Thanks perhaps to the economy, or what I was doing while in each location over the past two weeks, my visits to Seattle and Hawaii felt more like work than vacation time. But I did have a few free moments to think about where iLounge should be going in the future, and where the iPod and iPhone are and will be going forward.
Over the past three or four years, we have collectively watched as Apple’s devices—arguably pinnacles of design and thoughtfulness, albeit imperfect ones—have been surrounded by tons of garbage. The first wave was in poorly made cases and chargers; the second in me-too, OEM speakers and electronics; today, the third is in piles and piles of forgettable, demo-quality applications.
Behind the scenes, hundreds or thousands of iPod and iPhone developers are now praying for your attention and your dollars, hoping that you will help them become millionaires or multimillionaires at a time when the global economy is in frightening shape. It is a koi pond, but overloaded with fish.
Back when the iPod had few accessories, covering virtually everything seemed to be a good idea. But after the first wave or two of garbage began to flood our offices, we decided that we were not going to give equal time to everything out there; merit would become a key criterion for coverage, and junk would begin to disappear from our pages.
Amongst other things, we created iDesign to focus on the industry’s best practices, and started to ban companies from coverage if they engaged in shady marketing practices to our readers, like posting anonymous comments praising their own products. We also started booting obnoxious commenters rather than letting them ruin the party for everyone else.
Now, a similar reconsideration of the iPod and iPhone worlds is in order, and I’m in the process of determining what will and won’t be a part of iLounge’s coverage going forward. We’re preparing to bring on a new editor in the very near future, and it would help to know what you’d like to see so that we can plan our future coverage accordingly.
