An article on TUAW about the history of the MacBook Air prompted me to think back in early 2010, when I was comparison shopping for a lightweight laptop. My search had come down to four choices:

• the Toshiba Portégé M800,
• the Panasonic Y5,
• the Lenovo ThinkPad X301, and
• the MacBook Air.

At the time, these light-weight machines were premium-priced products that were selling between $2000 and $3000. So only after painfully extended deliberation did I order the Lenovo X301 because of its inclusion of the DVD drive. However, Lenovo cancelled my order in the spring of 2010. And that has made all the difference.

I have always despised that convention unique to PCs of appending a bunch of numbers to the name. Fittingly enough, I would have been fine just choosing the MacBook Air on that criteria alone. But practically, I wanted a very light machine with as minimal a power brick as possible. And I could not make that personal compromise about my DVD drive very easily. The funny thing is that I ended up buying a SuperDrive, trying not to make that compromise at all. I used it once since I purchased it. Smart compromise, Apple.

To round out the experience, the support for my MacBook Air has been fantastic, with only one battery issue between the two machines I owned (side note: I was a bit impetuous when the late 2010 MacBook Air refresh came out with the 4GB of RAM that I really wanted in order to run VMWare smoothly).

I have been asked about my favorite product before, and it is hands down my MacBook Air. I choose to remember that the past was filled with backache and heavy messenger bags loaded up with power adapters and extra batteries. I know that a better way exists, and that the right compromises were hard to accept but necessary for each of our sakes. Looking forward to 2012, I want to make products that solve people’s problems and to make the right compromises in the process. It will be a tough road, but definitely worth traveling.

Addendum: http://www.tuaw.com/2012/01/15/the-macbook-air-four-years-later/

I just don’t understand why the idea of web properties sponsored by advertising continues to be news. In fact, this quote from Alicia Eler from RWW sums it up pretty well:

If you pay for a product, you’re a customer. If you don’t, you’re the product. On Facebook, you are the product.

It’s applicable to just about any product or service you do not pay for. From a product management standpoint, every feature introduced is intended to maximize the value of the product. If the relationship is such that you’re paying, then the product is attempting to improve its value to you.

Conversely, if you are the product, then value is being squeezed from you. Incidentally, the advertisers are the consumer in this model. If you think that’s nefarious or shady, try an alternative. And if you find that hard to swallow, remember that the juice presser that’s squeezing you is deliberately very hard to leave.

If Samsung is not willing to extend the life of its hardware for its customers, won’t those customers be less willing to buy Samsung again? Won’t those customers just be dissatisfied with Samsung? I’ve used customer satisfaction metrics in the past to qualify areas of improvement in live products, and with Samsung’s situation, I would do exactly the same thing. Based on this J.D. Power and Associates report issued only recently, performance and ease of operation were identified as two top customer satisfaction factors. And certainly, both can be addressed by both hardware and software changes.

Samsung probably weighed the ROI of developing new hardware as opposed to the ROI of developing a version of TouchWiz on top of Ice Cream Sandwich. Given that Samsung is supposed to have a competitive advantage in terms of hardware development, I can imagine that they concluded that making a new phone is simply more profitable than investing resources into extending the life of the Galaxy S. To me, that’s a shame since it leaves current customers in the cold.

Although the smartphone industry is still maturing, this move could be interpreted as the inflection point where commodification of Android hardware is simply standard operating procedure, in contrast to the typical Apple iOS hardware lifecycle. Considering that it’s easier and cheaper for consumers to realize value in new software on their existing phones as opposed to setting their apps, preferences, and data on a new phone, I wonder if this will be a hard lesson for Samsung to learn in short order.

When it comes to product development, a customer on your books is worth more than two who are just browsing around. And I’d bet that customer on your books will be more likely to buy from you again, as long as you don’t treat them like dirt.

Over the past 4 years, I’ve been taking on more responsibility for the family’s Thanksgiving meal. I really enjoy the process and think of it as a showcase for recipes and techniques that I hone throughout the year. That said, there’s about 30 minutes or so right before the guests arrive, where I become highly stressed. After all, there’s plenty to worry about in terms of the food presentation, how guests will actually be served, whether there’s enough wine and refreshments, and of course the inevitable stain on your shirt that you need to clean ASAP!

So this year, I thought I’d take a little time to rethink what I do during Thanksgiving and incorporate those lessons into my preparation next year. Who knows, you might be able to take something away too!

Lesson #1 – Prototype and prep your recipes as much as possible beforehand!

This year’s menu featured a range of dishes, which included:

1. corn consommé,
2. goat cheese tart with mixed salad greens,
3. short ribs with pumpkin puree,
4. roast pork fried rice,
5. a vegetable casserole,
6. whole roast turkey with sweet potato fries, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy, and
7. various desserts including an almond pear tart, mixed fruit, and cookies.

In my case, the corn consomme and the goat cheese tarts were all new for me. I left the corn consomme to the night before, and it took me nearly 2 hours to boil, strain, skim, and repeat without knowing whether it would turn out right. In contrast, I tested the goat cheese tarts a week ahead, and knew exactly how the recipe would react in the oven, where I might have made a mistake, and how to serve it. Knowing how your recipes would turn out definitely helps keep the stress down.

Lesson #2 – Keep your knives sharp and clean!

Good knives are crucial to helping you carve a turkey easily and quickly on Thanksgiving. In case you need a tutorial on doing it the right way, Alton Brown is a favorite reference with this Good Eats clip on YouTube. And of course, there’s plenty of other things you’ll need to chop, dice, and slice throughout your prep. Don’t forget the bandages too, for the occasional nick.

Lesson #3 – Time your dishes to be made the night before as much as possible.

Out of all the dishes listed above, not a single one needed to be made the day of Thanksgiving aside from the turkey! So why not make everything the night before? Save yourself the hot kitchen and focus on entertaining during Thanksgiving day.

Lesson #4 – Enlist good help!

I couldn’t possibly have done everything by myself, which includes plating, presentation, serving, bartending, and cleaning. And if anything, I was fortunate to focus on cooking alone. I am absolutely grateful to my helpers who took care of everything else!

Lesson #5 – If you don’t enjoy making Thanksgiving dinner, don’t do it!

I know I’ll do it again next year because I love cooking! But if you want a break from the heat, try rotating the responsibility to someone else and call it being the guest chef! It’s far easier to backseat cook, and serves as a source of pride for someone who thinks they can’t cook. You’ll be able to take it easy and help someone learn to cook at the same time!

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to reflect with friends and family about the fortunes of the past year. Happy holidays, dear reader!

As a product guy, minimum viable product is one important method with which to organize product development efforts, and to maximize the amount of benefit derived from scarce engineering, development, and management resources. In agile development circles, Product Owners work with the team to consciously choose to release “MVPs” frequently, or release a bunch of them together in an integrated package or manner. My take is that “minimum viable product” is the set of features that satisfy the core needs of your target champion audience and provides the team with the greatest return in both actionable feedback and revenue/revenue potential. More than one can go live at a time!

To work backwards a little, agile development and Scrum in particular derive big benefits from thinking in this manner. The reason being that minimum viable product first forces you to think about a set of features, functionality, and fixes that make sense together, and offer your users the greatest benefit. Then, once you arrange things into a bundle, you look for areas where it’s possible to make them bite-sized for the team to work with and to execute on. Let’s say that you end up with 3 minimal viable “products”; that may simply correlate to three distinct milestone dates throughout a calendar year. But not all of them have to go to market immediately, not all of them have to be released as soon as they’re individually done!

Oftentimes, the driving force for product people to tie one minimum viable product to a release is the urge to get something to market ASAP. I say that you ought to resist that urge with all your might! It’s not about the “smallest kernel of your core idea” but rather, how you help your team build a great product iteration that goes to market successfully. It is up to the product folks to exercise some discipline and patience about what exactly constitutes minimum viable product. Anticipating how your users will be delighted by a single button versus a single experience makes all the difference in the world.

In conclusion, for all you product folks out there: Minimum viable product is the set of features that satisfy the core needs of your target champion audience and provides the team with the greatest return in both actionable feedback and revenue/revenue potential. Bundle multiple MVPs if you think the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

There’s nothing like making something come to life, whether it’s a recipe, or a fine spirit, or a knife. As Made by Hand illustrates with these beautiful videos, there’s a value to one’s handmade work that isn’t just linked to a salary and health benefits. There is something more that’s been lost for nearly a generation of Americans, a sense of pride in their work. When someone else holds your results in their hands, savors the sensation and utility and beauty that only you could give it, that becomes another kind of benefit that we’ve lost in this age of knowledge work.

Go out and make something for someone, particularly this holiday season. I guarantee that you’ll find yourself fretting over the details, sweating the steps, and experiencing a smile on the other person’s face that’s uniquely, beautifully, and pridefully connected to your work.

It is particularly telling that Jeff Bezos is honest enough to state:

We don’t think of the Kindle Fire as a tablet. We think of it as a service.

At this point, Amazon’s not competing with Apple; Kindle Fire to iPad comparisons are oranges and apples (pun intended!). Amazon is instead pursuing its original intention all along, by taking on the entire digital media industry and making Amazon an indispensible, frictionless, and fast service provider to consumers everywhere.

I especially liked two points of his that related to build/iterate/innovate, which were:

• creating space vs. churning features, and
• iterative process – customer feedback

The first, “creating space vs. churning features,” is so relevant to today’s software products that need to scale. Build a simple product first, then layer on convenience and complexity as needed. In contrast, so many organizations end up trying to build in everything, and end up with products like Microsoft Word where so much was invested in every detail, with only a fraction of its capabilities being used.

The second, “iterative process – customer feedback” is so important to maintaining great products. Ultimately, any product that gets launched will inevitably get feedback. Two lessons that I’ve learned the hard way: first, set yourself up to measure everything about your users. And second, always leave room to reinvent the product. It’ll never be perfect the first time around, and frankly, using a combination of KPIs/quantitative data as well as observations in the field will be a huge source of innovation. There’s no such thing as “build it right the first time;” it’s really more like “build it good enough the first time, and be prepared to change.”