Hitchhiker: You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Abs?
Ted:
Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the excercise video.
Hitchhiker: Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to
this: 7... Minute... Abs.
Ted: That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Abs. Then you're in trouble, huh? [Hitchhiker convulses]
I thought of this scene for three reasons in reading up on Apple’s celebration of hitting the soon-to-be-dispensed with 100K Apps milestone, yet another signpost on the ‘There’s an App for That’ Highway.
One, at this point, the number (and its subsequent increments) is largely meaningless until someone ELSE passes it. Then, it’s news again.
Two, the REAL gambit for the competition, most notably, Android, is to render this number meaningless by coming up with a better, DIFFERENT metric.
Three, given that Apple’s success has been predicated on a perennial willingness to cannibalize and re-invent itself, isn’t it about time THEY shift the story line (or at least augment it) away from quantity, Quantity, QUANTITY, and towards something else?
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