getluky.net

Disclaimer: I really know nothing about marketing. This is some simple woolgathering by a curious tyro.

For a while now, this post by Scott Ruthfield has had me pondering how a company makes it customers feel like its products are living, adapting, and growing things. Scott observed something in friends’ attitudes about the iPhone which he describes as an "implied upgrade". He and his friends who bought iPhones believed and expected that they would be upgraded as time went on, despite all experience to the contrary with other cell phones bought from other companies.

When I talked to others, they were sure of it too. They were waiting for the announcements of this or that new feature, and we all assumed that our phones would get it. Why did we all think our phones would be upgraded? Something “told” us that. Maybe it was the unconscious reaction to the iPod firmware update process inside iTunes; maybe it was a belief that Apple “got it”; maybe since this was more like a computer and computers get free upgrades… but they don’t. For some reason, we believed in an upgrade.

In light of his interesting observation, i’ve been trying to understand how a company like Apple can release a product without having to promise future upgrades, or detail all of its features exhaustively in advance, yet we expect that when we purchase the product, we’ll get everything we’ve seen in the commercials, and more. I would definitely characterize Apple’s products as somewhat mythical, in that its customers seem to propagate its perception in a way that goes beyond what the company actually states. I think that this is sometimes referred to as the “reality distortion field” around Apple.

Now, the reason I dredge this up is because i’m personally interested in seeing whether there is a viable alternative to focusing on promotional channels when considering how to market a new product. I’ve seen marketing plans that list conference blitzes, promotional clothing and accessories, mainstream media promotion, etc., all in attempt to show to upper management that someone, somewhere is thinking about marketing. I guess the rationale behind that is that it actually seems like marketing effort, but I always get the ugly feeling that concentrating on distribution of a message without worrying about the message is a giant waste of time.

Maybe it’s my lack of experience with this sort of thing, but i’d like to see marketing plans that spend all their time talking about the way in which you mention, discuss, present, or show off a product that treat it more like a mythological creature than a piece of static hardware or software. A good part of the equation is possibly to create well-designed, well-implemented products, and continually improve and upgrade them in a timely manner, and sometimes for free. But in addition to that, there may be a special way to treat product development and marketing in a company that asks consumers to plunk down a big wad of cash without worrying too much about the next model down the line.

This was annoying, but understandable. The tutorial “patch” to the Sun J2EE-1.4 tutorial, distributed by JBoss.org, is difficult to find [it's a zip inside a zip, here], and also needs some additions to its classpath to get a correct compile.

For the good of the internet, here’s what to do:

• Unzip the startguide40.zip package.
• Move jbossj2ee-src.zip into the j2eetutorial directory.
• Chdir into that dir.
• Unzip the jbossj2ee-src.zip.
• After it’s unzipped, edit jboss-build.properties, and put the location of your jboss install in jboss.home
• Go to examples/bank/.
• Edit jboss-build.xml, and modify the build.classpath to appear as follows:

   
    <path id="build.classpath">
        <path refid="client.classpath"/>
  <fileset dir="${jboss.server}/lib/">
            <include name="javax.servlet*.jar"/>
            <include name="jboss-j2ee.jar"/>
            <include name="servlet-api.jar"/>
            <include name="jsp-api.jar"/>
        </fileset>
    </path>

• Edit src/com/jboss/ebank/WSClient.java, and look for the import lines re: ServiceFactoryImpl and ServiceImpl. Modify them to look as follows:

    import org.jboss.ws.core.jaxrpc.client.ServiceFactoryImpl;
    import org.jboss.ws.core.jaxrpc.client.ServiceImpl;

After that, hopefully the instructions will work. My understanding is that versions of JBoss-4.2X are backportings of popular 5.X features, and they’ve probably ceased updating the Getting Started guides while work is prioritized on the 5.X branch. No harm done, I suppose.