First Impression, product wise

Another aspect of the Mac OS X UI that I think has been tremendously influenced by Jobs is the setup and first-run experience. I think Jobs is keenly aware of the importance of first impressions. Let’s say you buy a new computer and use it for three years. That’s about 1,000 days. Your first-run experience – the experience you encounter the first time you boot the machine after taking it out of the box – therefore constitutes about one-thousandth of your entire experience with the machine. I think that’s the sort of logic that has driven most companies not to put that much effort into designing the first-run UI – it’s only going to happen once, and if it isn’t smooth, so what?

Whereas I think Jobs looks at the first-run experience and thinks, it may only be one-thousandth of a user’s overall experience with the machine, but it’s the most important one-thousandth, because it’s the first one-thousandth, and it sets their expectations and initial impression.

Darn straight. Be it software application, eletronics appliance, or service package, if it has anything to do with end-user, your best beat to success is to "wow" them with a perfect first impression. Customers impressed with your product right from the start have a more forgiving mindset.

I still can't get over the excitment when I first used my ibook and Tivo.