RealityEquation

∗ Jive (verb): Design and Conquer

In yesterday’s article about the upcoming organic web revolution, I mentioned that Apple “jived” the iPod:

Apple didn’t invent digital audio players; they ‘jived’ it (as in gave it the Jonathan Ive treatment). The concept of widgets didn’t come from Apple, but it wasn’t until the release of Mac OS X 10.4 ‘Tiger’ that it really took off. Microsoft followed, then Yahoo! and now even Google lets you create little self-contained apps you can throw into your iGoogle interface. Let’s not even start with what iTunes Music Store did to that industy. Point is, Apple’s capable of pushing lifestyle products and changing consumer behavior and market paradigms, making technology accessible to more people (by choice or by need).

I think this phenomenon is common enough with Apple and a few other technology innovators that we should have a verb for it.

To “jive” something (in this context) is to take an existing tech product and design it so it’s easy and accessible to a whole lot of people, including non-geeks. Usually, the jived product conquers and dramatically expands its market, inspiring changes in the behavior of users and forcing innovation in the market (although these are usually dominated that one jived product). The iPod is an obvious example.

You’ll notice the word comes from the name of Apple’s Senior Vice President of Product Design, Jonathan Ive, who designed most of Apple’s best-selling products, including the iPods, Mac mini, the iPhone and the lovable iMac G3. Ive’s approach to design involves making the product not only easy (a minimalist approach), but arguably very sexy.

Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of tipping point — an epidemic explosion caused by a small change — can be associated with the phonenomon of jive, and marketing (or sometimes, a lack of it) is definitely a key contributor to the effect. Apple releases the iPod and, even more than the Walkman, it affects the lifestyle choices of college-goers all around the world.

You could argue that YouTube jived video sharing, Google was an early jiver of web search and now we see Apple taking a shot at jiving portable web applications.

I’m sure there are other (maybe even better) examples I can’t think of right now, but I’m sure we get the idea.