Sierra Missed

Have you ever read a fitness magazine? Maybe not. This has to be the silliest magazines sold today. Ostensibly, the magazine is about how to stay fit and suggests exercises every month. But really, is any of that stuff at all topical? Anything exercise they suggest today they could have suggested last year, and they could have suggested the next year.

Ah, but aren't, say cooking magazines like that too? Sure, but there are just a gazillion recipes out there, far more than the total number of exercises that can be covered. An exercise magazine is literally compelled to repeat itself over and over and over. In the end, you're better off getting a book.

Kathy Sierra's blog is a one-note blog. She just finds more and more ways to say the same thing, namely, she's into people trying to get users to "kick ass". She tells people that they must make products that users are passionate about. She first got her start (well, at least, popularly) in the Head First Java, and then co-authoring many of the other Head First series.

To the novice, these books look like what people imagine dummies books to look like. Lots of pictures, funny fonts, and so forth. The reality is most dummies look nothing like this. Pick one up, and they look simply like books.

If anything, what "Head First" books do is to go through examples in laborious detail, yet do not spare details just because it's "hard". They assume a bright reader, who is curious about how this works and how that works, rather than a reader who's an idiot.

To be fair, I like the Head First books, but I can't stand Kathy's Blog. Part of the problem, no, the entire problem is that it peddles in generalities.

At one point, I'm sure she gushed on the IPod design. Joel Spolsky is writing a series of articles on great design. He, too, points to the IPod. But even he points out that there are MP3 players out there that are smaller, cheaper, hold more, process more data, not as prone to scratch or get smudged like IPods. And yet, IPods still dominate the market.

My theory is that Apple does make good stuff, but they have the Apple mystique. They've built an image, from their distinctive ads, to their easy-to-use ITunes (which is perhaps far better than the IPod itself) to things that have come around it, such as podcasting (which Apple didn't invent, and in fact, took a while to completely embrace).

Kathy's approach is much more cheerleader, in this respect. In Kathy's world, cool stuff is naturally good. She doesn't say bad things, and try to push some less well known product, and she jumps on the Microsoft bash wagon. If MS doesn't "kick ass", it may simply be that so many people hate MS, and it's just way too tough to deal with that kind of negative word-of-mouth. She should explain why people still buy PCs. After all, aren't Apples kick-ass? Apple users are certainly passionate. But how many people would rather be in the PC market?

I'd be far more impressed if she could come up with a product idea, and sell that in her kick-ass manner, and see how well it works. It reminds me of these Tony Robbins self-help sessions. After people attend, they are really excited. They believe they are on their way to success. Yet, I've heard of people who are essentially groupies. They attend his sermonizing as regular members, but can barely apply his message to real life.

Yes, I know, in an ideal world, we'd live with products that don't suck. And yet, passion costs. People who make nice things, things people care about, often sell them at a premium. And there's strategy too.

For example, IPod mini's came in several colors, right? But Apple doesn't like a deep product line. In particular, they didn't want the Nano to compete against the Mini, so they ditched the Mini. The nano's only come in two colors, black and white. What? Didn't people like all those colors?

Still, Jobs must know something, because these things sell like hotcakes (do hotcakes really sell?). And by introducing a new line every six months, you're guaranteed to have something out-of-date pretty quick. That should frustrate most people, no? And yet, it doesn't. They're willing to get in line and get a new IPod. Heck, I'm still sorely tempted to get a video IPod.

See, the problem with trying to convince people to sell kick-ass stuff is that so few companies can really do this. It's hard enough to get a good idea and then to sell that idea.

I'll "prove" this. Kathy should get a few folks, maybe college kids, and have them brainstorm some kick-ass ideas, and see how many fly (this could seriously be a replay of The Real World, when they decided the house members should come up with a business plan, and instead bickered about what they wanted to do, and ended up doing nothing. Not that surprising, since the cast is typically picked not for their ability to cooperate, but for their likelihood to create friction and kick some member out at some point).

If she does this, I'd be far, far, more interested in the blog that covers that. I wouldn't even mind if it was real successful. That would be just as interesting as a failure, though a failure would let people ask, why didn't this idea kick-ass?

Now, that, I'd say, is a kick-ass idea.