making hardware fit the problem

With the approach of the 20^th anniversary of Apple's Macintosh there are a huge number of articles floating around. One of the more interesting is an interview with Jon Rubinstein - Apple's head of hardware engineering.

The past half dozen years have seen an Apple focus on a small number of themes with fairly tight linkages between the hardware and software folks. Rubinstein notes that Apple is into selling complete solutions. This clearly doesn't work in some areas, but in others it can create product like the iPod/iTunes/ITMS/QuickTime combination.

I've been involved in testing a variety of portable digital music players with a student for publication in a few months. On the surface it seems remarkable that no one has come up with a player that is a dramatic improvement over the iPod in the past two years. One of the core things the competitors are missing is the linkage between hardware and software (on the iPod, the home computer and the server). The linkage has been evolving and simply works much better than the combination of other music stores and players. In the end it may be this combination that is more important than price per GB, weight, battery run time or cost per track.

Of course Apple gets the marketing aspect too ... one kid we talked to suggested that giving someone a Dell DJ was like giving a cubic zircon.

Apple watching provides fascinating entertainment these days.

Comments

[sara]

giving someone a Dell DJ was like giving a cubic zircon

sweet!

I haven't seen any DJs at Reed. Tons of iPods and CD players, but really nothing else.