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Comment by doron | Hacker News Reader

"Clearly superior product" apparently require in the context of the market point 1, 2 to be present. Nevertheless your point is taken, and i agree with it overall.

All these issues of late, this pact, Facebook privacy, Apple Locks on products, hinge on the premise of an uncaring public as long it gets its fix of the day.

So many times you hear a commentator use the line "the regular user doesn't care". I saw many comments along that line on HN. And you can say this, because it is true, the public does not care.

consumers flocked to a locked relationship with ATT to get the iphone, few left facebook over its privacy issues, consumers will flock to get superior preferential access to the net via Droid's on Verizon wireless.

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Yeah, it's a clearly superior product for me because I haven't called tech support for about 17 years, that's why point 1 & 2 are utterly irrelevant to me.

And yes, the average end users just don't care, they don't understand, they don't think, they don't even want to, as entrepreneurs we already know this through our own experiences most likely, letalone needing to see it demonstrated writ large in this particular instance. Not having all the enabling features for the modern "consumer experience" equals poor market results, no matter the quality of the underlying product.

The problem is the lack of service starts right at the sales process rather than tech support. This is what a friend said about buying the Nexus One:

"Google really does have a TERRIBLE sales process. Firstly I meant to order a car dock with the first order. If you email them at all (including on your "order status") no one reads it -- based upon what category you choose they send you a stock response with zero way of escalating. So when I emailed saying "Could I add a dock to this order so I only get one shipping and one customs charge?" I instantly got the stock 'Nah go screw yourself' response claiming that their fulfillment is so super quick that it's impossible to make a change."

After hearing that, I think I'd rather get a nearly identical HTC phone from a local store where I can some recourse if something goes wrong.

I do agree that their sales, support, marketing are all not good. I'm just saying that on top of that you can see some engineer chanting mindlessly to himself "build it and they will come". It's like they focused only on the product itself and utterly disregarded the other components of the aforementioned 'consumer experience', and this resulted in a massive fail.

Would they have done better if they had focused on consumer experience a lot more? Almost definitely, but I think that's as far from their culture as it is for Microsoft to understand why an iPad is not just a PC in a new form factor. They just don't "get it" to use the common turn of phrase, I think maybe I didn't convey that so well because I'm sympathetic to the position and in the habit of dismissing the other components of the consumer experience myself.

> the average end users just don't care, they don't understand, they don't think, they don't even want to,

They shouldn't have to.

I'd say that's a debatable point. In the current market, I'd agree with you -- there are plenty of people willing to spoon feed consumers, so if you don't, you'll be left in the cold. Whether it's good for society's long-term prospects, however, is another matter. I believe that widespread apathy and general ignorance will be among the primary causes of the demise of western civilization.

Note, however, that I am not arguing against specialization. I'll be first in line to encourage people not to care too much about details in one area in order to focus on another, but if they don't care about anything, I take exception.

If they want to deal with the kind of organisation that focuses their efforts on making better products rather than handholding their customers, by definition, they have to.

They don't though, that's not news, we all get it, we all live in the same marketplace, and we all get used to that eventually and just deal with it. Participating in it doesn't mean we have to think it's a great thing, I think it says bad things about humanity as a whole personally.

Where do we draw the line? At what point is it permissible to suggest that someone should bother to show the slightest bit of interest in a product, technology, or field that they are becoming increasingly dependent on?

There are a lot of people that are dependent on their car, but don't know much more than how to turn the steering wheel and push the gas/brake pedals.

And that's exactly the way it should be.

True (I knew that would come up). But I don't need to know how TCP/IP works to write a web page. Likewise, most people know how to put gas in their car, and some can change their oil, antifreeze and tires. There's a difference between zero-knowledge, and working knowledge.

I am not quite sure at what points these types of knowledge are equivalent.

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