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Brick No158: The Most Important One-Thousandth
By Matt Weston, Thursday 1 September 2005 Exhibits A, B and C Anyone who knows me knows I'm an Apple junkie. I've got a Powerbook and an iPod to prove it. And - Exhibit C - a till receipt from the Apple Store, Regent St, last Tuesday: 1 x Mac OS Tiger [probably unnecessary update of operating system], 1 x wireless mouse [third mouse in less than two years], 1 x Airport Express [bit of kit that lets me play songs wirelessly, amongst other things]. And, as an Apple junkie, I often wonder what makes people like me want to buy - again, and again, and again . . . The most important one-thousandth This might be a third-hand story, but it's good. It's an excerpt from a recent interview with John Gruber, long-time commentator on all things Apple. Here, John is talking about Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple: "I think Jobs is keenly aware of the importance of first impressions. Let's say you buy a new computer and use it for three years. That's about 1,000 days. Your first-run experience - the experience you encounter the first time you boot the machine after taking it out of the box - therefore constitutes about one-thousandth of your entire experience with the machine. "I think that's the sort of logic that has driven most companies not to put that much effort into designing the first-run user interface - it's only going to happen once, and if it isn't smooth, so what? "Whereas I think Jobs looks at the first-run experience and thinks, it may only be one-thousandth of a user's overall experience with the machine, but it's the most important one-thousandth, because it's the first one-thousandth, and it sets their expectations and initial impression." Note: I said it was a third-hand story. The full interview is over at GUIdebook But it was originally pointed my way by Matt Linderman at 37 Signals. Some great reader comments at the foot of Matt's piece, including a Jobs claim that, by shaving 10 seconds off boot times, Apple can save a dozen lives a year. Of course, John Gruber is right about Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs is right about the importance of first impressions. And yes, that first one-thousandth is the most important one-thousandth. Not just for Apple but for you and I. It's hard to name a company with more long-term customer loyalty (or more junkies) than Apple. And maybe it's wholly counterintuitive, but that long-term loyalty IS sealed-in in the first one-thousandth of a customer's overall experience: the first day you install a new operating system; the first hour you use your new iMac; the first time you rotate the wheel on an iPod. (Apple knows this. That's why the Regent St store - Apple's 99th - is more demo than shop. At the Apple Store, anyone can play for any length of time on any Apple product. You get to experience that first one-thousandth before you buy.) Remember to sign up: back to top |
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