If you showed TiVo to Steve Jobs, his head would explode¹

Last weeks episode of Hypercritical featured a truly epic rant by John Siracusa about the TiVo Premier Elite. I listened to it this morning and thought it was really great. Apart from the pure amusement of hearing someone complain so passionately that you as a listener fear that he will get a brain aneurism, it also contained a pass about the attention to details, which he did not elaborate on, but that I found really interesting and important.

Part of the rant was about the menus on the TiVo. Apparently² previously they haven’t been high definition, even though previous devices had been HD devices. In the Premier Elite version this was said to be fixed, but some lower level menus still contained standard definition graphics. This is the kind of faulty detail that most people will live with but that drives obsessive perfectionists list Siracusa insane. When asked by Dan Benjamin to guess why TiVo hadn’t bothered to fix something like this, Siracusa thought that it likely was because some number cruncher had decided that it would give enough return on investment to justify the efforts spent. It was in this context that he said the thing about Jobs’s head explode.

I think he really nailed what separates a few companies (among them Apple) from the rest; the attention to all those tiny details that in themselves will not provide enough of an improvement of the product to get sufficiently more revenue to justify the investment. It is however, in my humble opinion, this meticulous work that result in a product that ”just works” of feels so much more smother, better and is simply joyous to use. The result from all these small improvements is so much bigger than the sum of them. And, as proved by Apple, the return on investment can be tremendous in the long run if you stick to it.

The lesson I will take from this is to always sweat the details, keep pushing the good or workable to excellent. That is the only way to accomplish something truly amazing, whether it is a piece of computer hardware, a web site or a lecture.

Anyway, listened to Hypercritical #59 for some great entertainment and an important lesson and, most importantly, pay attention to the details as well as the whole in your work and you will output greater results.

On March 7 Apple is hosting a press event. The invitation makes it pretty clear that the event will be about the iPad 3. I will not rehash the rumors about retina display etc. since they are already all over the internet, but I will make some other predictions/guesses/wishes.¹

According to sources (as well as Apple Store stock counters), the current Apple TV is becoming increasingly sparse at stores around the country, with most locations reporting no availability at all right now. More tellingly, at all of the stores where the device is out of stock, availability is listed as starting on or after March 7th²

So it’s very possible that the Apple TV will get some sort of update at the event.³ To this, add the following news from last week:

CHIPMAKER Intel is finally set to launch its Xeon E5 chips next week with server and workstation vendors keen to show it isn’t going to be a paper launch and that chips are already in the channel.⁴

As far as I know, this is the most likely chip to be used in the next generation Mac Pro and the very reason why the Pro hasn’t been updated for a long, long time. ”Next week” coincides well with the March 7 event, so maybe the Mac Pro will actually get some keynote time.

One of the features advertised for OS X Mountain Lion is AirPlay. What if the event reveals something new about this were you will be able to stream both ways between Macs, Apple TVs and iPads? Or maybe some other form of integration between the pro apps and Mac Pro and the Apple TV. I would very much like the ability to stream from my computer to my iPad, as well as the other way around.

Actually showing a new Mac Pro at the event would be a great move since I know a lot of people is beginning to doubt Apple’s devotion to the pro market, in part because the Mac Pro never gets any updates or press event time and in part because of the ”consumerification” of Final Cut (X). I think and hope that this is not the case. It’s very possible that Job’s Apple was ready to axe the Mac Pro, but that Cook’s Apple has other priorities. The pro market may not be as lucrative as the consumer market, but my gut feeling is that having the pros on your side is great marketing to bring more consumers in.