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limericks and authenticity

  • Artigo

Aside from developers, designers, technical writers, and (one hopes) a usability girl or two, Apple's got a poet on staff:

There once was a user that whined

his existing OS was so blind

he'd do better to pirate

an OS that ran great

but found his hardware declined.

Well, maybe one who writes limericks shouldn't be labelled a poet, but that's a philosophical discussion that I'm not going to get into. Regardless of what you call the person who wrote it, the limerick is buried in the new MacTels, and someone found it this week.

One thing that Apple has a fundamental understanding of is building hardware and software that's authentic. They don't try to always be ultra-professional, because they know that ultra-professional comes across as ultra-stuffy. So Apple puts in little touches like this, and people feel like Apple is more real when they find it. It doesn't take away from the polish that Apple puts into their products, it just makes them a bit easier to love.

This is a lesson that many companies need to learn. People want to know that there's really someone behind the curtain. Easter eggs and little hidden messages like this make people smile. It makes your users feel more connected to what they're using. How is that not a good thing?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2006
    nadyne, http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/10/21/483608.aspx

    What does Apple do when the CIO of a 500 company calls them up and informs them that he's canceling his order of 10,000 iMacs because he doesn't know how many other hidden features are hidden in their product.

    It may make people smile, but if those smiles cost you hundreds of millions of dollars, are they worth it?
  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2006
    Extreme hypothetical examples are only extreme and hypothetical.  

    My focus is on the user experience, how the user interacts with their hardware and software.  I look at how users engage with their products.  Easter eggs make for a more engaging experience.  I'm well aware that these can go over-the-top, or can introduce additional bugs or security holes; I'm even aware that our own employer has run into this problem more than once in its history.  That doesn't make the concept of easter eggs a bad one.  There's a baby in that bathwater.
  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2006
    The comment has been removed