Cutting Through the Haze of Uncertainty

After some initial difficulty, it looks like the uncertainty that surrounded three important priorities in my life is finally yielding to my persevering efforts. In addition, I've temporarily abandoned some of the home-brew web projects I was working on to focus on content. If content is your selling point, sometimes it is best to focus on that and diversify later.

Companies are similar.  When any company - new or old - is launching a new product. The original blackberries were little more than pagers with an amber-black LCD. RIM got very good at doing one thing before they added more functionality. Netbooks offered greater mobility and lower pricing as the greatest attraction factors, and worried about greater ram, faster CPUs and better wireless range as they became successful.

Yes, you can spend a lot of time working on the perfect version of something. Duke Nukem Forever might be an excellent example of what happens in such a case. It never gets done, or money stops coming in, usually one leading to the other. The reason companies can release imperfect products is thanks to early adopters. To all you disappointed iPhone 4G owners, you can rest easy knowing your money is not wasted; it is a donation to the Church of Mac. Without your donations, they would be unable less able to develop the next slightly-better version, which you will also pay a horrendous amount of money for.

For me, my next tech purchase will probably be a Kindle. It's got battery like nothing else, displays text clearly and yet also connects to the internet. That's a whole lot of awesome for a new product. So it's amber-black, so what? What if that is exactly what the application calls for? Besides, with so much variation between how colour is perceived (and also described, 'midori' is apparently Japanese for green and blue), perhaps amber-black is the best option for a number of mobile devices. You'll never see Apple, the company of colour for everything do that though, right? Right? Oh, except maybe on the original, original iPods.

Kids these days don't even remember THEIR good old days. This is what companies have to do, though, confront the initial uncertainty that their products may be viewed with and defeat it by doing one thing very well. If their product provides utility to individuals or companies in additional ways, it may help, but start by doing something very, very well.