[Image source]

There are only two ways to catch up a “market leader”:

1. the leader makes very bad decisions that eventually comes back to haunt him and leaves him vulnerable.

or

2. you buy a startup or small company that has the innovation, but lacks the resources, giving you a better possibility of catching up.

Either is very hard, just look at Microsoft. Vista really sucked, but still they are the “market leader” operating systems. Or see at Google, they bought Android and see where they are today, still on the hunt for iPhone and trying to be the dominant mobile platform.

So, what to do? Stop playing the game of others and play your own. The catch game is like gambling in a Vegas casino, you will win enough to continue betting, but will never win against the house or break even. Do something different, which makes you the leader since you are the first to come up with it.

For example, Asus and the netbooks (eventually everybody was able to catch up). More interesting, instead of trying to play catch-up, Apple did something different, the iPad, which is a device that is between the tablet, eBook reader and netbook.

Another example is the Puma Phone, just freaking cool stuff.

At the end of the day is like convincing people to not follow the conventional patch and follow, therefore making you the leader.

It was reported on monday by notebookreview.com: “Asus shows off revolutionary new dual-display concept notebook”.

Asus concept (source notebookreview.com)

My question is: how come it wasn’t revolutionary when One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) announced a very similar concept almost a year ago, called the OLPC XO-2.

Actually the the one by OLPC look cooler than the Asus one.

I guess the editor at notebookreview was quoting Asus because is how they made the announcement according to this news piece.

It’s funny how much the words revolutionary, unique, special and first of its kind, are used today. Correct if I’m wrong, but the last time a product launch that lived to its hype of calling it revolutionary was the iPhone. Even if its not perfect, it changed the industry. Other examples:

• the Asus Eee was revolutionary the notebook industry, what manufacturer doesn’t produce netbooks,
• the Wii was revolutionized the gamming industry by producing a console appealing to non gamers,
• Guitar Hero, not sure about it but hell it changed how we look at music and games

However, Asus dual-screen is not, you can’t call it revolutionary when somebody already has published the same concept.

Sometimes we try to impress other so much, that the only ones that are impress are ourselves. I guess the lasting impressions are those that don’t seek to impress.

Originally this was the title of this post:

Removing your battery from your MacBook, will decrease its performance.. So what?”

I still feel the same, however I changed my mind, when thought about it from a broader point of view. If your laptop, either made by Apple, Asus, Sony, HP, Dell, slews of the performance of the CPU if its ONLY running on the power (no battery), do you care? In my case it depends, for a few it might be important, but most users might not care. As its stated in “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum“, its better to make 20% happy, than trying to satisfy everybody. More on this later…

It is reported that “Apple notebooks take huge performance hit with battery” and Apple apparently acknowledge this some time ago. After pondering on it, I got to a conclusion: so what and who cares? Is this important to most Mac owners ? My guess is that the majority will care less, what they care about is that their laptop works, in such way that they don’t have to think about what is going on under the hood. They don’t even want to think about the hood, they just want to concentrate in their books, designs, emails, art, etc. , they want to be able to create and worry about other thing and not the pains sometimes one has to suffer with computers.

Looking more into the the reduction in performance, it seems  logical, because one of the main parts of the device is not connected to it, meditate about it. Take cars for example, your car can run without a battery, but will it start? Will you be able to play some music on the stereo? Its all about the tradeoff, you give something, but you get something else: trade. Expanding more on the car example, will it be great if your car will calculate how many kilometers were left, when you are bellow one third of the full tank. Even better if it will ask me if I will like to go into “gas saver mode”, while detecting that you haven’t gone over 50 km in the last 10 minutes. It could be possible, but will complicate things more, making the care more robust and rise the cost for: tradeoff.

Here is clear example about tradeoff Wii vs Play Station 3

Its interesting to read the comments in the post mentioned above, how this is not news, talk about tradeoff or criticized Apple decisions. Here is little secret: if you don’t like it, don’t buy it, if you don’t like Apple buy another thing. I don’t like them that is why I own a “Dell From Hell” XPS 1330. I’m satisfy with it, I love the fact that has a small adapter (as MacBook). I understand when I need full power and brightness in the screen and when I need 4 hours of battery, and I appreciate the freedom of choice. It doesn’t run hot because it has a 5400 rpm and integrated video card, I don’t need more because I don’t play games. I used to have 17in, 10 pound monster, with a 2 pound power adapter. I was giving up something that now I value more than the value of having everything. I want mobility, portability, comfort. I identified that new value and decided to trade for it.

Dell from Hell – source

Back to making 20% happy: that is why Apple does best, he makes them really happy. If you think Apple design decisions are stupid, then Apple is not designing for you, is for others that find their products worth the so called “premium”. I don’t like their products, but doesn’t mean they make crappy ones, its just not for me (or maybe you). Someday this might change, like when comfort became more value than power, in the meantime I will continue to learn from Apple, understand their customers and have fun posting about it.