“I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left. You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable.” Steve Jobs
“Wi-Fi doesn’t stand for anything. It is not an acronym. There is no meaning. Wi-Fi and the ying yang style logo were invented by Interbrand. We hired Interbrand to come up with the name and logo that we could use for our interoperability seal and marketing efforts. We needed something that was a little catchier than ‘IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence’. Interbrand created ‘Prozac’, ‘Compaq’, ‘oneworld’, ‘Imation’ and many other brand names that you have heard of… The only reason that you hear anything about ‘Wireless Fidelity’ is some of my colleagues in the group were afraid. They didn’t understand branding or marketing. They could not imagine using the name ‘Wi-Fi’ without having some sort of literal explanation.” Phil Belanger, founding member of the Wi-Fi Alliance
“I had a guy come up to me, in my face, saying, ‘You think you’re so cool? You’re not cool’ and I’m saying to him, ‘Dude, it’s a commercial.’ ” Justin Long, on playing the slacker-hip Apple Mac guy to John Hodgman’s nerdy PC guy
“We find that pretty arrogant. They don’t decide. We don’t decide. Gamers decide.” Xbox Canada’s Jason Anderson, on Sony’s E3 proclamation of “Sony decides when the next generation begins”
“Earlier this week, Chicago Tribune quoted Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris as saying iPods have a relatively low failure rate and that they are designed to last ‘four years.’ However, Kerris in a statement to the iLounge on Friday said she was misquoted. The Apple spokeswoman said she told the reporter that the iPod was designed to last ‘for years,’ not ‘four years.’” AppleInsider
“In a world where strategy is a commodity, creativity becomes the vital factor from which value flows. When everyone can think strategically about everything, the locus of value creation shifts from out-thinking everyone to out-creating them… Now, we see the hints of the revolution everywhere—from the death of mass culture/blockbusters, to the rise of free culture, to the exploding investment in innovation and design, to the flight of capital away from the US. I think it is going to create enormous challenges for firms—challenges which can’t be answered by thinking strategically; but can only be faced by thinking creatively.” Bubblegeneration
“GM boss Rick Wagoner’s statement about GM’s problems is ridiculous. He claims that labor, pensions, and health care are bigger issues than product. How can a car company deal with those issues if they don’t sell cars people want? How hard is this? Cadillac is doing great. Chevy needs to make rear-drive Impalas, Monte Carlos, and a new Camaro and drop the Cobalt an inch closer to the ground. Pontiac needs a GTO that looks like one, alongside the Solstice, and to never market a new model on “Oprah” again. Buick and Saturn need to disappear, and Saab and Hummer need to go somewhere else. If everyone reading this magazine already knows this, why doesn’t GM?” Motor Trend reader Joe Bernard, in a letter to the editors
“The Great Commission is not a marketing manifesto.” John MacArthur
“This is where MySpace Careers comes to the rescue. For a minimal fee you can get as many teenagers as you need to sit at your office, on your computers and abuse your bandwidth with a constant stream of IMs, chats, profile comments and YouTube videos. Imagine the look on that VC when he sees all that industrious busy making!” Supr.c.ilio.us, on MySpace’s new job search website
“Many years ago, one mustard dominated the supermarket shelves: French’s… It was a yellow mustard, made from ground white mustard seed with turmeric and vinegar, which gave it a mild, slightly metallic taste. If you looked hard in the grocery store, you might find something in the specialty-foods section called Grey Poupon, which was Dijon mustard, made from the more pungent brown mustard seed… Then one day the Heublein Company, which owned Grey Poupon, discovered something remarkable: if you gave people a mustard taste test, a significant number had only to try Grey Poupon once to switch from yellow mustard. In the food world that almost never happens; even among the most successful food brands, only about one in a hundred have that kind of conversion rate. Grey Poupon was magic.” Malcom Gladwell, on the “Ketchup Conundrum”