The launch of Apple's new iPod shuffle gives us a textbook example of the difference between Wow! and Pow!
Wow! is impressive, but expected. It moves incrementally. It takes you past a standard already set.
Pow! is also impressive, but totally UN-expected. It moves in leaps and bounds, sometimes in quantum leaps and bounds. It smacks you about the head, since you never saw it coming.
So in terms of the new shuffle, the Wow! is that it's now even smaller. Here's the incremental, expected process:
- The first one
was small.
- The second one
was smaller.
- The third one, well...it wasn't gonna get bigger, right?
The Pow! though, is that the teeny weeny thing TALKS.
THAT's the Surprise. That's the "Holy Jeez!" That's what gets the blogosphere and the tweeters buzzing.
Next time around, the iPod Shuffle Wow! will be that it talks to you with celebrity voices, or in foreign accents, or something expected and incremental like that.
The Pow! may be that it'll be invisible.