Megahertz wars. Err... what wars?

It occured to me today, that some six, seven years ago big part of computer marketing was the speed of processor, expressed in MHz. It used to be a really big thing how fast your processor is. Now, this is gone.

I started to wonder why and here are some thoughts:

1. Processor speeds ventured into gigahertz territory, and maybe for some unknown reason, gigahertz doesn't sound so cool as it's mega brethren.

2. "Apple" finally succeeded in convincing general public, that processor speeds aren't that important. That was time when Macs were still running PowerPC processors, which were slower than their "Intel" counterparts. Irony is, that for some time now "Apple" is using "Intel" processors as well.

3. Or, most likely, computers have very much infiltrated the life of mainstream public. Fancy terms like "megahertz" doesn't mean anything to them and are difficult to remember. There are more important things like design, brand or color.

I suspect this should happen with any advanced technology. First it's marketed through technological advancement, but any tech advance "commodizes" over time and in the end it's always down to what color the stuff is.

Guilty as charged

Seth Godin has a post in his blog, which strikes a chord. The key phrase is:

When in doubt, challenge the strategy, not the tactics.

Guilty as charged, Seth. Too many times when recieving a brief, for instance, and feeling that something is wrong, i've started to nitpick the details, but failing to see the bigger picture. I'll try to remember this.

Cheap luxus

Spotted today, when coming to work. The white sign says: "Sale - gold for 12 Ls a gram". The yellow line in latvian: "Gold can't be cheaper". 

The guy or gal who decided to put such signs out isn't really good with psychology, is she? I mean, why do you buy gold? Because it's expensive! Saying "Discount jewellery" is the same as trying to sell Roll's Royces, using 10% off as an argument.

Disability discrimination

I'm bad at olfaction. Which is a complicated way of saying that i have a quite bad sense of smell. It's most obvious when something stinks: people start to wince and only after a minute i say "yeah, there's a hint of daisies in the air". It's a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing is i can't be easily bothered with bad smells. Bad thing is - i might die in a fire accident, since i won't sniff the smoke fast enough. Which makes me sort of a disabled person: i'm limited in some way. So the question is, why there are no invalidity group for people with olfaction problems, as there are for people with hearing or seeing problems?

Prepare to meet thy end

Apparently marketers are missing out on the possibility to make some money on the fear of end of the world. "End of the world", of course, is the launch of LHC today, that, as some believe, may create a black hole which will swallow the planet. Don't you think end of the world should be a nice motivation to by sports cars, jewellery, expensive meals, maybe even yachts? 

Imagine a picture of confident male in his 40-ties, sitting in RollsRoyce, headline above: "No better way to meet thy maker".

Input = output

Russian designer Artemi Lebedev writes in his site, that he believes design is solving of the task. Therefore, he implies, you shall never discuss the design itself. What you should and must discuss is whether the task is solved.

Very clear. Just one tiny detail. What it requires is that the task is set precisely and to the point. And that is often overlooked by clients and designers themselves.

Incompetence

Another telecom company sent me the agreement today, to fill in our company details. What the girl sent was a real agreement with real details in, INCLUDING THE BLOODY PASSWORD of that company.

Now what can we do? There are only three wireless telecom companies around, first is this one, second has a bloody ugly logo, and last one is lithuanian...

Walk the walk

A telecommunications company which praises itself as being high tech and connected and all that, and doesn't recieve service application from their webpage? There's something wrong with that.

why can you edit the message but can't delete the entire post?