An Open Letter to Steve Jobs
An open letter from DDD (Digital Device Dependent)
Dear Steve Jobs,
I’m writing to you on behalf of millions of people who walk around wired to little tech devices and won’t leave the house without them. No, I’m not talking about the iPod – and that’s the point. While your brilliant product line enhances the lifestyle of (100) millions, I’m talking about the little devices that keep us alive, the people with chronic conditions.
Let’s talk about diabetes, the disease that affects 20 million Americans, and I’m one of them.
Whether blood glucose monitor or insulin pump, thanks to the achievements of medical device companies, we can now live a normal life by constantly monitoring and adjusting our blood sugar levels.
But have you seen these things? They make a Philips GoGear Jukebox HDD1630 MP3 Player look pretty! And it’s not only that: most of these devices are clunky, make weird alarm sounds, are more or less hard to use, and burn quickly through batteries. In other words: their design doesn’t hold a candle to the iPod.
Most people on this planet can’t agree on much, but most do agree that Apple knows how to design outstanding high-tech devices. It’s your core expertise. It’s your brand. It’s you and Jonathan Ive.
We are, of course, deeply grateful to the medical device industry for keeping us alive. Where would we be without them? But while they’re still struggling with shrinking complex technologies down to a scale where we can attach them, hard-wired, to our bodies, design kinda becomes an afterthought.
Read more: diabetesmine.com
January 10 2010 03:51 pm | Open Letter