OK, folks, you can stop writing to tell me that I could have bought a replacement for my Apple iPod battery from a third-party vendor. I'm not sure I could have way back when, but what I didn't mention is that I'd already replaced my iPod three times under the warranty and was just disgusted with the thing. I'd also fallen for the Mini.
Reader Jim Bailey writes to note that Apple will in fact replace the batteries. For the low, low price of $105.95, that is. Unless you're really worried about batteries in the landfill, and don't trust third-party vendors, that doesn't strike me as a terribly good deal.
Reader Tom Jackson writes to praise the iPod competition:
I couldn't help writing to you after reading your item on the iPod. My wife, who once bought me an autographed copy of THE FUTURE AND ITS ENEMIES, gave me a Dell Jukebox as an anniversary gift last July. (I had noticed that it was cheaper, and the reviews had mentioned that it had a longer battery life than the iPod.) I have been using it it for about nine months now, and it has a really good battery life. I've never run out of power before I recharged it, so I don't know what the maximum battery life is, but I always seem to get many hours of use before I have to recharge it again. Of course, the other test will be how long the battery lasts before it wears out and won't hold a charge anymore. The Dell Jukebox never gets much in the way of praise, but it is reliable and seems to work well.
Unfortunately, Dell has a real problem with aesthetics, which limits the appeal of its products.
Reader Nick Schweitzer recommends the Creative Zen Touch:
I bought mine a few months ago and it is excellent from a hardware perspective... I think just as easy to use as an iPod with a few extra features. The software is not quite as good as iTunes... but the battery is great. I go a couple days between charging, and I have it on all day at work. There is also a smaller Zen very comparable to the iPod mini as well.
There you have it: Plenty of iPod competition, but nobody's got everything. If you're buying an Apple product of any kind, my recommendation from long years of experience, is to always buy the Apple Care extended warranty. You absolutely will need it.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on April 27, 2005 • Comments
In theory, if all buyers of a product agreed not to pay more than a certain amount for it, they could keep prices artificially low. In reality, that doesn't happen because there's always an incentive to cheat, getting access to scarce supplies by bidding up the price. But what if you get a professional society, and perhaps the law, to deem paying market prices--or, for that matter, anything at all--unethical? Then you'd have a bit more enforcement power.
That's what scientists who want to do embryonic stem cell research are trying to do with women's eggs. A new report from the National Academies recommends ethical guidelines for stem cell research, including what Rick Weiss of the WaPost characterized as a surprising call for a ban on paying egg donors.
I'm not so sure we should be surprised. Scientists are as self-interested as anyone else, especially when it comes to stretching scarce research dollars. What the guidelines do is try to set up a buyers' cartel.
Eggs are the scarce resource for producing embryos, including clones, for research. Donating eggs is not the least bit like donating sperm. It's no fun, and involves lots of nasty hormone injections and more than a little risk. (One of my relatives, who was young and otherwise healthy, was once hospitalized because of complications from an attempted egg donation.) Women who donate eggs for fertility treatments are well compensated for their troubles. (This site gives a price of $5,000.) And these women get the psychological compensation of knowing they're helping a couple have a much-wanted child. For most people, contributing to the incremental progress of medical research just doesn't have the same emotional punch.
It's not clear where researchers think free eggs will come from. Either the no-payment plan is a subtle way to sabotage research cloning by depriving it of eggs, or it's an economically naive effort to exploit idealistic young egg donors. Neither motive strikes me as ethical.
The National Academies information page, including a link to the full report, is here.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on April 27, 2005 • Comments
In the new issue of I.D. Magazine, I interview Robyn Waters, the trend-spotter behind many of Target's pathbreaking design ventures. The published format is very short, though it hits the highlights of our conversation. Here's one more bit that didn't make it into print, following on her discussion of the Philippe Starck sippy cup:
Q: I have to be a little skeptical. My response to the way Target marketed the line was, "Target doesn't actually think its customers are going to like these things. It's not marketing the things. It's marketing Philippe Starck--oh, you should know who he is, you should be impressed that we have him." How well did those designs actually do?
A: It was definitely marketed to capitalize on the buzz. It was not a huge volume program. But the sippy cup in particular really became an icon for the program. I literally got faxes and emails from people in Germany and Japan and Italy. They were frantic to know how they could get one of these sippy cups. I have two samples of that product left, and I take it with me to some of my talks. I tell you, I could have sold those things 10 times over at a huge markup.
Part of the benefit to Target from the Starck Reality program was that we developed our staff. To get these products executed to the intense specifications of Philippe and his design team, we jumped through lot of hoops. The program gave our designers, young designers pretty new out of school, the opportunity to work with a master for a year, and to feel good about what they did ,and to be challenged constantly: "Not good enough, not good enough. We have to be able to do this." There were so many times when a vendor said, "Sorry we can't do that." Philippe's answer was, "Well, they can if they do it this way or look at it this way." Or, "Then we find somebody who can do it." That was a huge, valuable lesson for us in terms of how we--the design department and trend department--were going to work with merchants in the future. He was all about finding solutions, exploring all the possibilities, getting outside the box, and then finding different ways to do things. It was literally like sending your staff to graduate school.
She was right about one thing. Around the time of our interview, the sippy cup was going for around $15 on Ebay.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on April 26, 2005 • Comments
While I'm pointing out Apple's flaws, here's another one. Contrary to what I said in the paperback edition of The Substance of Style, I no longer think the iPod qualifies as good design. It's gorgeous and tactile, and the software interface is excellent--aesthetic and functional qualities lacking in most electronic products--but Apple has never been much good at the physical side of design. If only they didn't have to actually make things. In this case, the batteries are the problem. They're beyond terrible, and Apple won't replace them. My original iPod lasted about a year before the battery died and I had to throw it out. Worse, my iPod Mini has never really held a charge, except for the day it spent in the Apple Store.
And I'm not alone. Here's a protest video, and here's a non-Apple page of FAQ on the problem. Unlike many iPod users, I'm fairly environmentally insensitive and don't mind the disposable approach per se. But, given the price of the product, it should last a lot longer. For now, I'm sticking to plugging my Sony earbuds into my computer.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on April 26, 2005 • Comments
I learned from Michael Bierut's characteristically fun post on Design Observer that McDonald's had opened a HUGE, retro-styled new place in Chicago to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Michael linked the building to the work of "our country's greatest unacknowledged design visionary, Bruce McCall," whom he called (with this link) "the visual poet of American gigantism". (The obligatory negative Chicago Tribune review is here, along with some fun slide shows.)
Now reader Rick Lee, a commercial photographer in Charleston, West Virginia, informs me that McDonald's retro style is apparently going national. He posts the photographic evidence on his blog, along with some other fun entries, including a couple of photographer's tricks for making science look cool, even when you aren't in an actual lab.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on April 26, 2005 • Comments
I use a Mac because I like the software, but I've never bought Apple's claim to groovy virtue and niceness. The only reason Microsoft has a monopoly (on its operating system only) and Apple doesn't have one on its OS and its hardware is that Microsoft was more effectively managed--not that Apple didn't try.
Now word comes that Apple stores are pulling all titles published by Wiley, including David Pogue's popular Macs for Dummies, 8th Edition to punish the publisher for the forthcoming book iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business. The company's Control Freak in Charge may have every right to be mad, but does it really serve Apple's customers, or its shareholders, to make Mac info more cumbersome to get? Or to look like a heavy-handed jerk after you've already made the company look bad trying to censor blogs? (Via Good Morning Silicon Valley.) At this writing, iCon Steve Jobs is at 144 on Amazon, with publication more than a month away.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on April 26, 2005 • Comments
Congratulations to Jonathan Rauch, who won a well-deserved National Magazine Award for his excellent columns in National Journal. (Reason Online reprints his columns and maintains an archive going back to 1998.)
This award is a Very Big Deal, though you'd never know it from National Journal or the anything-but-self-aggrandizing Mr. Rauch. (If you crossed him with Camille Paglia, you'd get a normal level of writerly self-promotion.) The National Magazine Awards are like the Pulitzers or the Oscars--only with a much tighter connection between actual merit and winning.
Demonstrating a refreshing range, the specific columns honored were on gay marriage, McCain-Feingold, and the political risks of the "ownership society".
Posted by Virginia Postrel on April 26, 2005 • Comments
In his Forbes column, Peter Huber makes the provocative argument that rising oil prices have little effect on consumer behavior, in part because gas taxes, which don't rise and fall with oil prices, make up such a large part of the price of gasoline. His conclusion:
All of these factors collapse into a single economic metric: The demand elasticity for crude is very low among the ordinary drivers whose behavior is most reviled by people who think they know better. In the short term low elasticity means consumers can't easily change their habits--they are stuck with the car engine and the commuting pattern they had yesterday. In the long term it means that when you buy a car, and the house you've always wanted, the capital costs you are incurring are so large that alongside them the oil is almost too cheap to meter.
I'm not entirely convinced. There's a lot of opportunity for small adjustments, since the vast majority of cars on the road at any given time are there for optional trips. Commuting isn't the only reason people drive. You can save a lot of gas by combining errands more efficiently, walking for short distances, or even staying home. But Peter's column is definitely worth a read.
Maybe it's my imagination, but the traffic in L.A. seems to be getting less horrible as gas prices get closer to $3.00 a gallon.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on April 26, 2005 • Comments
In his talk last week, Grant McCracken explained how superstar industrial designer Raymond Loewy misunderstood the early-'50s zeitgeist, making his 1954 Studebaker a humiliating commercial dud. Americans, Grant argues, wanted cars that reminded them of rockets and jets--vehicles for individuals and a society "going somewhere." Loewy's streamlined design, I would argue, did try to capture movement--only it was rooted in pre-war imagery where sleek locomotives, not airplanes, were the touchstone of progress.
After his public humiliation--Studebaker unceremoniously fired him--Loewy took out his frustrations in a speech that was later published in The Atlantic. Ranting against the bad taste of his fellow Americans and the car designers who encouraged them, he said things like, "The world will soon forget that under these gaudy shells are concealed masterpieces of inspired technology. What we see today looks more like an orgiastic chrome plated brawl." (Not so long before, Loewy, with his unnecessarily streamlined pencil sharpeners and flair for publicity, had been the epitome of middlebrow not-so-good taste.)
What Grant didn't mention about Loewy's speech/article is that much of it was about what cars will be like in 2005--and that it's online, in the publicly accessible portion of The Atlantic's great web archives.
In predicting the car of the future, Loewy gets some things right, notably the increased emphasis on safety, but he gets a lot wrong, right from the start: "Experts estimate that fifty years from now there will be 120 million automobiles on the roads for approximately 98 million Americans." (There are roughly 300 million Americans, with about the same number of cars.)
If you're a fan of mid-century images, particularly of cars, I recomment Ephemera Now, with running comments here. My favorites aren't the cars, though they're prettier, but the bizarre paintings of televisions in oddly glamorous places.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on April 26, 2005 • Comments
In chapter four of The Future and Its Enemies, I discuss MIT management professor Eric von Hippel's work on "sticky information"--knowledge that is difficult to transfer from one person (or group) to another. In developing new product ideas or improvements, one way to overcome the sticky-knowledge problem is to have users do their own innovations. That's the topic of Von Hippel's recent book Democratizing Innovation and of my new NYT column discussing it:
When most people think about where new or improved products come from, they imagine two kinds of innovators: either engineers and marketers in big companies trying to "find a need and fill it" or garage entrepreneurs hoping to strike it rich by inventing the next big thing.
But a lot of significant innovations do not come from people trying to figure out what customers may want. They come from the users themselves, who know exactly what they want but cannot get it in existing products.
"A growing body of empirical work shows that users are the first to develop many, and perhaps most, new industrial and consumer products," Eric von Hippel, head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in "Democratizing Innovation," recently published by MIT Press. (The book can be downloaded at Professor von Hippel's Web site, http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/.)
Innovation by users is not new, but it is growing. Thanks to low-cost computer-based design products, innovators do not have to work in a professional organization to have access to high-quality tools. Even home sewing machines have all sorts of computerized abilities. And once a new design is in digital form, the Internet allows users to share their ideas easily.
Because users are often quite different from each other, their innovation, by definition, accommodates variety. A survey of users of Apache Web server software found that different sites had different security needs: one size definitely did not fit all. Nineteen percent of the users surveyed had written new code to tailor the software to their specific purposes.
"Users are designing exactly what they want for themselves; they have only a market of one to serve," Professor von Hippel said in an interview. "Manufacturers are trying to fit their existing investments and existing solution types to the largest market possible."
Read the whole column here.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on April 20, 2005 • Comments