like competition in order to understand that it exists. Your fair share isn’t going to be yours unless you give the public a reason to pick you."

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The idea of a new gig, a fresh start, is appealing because of its simplicity. You know nothing about your future team; you have no idea about potential death marches, or that guy down the hall that just bugs you for no particular reason. It’s simple to think about the future optimistically because the future hasn’t screwed you, yet.

This optimism fades in the middle of the night when you open your eyes, startled, and think, “Why in the world would I leave a solid gig with people I know and a bright future?” The reasons are myriad, but that’s not the point. The point is for any big decision, you’re going to question it from every single angle. You’re going to have endless inner dialogues with yourself. You’re going to talk yourself into the gig and then you’re going to talk yourself out of it.

It’s exhausting.

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Everybody loves a prototype. Engineers get a chance to strut their stuff. If you’ve got a 40-inch OLED TV in a lab somewhere, bring it to your trade show. Executives take pride in their company’s technical prowess. Marketers get an excuse to throw an even fancier party. And customers and press get idyll fodder for a daydream.

None of those things equal units sold. None of those things turn a customer into an ardent fan.

That an industry exists around rumors and leaks for unreleased products may be useful to Apple, but it is a side-effect of their product strategy, not the basis of their marketing. Consider that when Apple finally does release a product, the marketing tends to showcase the device itself in clear, comprehensible ways. Apple isn’t shy to make claims about the grandiose, epiphanal nature of its products because—whether they pull it off or not—they have built a culture in which every product they make is designed to be world class.

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