> The original iPhone was great on day one. It couldn’t do as much as today’s iPhone, but it performed its feature-set extremely well. There were almost no rough edges or unpolished areas in its hardware or software, and nearly everything seemed justifiable, well conceived, and well executed.
> Apple tends to do that a lot. It’s deeply ingrained in their culture, priorities, and product development practices. In brief, their philosophy seems to be to ship only what’s great and leave out the rest. That’s why, instead of having a bad copy-and-paste implementation for the iPhone’s first two years, we just didn’t have one at all.
Yes, it’s very important to improve and iterate your designs. But on day one you either believe you have a great product (of any size) or you don’t. Often the temptation to build a “platform” or “system” is so strong that you build a skeleton of that vision and fill in the gaps with things that you know aren’t great. That makes for a patchwork product that doesn’t excite anyone.
Instead, do something smaller that’s great from day one. Brandon Schauer’s “[cake model of product strategy](http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandonschauer/2879231007/)” is a great depiction of this; instead of spending your first 2 launches on undesirable and possibly unnecessary skeletons, build a small version that’s desirable immediately:
Another good manta is 37signals’ “[Build half a product, not a half-ass product](http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch05_Half_Not_Half_Assed.php)”.
DropCopy is a cool utility to drag and drop files to other computers on your network (for instance, while sitting next to someone and frustrated about emailing files to each other). Also, feels like magic.
Fascinating discovery of the day, over Chinese food with a group in Lagos: the most popular electric generator here is called the “I betta pass my neighbour“, alluding to the fact that having one propels you socially above your neighbour who has none. A uniquely Nigerian take on “[keeping up with the Joneses](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up_with_the_Joneses)”.
You can also apparently direct your exhaust to spew on their house instead of yours.
That is, addiction in general and information/Internet addiction in particular.
> The world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago. And unless the forms of technological progress that produced these things are subject to different laws than technological progress in general, the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 40…
> My latest trick is taking long hikes. I used to think running was a better form of exercise than hiking because it took less time. Now the slowness of hiking seems an advantage, because the longer I spend on the trail, the longer I have to think without interruption…
> We’ll increasingly be defined by what we say no to.
I love [this contest idea](http://designforthefirstworld.com/):
> Dx1W is a competition for designers, artists, scientists, makers and thinkers in developing countries to provide solutions for First World problems.
While my lovely wife works tirelessly to help the rest of the world develop, I’m working in the “first world” to make sure there’s a worthwhile and sustainable lifestyle for them when they arrive. The current example we’re setting in the U.S. (low rankings on [health](http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html), [happiness](http://www.happyplanetindex.org/explore/global/index.html), and [world respect](http://www.scribd.com/doc/24369375/Reputation-Institute-Country-Rep-2009-Complimentary-Report)) doesn’t seem like a worthy goal for the rest of the world.
Efforts like [Design for the Other 90%](http://other90.cooperhewitt.org/) are valuable and important, but I love that designers from that 90% are trying to help us too.
