Steve Jobs despre ce vrea publicul

Azi se lansează noul iPhone. N-am avut niciodată unul, not an Apple man myself, dar povestea procesului de creație a primului iPhone e captivantă. E probabil si prima dată cand cineva a pus cuvintele superstar si engineers unul lângă altul:

Instead, Forstall had to make a strange pitch to superstar engineers in different parts of the company: “We’re starting a new project,” he’d tell them. “It’s so secret I can’t even tell you what that project is. I can’t tell you who you will work for…. What I can tell you is that if you accept this project … you will work nights, you will work weekends, probably for a number of years.

Nu sunt nici un fan al lui Jobs care, post-mortem, pare să fi devenit eroul unei generații întregi de yuppies. Dar e clar că omul a avut clarviziune și a intuit mai bine decât oricine ce vrea publicul:

Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘if I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.

Și un adevăr deprimant pe care abia acum începem să-l înțelegem:

When you’re young, you look at television and think: “There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down”. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.

Sursa foto: Flickr, superstrikertwo.

Cealaltă Olimpiadă

Adrian Georgescu despre eroii nevăzuți:

E drept, la început, ciotul, cu magnetismul lui tragic, îţi suge privirea. Apoi, observi că trupul s-a regrupat, asemenea unei armate de asalt care a suferit o înfrângere, iar toţi oştenii execută o misterioasă mişcare prin care vin în sprijinul secţiunii distruse. După câteva minute, acolo unde vedeai dizabilitatea începi să vezi abilitatea, acea putere care mişcă munţii din loc. Nicăieri nu e atât de vădită această valenţă de regenerare şi de căutare a sportului: te lupţi cu celălalt spre a te găsi pe tine.

Sportul face bine la suflet

Una din șmecheriile pe care le aduce anglofilul 2.0 e că recomandările sunt acum grupate și actualizate într-o rubrică din sidebarul din dreapta căreia i-am zis “Revista presei”. E felul meu de a da mai departe articolele mișto pe care le citesc de-a lungul zilei.

Dar câteodată dau peste un articol atât de bun încât parcă e păcat să-l înghesui acolo.

După moartea mamei, Martin Samuel scrie despre felul în care sportul face întunecimea unei tragedii măcar un pic mai suportabilă. Un articol sincer și emoționant, care te lasă cu un nod în gât:

Maybe you know someone. And, if you do, maybe you are taking small pleasure from whatever gets you high: the concertos of Rachmaninov, the films of Humphrey Bogart, a good play on Radio 4. But us, in our house, we like sport. We like watching it, we like playing it, we like arguing about it. And while sport won’t save a person from metastasizing tumours, it can perhaps save those in the vicinity. It can, for a moment, occupy their minds or lift their souls.

Fotbalul e un lucru trivial, in the grand scheme of things. Dar când vă mai întreabă cineva ce e așa de interesant la 22 de bezmetici care fug după o minge, trimiteți-l la articolul ăsta.

Sursa foto: Flickr, eviltomthai.

Ain’t no school like the old school

Două anecdote din ultimul număr Champions despre doi fotbaliști de modă veche:

Javier Zanetti: When I signed my contract, they made me choose a car. I picked up a BMW, but the day before my first training session, I felt strange. So I phoned [Inter captain] Giuseppe Bergomi and asked him if it was OK that I show up in a BMW. I didn’t want to send the wrong message to my new team-mates. But when I arrived, I realised my car was the ugliest in the whole parking lot! And I felt much better.

In a scene right out of a 1960s spy comedy, one of these agents [securist ungur] tracked Puskas to a casino in the German spa resort of Baden-Baden. The agent was such a bad gambler that Puskas, taking pity on him, gave him some cash to keep going. In his report, the agent notes: “I received a lot of money from him and I found it a bit uncomfortable.”

They don’t make ’em like this anymore. Cel mai mult imi place expresia lui Zanetti – “they made me choose a car”.

Sursa foto: Flickr, tokaigabor.