I've been using the new iPhone 3.0 OS for just over a week now and of course, it's a huge improvement over previous versions. It's a hell of a lot faster (no wonder the iPhone 3G S feels fast) and adds a ton of features. The Stocks app, in particular, has been given quite an update; news headlines, more market stats, landscape mode and more interact chart modes. But, the Weather app? Nothing.
I can only assume this is due to the sun always shining in California where all the product managers, engineers and decision makers live. I live in Seattle and the sun definitely does not always shine, so I would have liked an update to the Weather app. Instead, I have to use the Weather Channel app, while good, carries inline ads.
This lead me to wonder, does Microgroove do the same thing with our product design and features?
There's no doubt our clients use our products more than we do, there's simply more clients than us. And Microgroove isn't in the Recorded Music Business as such (I'd say we're in the Music Software & Technology Business), so our clients must know more than we do about what they want?
The route we take is to ask our clients what features they want (they actually come to us before we reach out to them), but we decide how to realize that feature. If a client asks for a Video Playlist Feature, we decide how the CMS will enable our customers to organize their videos into playlists.
Then again, as Henry Ford said, "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses'".