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Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

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Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#51

Post by angus77 »

wh-uws wrote: post #36
dantheman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Nintendo's success primarily has to do with them employing one of, if not, the best game designers that has ever lived - Shigeru Miyamoto. By trusting and empowering him they are able to have taste, just as Jobs's taste defined Apple, Miyamoto's defines Nintendo.

With my decidedly limited knowledge of Japanese tech out outside of videogames and some phones, I would say Shigeru is about as close as Japan has to a Steve Jobs

Except that most people (even Japanese people) don't know his name.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#52

Post by tuppy »

shioyama wrote: post #45
tuppy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem which many have mentioned here and elsewhere is that while Japan is unrivalled in craftsmanship ("monozukuri") -- making physical things -- exactly the opposite is true when it comes to "unphysical" things like software. This is something I do not understand. Why is there a cultural aversion to creating beautiful software? As an example, Honda has some of the most beautifully designed interiors in the au…

Have you looked at Japanese websites? Most of them have pretty terrible design/UI. It's the same thing. My take on this is that you have to look more broadly to understand the tendency for cluttered design in Japanese interfaces. Walk around a small neighbourhood in Tokyo and you'll see how cluttered the layout is. On small "roji" (back alleyways), Japanese like to stack potted plants outside their front doors in a p…

I'm baffled because historically, Japan is all about using limitation to great effect. In terms of food, art, language (is there a more contextual language?), and engineering, Japan very much has an island-nation use-limited-resources-and-achieve-great-things approach.

The website thing that you mentioned is true. .jp websites are TERRIBLE in UX. I wonder if there is some part of Japanese culture that wants to embrace complexity for it's own sake.

And, let's be honest, the US/EU/Everywhere-Else designs for phones weren't very good pre-iPhone either. It had the same complexity problems and close to the same UX ridiculousness that the Japanese phones had. Perhaps it's a human thing, to marvel at too much to comprehend and consider it a good thing.

That being said, if any company were to come up with an iPhone, I would think it would be a Japanese one. But Japan is very traditional and Apple is unique in that it disregards a lot of conventions. I think this might be to Japan's detriment. I don't feel that they've embraced the current approach to UX, they are still stuck in the "complexity = more features = better" days of the Web during the dot-com-boom days (aka ancient history).

I hope there are some Japanese entrepreneurs out there ready to shake things up, the cultural seeds are already there for beautiful and elegant products.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#53

Post by bane »

I've had a feeling for a long time that Japan (not South Korea or China or other regional countries) is on the verge of a massive cultural shakeup.

I can't quite pin it down, but when you peel back the vast homogeneous conformist mass consumer oriented society, there's a really wonderfully quirky, genuinely interesting underground scene that's so vibrant, so full of energy, that it seems like it's about to burst into the mainstream in the same way the beatnick and then hippy movement did in the West.

Steve Jobs came out of that movement, who's to say we aren't about to see the birth of the next Steve Jobs in Japan? Only his parents were in a banjo kettle drum band in Osaka that played basement coffee houses and did cosplay on the weekends to super indie Manga series that explores the meaning of identity as a pop star with only digital, manufactured fans.

In the States Vietnam was the flashpoint that really caused people to gel around the question authority hippy movement, perhaps some current or future event will cause the same with the Japanese youth.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#54

Post by angus77 »

delackner wrote: post #41
kstenerud wrote: post #32

The article kind of misses the point. The reason why people are leaving the Japanese phones for the iPhone is because Japanese phone interfaces SUCK BALLS. And they have ALWAYS sucked. I suffered through 5 years of one phone after another being such a terrible user experience that I think it scarred me for life. And don't even get me started with Sony, who replaced the perfectly functioning joypad in their phones (wh…

This is so true. Example: My iphone died recently, so while waiting for the 4s to come out I used a 3-4 year old Sony Ericson lying around the office. It has so many buzzword features! It even has dedicated media playback buttons on the outside! Yet how do you call someone? It takes 6 button presses. Press down > click on first name > Call > Voice Call/Video Call/PushTalk > No Message/Create Message > Call/Call with…

Wow. I've only owned Toshiba phones (on both au and SoftBank) before I got my HTC Desire, and making a call was always a matter of clicking the 電話帳 button and selecting the name. Although I've used other people's phones plenty of times, and it was always pretty much the same. I've never used anyone's Sony Ericsson, though.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#55

Post by delackner »

angus77 wrote: post #54
delackner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so true. Example: My iphone died recently, so while waiting for the 4s to come out I used a 3-4 year old Sony Ericson lying around the office. It has so many buzzword features! It even has dedicated media playback buttons on the outside! Yet how do you call someone? It takes 6 button presses. Press down > click on first name > Call > Voice Call/Video Call/PushTalk > No Message/Create Message > Call/Call with…

Wow. I've only owned Toshiba phones (on both au and SoftBank) before I got my HTC Desire, and making a call was always a matter of clicking the 電話帳 button and selecting the name. Although I've used other people's phones plenty of times, and it was always pretty much the same. I've never used anyone's Sony Ericsson, though.

Just tapping the name actually placed the call? What an idea. Just for fun, I looked at an older Docomo model on my desk by NEC. It is even worse:

Phonebook > Search > List of ways to search, NONE of which is just "show me my phonebook".

Let's try name lookup > Enter a string to search for > Search results > Choose a result > Dial.

Let's try Group > List of Groups > First Group > Choose name > Dial

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#56

Post by sliverstorm »

flocial wrote: post #22

I read this article and it was interesting. Sony can still make some beautifully designed products and even beat Apple in certain ways, the Vaio X had similar capabilities to the MacBook Air and still much lighter and well-designed. However, the greater issue is not the "design by committee" problem but the fact that the entire country is simply lost and headless. It's not only business but politics and society in ge…

I'm not deeply familiar with the Japanese tech industry, but the paralysis would seem to come quite simply from an entrenched immovable old guard with business practices that were appropriate 60 years and 5-10 generations of tech ago.

Japanese engineers are, as best I can tell, extremely competent, dedicated, and driven. Set them loose on a large scale and you could have an incredible force on your hands.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#57

Post by angus77 »

shioyama wrote: post #45
tuppy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem which many have mentioned here and elsewhere is that while Japan is unrivalled in craftsmanship ("monozukuri") -- making physical things -- exactly the opposite is true when it comes to "unphysical" things like software. This is something I do not understand. Why is there a cultural aversion to creating beautiful software? As an example, Honda has some of the most beautifully designed interiors in the au…

Have you looked at Japanese websites? Most of them have pretty terrible design/UI. It's the same thing. My take on this is that you have to look more broadly to understand the tendency for cluttered design in Japanese interfaces. Walk around a small neighbourhood in Tokyo and you'll see how cluttered the layout is. On small "roji" (back alleyways), Japanese like to stack potted plants outside their front doors in a p…

The thing with the winding streets is that they came out organically---nobody planned them that way. You can't really fix that without doing something horribly draconian.

The newspaper inserts, magazines and websites, though...you'd think someone could just say, "Wow, this is an incredible eyesore that's impossible to navigate," and, you know, just not do that anymore.

I've got a Panasonic TV with an HDD recorder(can't remember the model, I'm at work) that is incredibly simple and intuitive to use. Want to record a show? Click one button on the remote, and you're given a grid of the upcoming TV listings. Click on the show you want, and it's done. Even my 6-year-old son knows how to use it. I can't imagine Apple doing better. Good UI can certainly be done in Japan.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#58

Post by kalleboo »

delackner wrote: post #55
angus77 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I've only owned Toshiba phones (on both au and SoftBank) before I got my HTC Desire, and making a call was always a matter of clicking the 電話帳 button and selecting the name. Although I've used other people's phones plenty of times, and it was always pretty much the same. I've never used anyone's Sony Ericsson, though.

Just tapping the name actually placed the call? What an idea. Just for fun, I looked at an older Docomo model on my desk by NEC. It is even worse: Phonebook > Search > List of ways to search, NONE of which is just "show me my phonebook". Let's try name lookup > Enter a string to search for > Search results > Choose a result > Dial. Let's try Group > List of Groups > First Group > Choose name > Dial

Just tried the docomo NEC (N-02A) I had lying around. Down arrow > Left right to pick the first kana of their name > select name > Press dial button. Not that bad, but a far far cry from the european Sony Ericsson's smart phonebook.

Right now I have a SH-12C as my main phone, and it's basically an Android phone with a kickass screen and all the crazy japanese features jammed in it (1seg, mobile suica, 3D camera+screen, privacy veil, etc). And it's great - Google software really makes those features finally worth it. There's even an Android widget to display your Suica balance.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#59

Post by ilamont »

dantheman wrote: post #23
ilamont wrote: post #16

Nintendo is an interesting case that may dispel some of the stereotypes about Japanese companies and management styles. First, the company is quite old (1889, I believe). It started out manufacturing playing cards, yet had a pretty remarkable evolution after its post-war CEO (a member of the founding family, surnamed Yamauchi) took over. While it was a top-down organization, Yamauchi recognized and encouraged some ou…

I think Nintendo's success primarily has to do with them employing one of, if not, the best game designers that has ever lived - Shigeru Miyamoto. By trusting and empowering him they are able to have taste, just as Jobs's taste defined Apple, Miyamoto's defines Nintendo.

I would actually give a lot of the credit for Apple's taste to Jonathon Ive, with the backing, direction, and final approval of Jobs. I think Shigeru and Ive were both masters of design and interface, and besides their influence on the look and feel of the product, could operate at the level of actually engineering/creating.

For the Wii project, some of Miyamoto's ideas didn't make it into the final product. For instance, he wanted to create a low-cost machine in order to devote more effort to the interface, but hardware requirements and costs got in the way:

Originally, I wanted a machine that would cost $100. My idea was to spend nothing on the console technology so all the money could be spent on improving the interface and software. If we hadn't used NAND flash memory [to store data such as games and photos] and other pricey parts, we might have succeeded. ... We set out to design a console that would sell for less than 25,000 yen ($211). It was a tall hurdle. But unless you start off with a target, you can't control costs and you'll inevitably lose money. Also, we thought a low-cost console would make moms happy.

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2006/tc200...

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#60

Post by jerf »

jbm wrote: post #26
dantheman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Nintendo's success primarily has to do with them employing one of, if not, the best game designers that has ever lived - Shigeru Miyamoto. By trusting and empowering him they are able to have taste, just as Jobs's taste defined Apple, Miyamoto's defines Nintendo.

Some of the best graduates from Tokyo University wind up at Nintendo. It was considered one of the best places to get a job. Nintendo is not a company I would want to emulate. It is getting squeezed by Sony and Microsoft, and even its innovations in terms of casual gaming seem to be on the verge of going away. I consider it a colossal waste, but I guess YMMV. Disclaimer: I thought the same when the DS came out. I was…

Before burying Nintendo, it may be worth taking a moment to remember that in terms of market share this generation, Nintendo Wii + Nintendo DS is about 237 million, and XBox 360 + PS3 + PSP has sold about 179 million[1], and the totals are not made up with software sales either [2].

This looks less like a company getting "squeezed" and more like a company that has run the board in this console generation.

I'm not a huge fan of the Wii either, and the next Nintendo generation is looking decidedly shaky, but from a business perspective I can't fault them based on present data.

[1]: Some simple math with the data from http://www.vgchartz.com/hardware_totals.php

[2]: http://www.vgchartz.com/hardware_totals.php?type=Software&#3...

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