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| Home >> Index Pages >> Informational Pages >> Discount Computer Systems >> News >> Collection of Essays from Scholarship 2007 >> |
Jie Li- by Jie Li Essay titled "Cheat to win" certainly seemed inappropriate for scholarship application. Some readers would even pause for a second while staring at it. No, this is not to encourage people to be dishonest. Rather, the thesis is to "cheat" the dishonest rules imposed by others. Simply put: rapid success in computer technology business can be earned by breaking-rather than following-the antiquated rules of the establishment. After all, what separates the winners and the losers is the willingness to question, and challenge the rule that says: "You can't do it like that". Nintendo and Apple are both live example of "naughty rule breaker", who eventually succeeded. "Nintendo Wii console beats Sony PlayStation 3 in both sales and profit made." That was the news title nine months ago. "Almost one fourth of computer giant Apple's profit comes from sales of their MP3 players." Yes, MP3 Players! Though, as winners, they both cheated. Wii: 'Sony Pride' loses his way In the early morning of November 17 2006, thousands of Sony fans waited as much as 20 hours just to be the firsts to own a PS3 console. The price was boosted up to two thousand dollars on EBay. Compare to the Sony storm, Nintendo had a much quieter release. With not as many eyes laid on them, Wii was out in the market just a few days after. Sony seemed to have won the publicity, but soon, Wii's cool controller and fun play style attracted more gamers than any of its competitor and finally bypassed Xbox 360 in number console sold, and is now leading way. PS3 was heavily criticized for its price upon release: $400 for 20 GB console, as much as $600 for 60 GB. Only few knew, with blue-ray disc drive, NVIDIA RSX graphics chip, IBM cell processor equipped, Sony loses $306.85 per 20 GB console sold and $241.24 for 60 GB(1). While losing money selling the consoles, PS3 hoped to dominate the software market in the long run. Sony bet his all his chips on pretty graphics. With the success of Blizzard's World of Warcraft and Halo series, it seemed obvious that 3D motion and fascinating graphics is the thesis of the next generation gaming. What Sony did was certainly understandable. All games, video or computer, pretty graphic is always number one on producers' "must-achieve" list. "Graphic" seemed to be the "rule" at that moment. Nintendo on the other hand "cheated". They didn't take the path which all their competitors took. Instead of competing for visual effect, Wii offered affordability and innovation, and most important: enjoyment. Ironically, the focus of gaming in the pre-Wii era was anything but fun. You had to stare and grind your teeth at the screen to get anywhere. Wii certainly changed that. "Gaming is about entertainment!" Nintendo had that in mind when they designed the console. Sony underestimated the number of people who are willing to play golf in the living room swinging both arms-as appose to pressing the dull buttons while staring at real-like graphic. They are severely overestimating the "loyalty" of their fan base. All the great features added to PS3 didn't help Sony much attracting eye balls. They only raised the cost to a point only the extreme gamers are willing to go for. If Sony decided to cut back the cost on purchasing graphic chips and focus more on enjoyment of the game itself, it would have been a different story. Wii won the console war. They cheated! While the market is all about graphic, they teamed with "fun". Apple: Jobs' success isn't an accident Letting Steve Jobs go was probably the worst decision Apple has ever made. With stock price and market share falling to the bottom, they had to have him back in 1997. Four years after Steve sat on the CEO seat again, iPod was released. If computer technology was ever a platform, without a doubt, iPod placed Apple inc. right in the middle of the flash light. Chances are, yourself, or somebody you know, owns an iPod. Description of the popularity of iPod seems to be unnecessary. What rarely seen in the technology market is, hundreds of byproducts are invented in the purpose of serving one machine. With special designed case, lock, lap fan, mini mouth, reading light, notebook computer had the honor. Now there is iPod: iPod speakers, iPod cases, iPod screen protectors iPod adaptor is now an option on new car purchase. Must I remind you iPod is nothing, but a MP3 player? How is iPod so popular? Because Jobs cheated! The old-fashioned MP3 player is nothing but a MP3 player; it served one simple purpose: play music. It has buttons, and hopefully a screen to display the title of the song being played. It is more convenient than carrying around a CD player but capacity and battery life started to bug a few consumers. None of the companies targeted those as problems, as there are already excess number of producers in the market. Further improvement didn’t seem to be necessary. The "rule" for MP3 player market was: buttons, LCD screen display, a unique look hoping to attract eye ball of some people. The market was then "rinsed" when iPod came along. The first thing iPod did was to solve the capacity problem. Instead of placing an internal ram or using external a storage card, Apple placed a mini hard disc inside. That extended the capacity of a MP3 player to as much as 10,000 songs. (First and second generation iPod) Sum all the songs you, you parents and your grand parents know, you may not even come close to that number. By placing an internal rechargeable battery, another problem is out of the way. It certainly couldn't solve the battery life issue entirely, but a charger certainly offers much more variability and convenience compare to the AAAs. The most contribution of an internal rechargeable battery to the iPod is that it allows the size of an iPod to shrink significantly. The fourth generation iPod-nano is only 1/4 inches thick and the iPod-shuffle is the size of a thumb. Moreover, iPod also revolutionized the old-fashioned buttons to the new circle-like controller. The question comes to: who wouldn't want to own a MP3 player that has a fresh new look, only 1/4 inches thick, a cute screen, is controlled by slicing finger around the controller, and has album photo and personally picture storing function? Yes, Jobs too, cheated! While boring buttons and AAA batteries blocked the way, Jobs leaded apple to another path. There is something you haven't think of up to this point. We, the consumers are the ones being cheated on. Take a moment and look at some of the leading companies in the industry. Dell is nothing but putting together cheaply made parts and shipping to you. iPhone costs as much as hundreds of dollars to own while it barely carries any new technology. Wii grabbed the rope that was abandoned by the industry and used it as a weapon. iPod is nothing but a cute MP3 player. They made their products popular without even spending much time in the lab. The spirit of "cheating" is more about innovation than improvement. From this perspective, "idea" is the captain of computer technology industry, not technology itself. References: | Directron.com College Scholarship | Related Items: | Chris Covington | Cirrus Foroughi | Jack Salamanchuk | Jennifer Furtado | Jennifer Story-Salacup | Maria Khan | Paul Frederick | Shawna Harpole | Steven Li | Veronica Muo | |
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