Nostalgia for iconic products

Hi frens,

As you grow older, you’ll come to realize that good things don’t always last in the market.

A product exists on the market for multiple factors. It's not just because usability, not just marketing, not just design, not just customer support, etc.

If capitalism makes the product possible, it often expects profit returns within some time. If rich people devoted to some charities, it can last for ages.

We as product builders, often make fun of the experience that, the product quality is getting worse while the sales are growing.

People rarely know how to appreciate the inner quality of a product unless being a builder, too, especially in a mass consumer market.

I remembered Windows 98, playing around with Regedit to modify system advanced settings (which may broke the system lol). The experience ultimately led me to desktop Linux. A lot more to play with.

I remembered early pre-iOS 7, beautiful though lacking some core functions, however complimented by flourishing third party apps and jailbroken tools. I still have one iPad mini 1st generation for iOS 6.

I remembered Nokia 1520 yellow, an iconic Lumia design. Unbelievable phone camera at that time. It wasn’t affordable to me, but I managed to borrow one for a few days. Nokia Lumia series came out too late, with Windows Phone system design ahead of its time, but so bad for third party developers because they dropped backward compatibility.

I remembered how my Apple Watch (the true 1st generation) worked, the unprecedented buying and unboxing experience of Apple products. Almost everything has changed since then. Care and attention to details have turned into boring business.

And yet, I’ve learned not to be a perfectionist in a specific way, not too much nostalgic, but to make a product sustainable.

The wild times have gone. I have changed as well. The best is yet to come.

Your friend,

Denken

P.S. The photo is licensed from N i c o l an under CC BY 2.0.