limericks and authenticity

Nadyne Richmond

17 Feb 2006 1:37 PM

Comments 3

Aside from developers, designers, technical writers, and (one hopes) a usability girl or two, Apple's got a poet on staff:

There once was a user that whined
his existing OS was so blind
he'd do better to pirate
an OS that ran great
but found his hardware declined.

Well, maybe one who writes limericks shouldn't be labelled a poet, but that's a philosophical discussion that I'm not going to get into. Regardless of what you call the person who wrote it, the limerick is buried in the new MacTels, and someone found it this week.

One thing that Apple has a fundamental understanding of is building hardware and software that's authentic. They don't try to always be ultra-professional, because they know that ultra-professional comes across as ultra-stuffy. So Apple puts in little touches like this, and people feel like Apple is more real when they find it. It doesn't take away from the polish that Apple puts into their products, it just makes them a bit easier to love.

This is a lesson that many companies need to learn. People want to know that there's really someone behind the curtain. Easter eggs and little hidden messages like this make people smile. It makes your users feel more connected to what they're using. How is that not a good thing?

Apple, UX

Comments

Larry Osterman [MSFT]

17 Feb 2006 3:20 PM

nadyne, http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/10/21/483608.aspx

What does Apple do when the CIO of a 500 company calls them up and informs them that he's canceling his order of 10,000 iMacs because he doesn't know how many other hidden features are hidden in their product.

It may make people smile, but if those smiles cost you hundreds of millions of dollars, are they worth it?
Nadyne Richmond

17 Feb 2006 3:51 PM

Extreme hypothetical examples are only extreme and hypothetical.

My focus is on the user experience, how the user interacts with their hardware and software. I look at how users engage with their products. Easter eggs make for a more engaging experience. I'm well aware that these can go over-the-top, or can introduce additional bugs or security holes; I'm even aware that our own employer has run into this problem more than once in its history. That doesn't make the concept of easter eggs a bad one. There's a baby in that bathwater.
John C. Welch

17 Feb 2006 11:36 PM

I dunno Larry, but I don't think that Microsoft is that worried about it, considering how long Excel had a *Flight Simulator* in it, and unfixed calc bugs.

That was at least two versions worth. So obviously Microsoft has no moral high ground here, and it's obviously not a real world problem.

Adobe's burping cat in Photoshop 4 or 5 didn't give anyone the irrits, as they sold millions of copies in that time frame.

So now we have at least one computer maker and two very large ISVs that didn't seem to be hurt by them. Hmm...

go ahead, mac my day

limericks and authenticity

limericks and authenticity