frog on apple and bloomberg
An unplanned companion to Tim O’Reilly’s piece this morning is Tim Leberecht’s post at Frog Design design mind blog comparing Apple and Bloomberg as “Old Champions in the New Economy.”
Apple and Bloomberg, in some ways, are the antidotes to a marketplace that – propelled by the forces of the Social Web – is becoming increasingly atomized, hyper-distributed, open, and transparent. Secrecy, compliance, top-down hierarchies, rigid communication policies, and walled gardens are characteristics that may be somewhat outdated in this era, and yet they seem to be the very cornerstones of Apple’s and Bloomberg’s success as the two firms thrive as the surprise champions of their respective categories.
Worth reading in full, though what’s surprisingly missing in the post is a stronger recognition that both companies have built their reputations on nailing the user experience. Back in the mid-nineties when everyone thought Bloomberg was ripe for being picked off by “the web,” I remember talking to one trader who basically told me that I could just try to pry his Bloomberg terminal from his cold, dead hands.