Brandthony

Sent this to my buddy Amadeo Plaza over text and thought it was funny enough to post here. Basically, summarizing Apple’s Q1 earnings today.

Apple is mercilessly slaughtering all of its competition, according to its Q1 earnings call today. Blowing past Wall Street’s expectations and causing RIM executives to consider ritual suicide, its announced $400+ billion market cap is literally enough money to feed all the starving schoolchildren of the world for the next 125 years.

When asked if these results helped explain the slew of Apple knockoffs at this year’s CES in everything from straight product clones to aesthetic inspiration – even in unrelated categories like home appliances – an Apple rep responded with a single email with no subject line and the following image attached:

24

01 2012

The very first thing I have to say is that I’m 125% behind the SOPA protests. It’s an awful bill and I hope it dies. That’s the point of my protest of the protests.

This protest is all talk & little action, much like Occupy Wall Street has seemingly been a hipster hangout/soup kitchen/outdoor festival. When I went it seemed like the demonstrators were more interested in entertaining me than educating me.

1. The Participating Sites Are A  Joke

Check out this roster of the internet elite:

2. Of the real name brand protestors, what are we accomplishing?

Reddit? Mozilla? MoveOn? FreePress? Talk about preaching to the choir.

Wikipedia is down for one day, big whoop. In this short attention span world, all it will take is another 24-hours to forget this 24-hour protest.

Wikipedia has the biggest opportunity to make an impact, but a 24-hour protest will do nothing but attract some headlines and occupy Twitter’s trending topics for a day. If Wiki really wants to make an impact, shut Wiki down indefinitely until the bills are killed. That may be drastic, but Wikipedia is the shortcut for the world to information they need. If that source is cut off, it’ll cause a shit storm.

Shit storms are motivating.

3. Google is a participant who isn’t participating.

Read what I wrote in the search box.

I’m so glad Google is so heavily backing this effort. Solidarity, brother.

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on them. I mean, as a public company they do have to make a profit and those Google Ads aren’t going to click themselves. They have the right to do everything they can to be a profitable business, much like movie studio…oh.

Awkward.

4. I used 3 of the protestors to make this blog post happen.

I used the Google search bar on my Firefox browser to find the images to liven up this WordPress post.

Yeeeeeeeah.

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Look, I hate SOPA as much as the next guy. I want that bill to die. But this is all pomp and circumstance. Hopefully the protests are successful, but it’s honestly a weak effort.

I thought the Internet would try harder to save itself.

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Update

Apparently the blackouts are working, to some extent. I still stand by my post. We’re lucky that our government is filled with pushovers.

Additionally, here is a great presentation on what SOPA and PIPA actually are:

18

01 2012

I’ve been thinking recently about the idea of “Big” ideas. We all tend to confuse small ideas with “Big” ideas, because when you think about it big ideas are often actually small, very focused ideas.

Nike isn’t “Perform like a world-class athlete.” It’s “Just Do It.”

Apple isn’t “Change The World Through Innovation.” It’s “Think Different.”

Those big promises and brand associations we make with those two iconic brands are simply byproducts of what are really small directives, actions they tell consumers to take: “do it” & “think different.” Neither are big ideas in and of themselves.

You see something similar in category changing innovations.

If nothing else, history has taught us that we must take notice notice of the small problems. The needs customers don’t even know they have. The seemingly “small” inconveniences. Some of the best products ever created focused on those small inconveniences.

Was the Blackberry all that bad? It was a phone and it had productivity tools. Was Blockbuster all that bad? You eventually did get a movie, right?

But both the iPhone & Netflix decided those little inconveniences were intolerable and built products and services that eventually overtook their competitors.

All throughout human history progress has been built on the back of eliminating any and all inconvenience, even if the end result remained the same. Horses got you places, cars got you there faster. Fans provided relief from heat, air conditioning eliminated heat. Etc, etc.

The greatest catalyst for innovation is humanity’s capacity to never be truly satisfied by anything. There’s always better.

And when it comes to the notion that big ideas are actually small ideas, it reminds me of something I recent read in Steve Jobs book:

Even at a young age, Lisa [his first daughter] began to realize his diet obsessions reflected a life philosophy, one in which asceticism and minimalism could heighten subsequent sensations.

“He believed that great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from restraint,” she noted. “He knew the equations that most people didn’t know: Things led to their opposites.”

Speaking of small ideas, check out Greg Verdino‘s book MicroMarketing, for which I was the lead researcher. It’s a good book dammit, I swear.

02

11 2011