If you don’t read The 99 percent you should start. They’re pitch-perfect and useful so often. This article however, I think needs some clarification. Quotes like this:

“Sometimes it’s best to launch a product before it’s perfect.”

bother me for two reasons.

• First, even presuming an application can be perfect is silly. Get it out of your head. They’re never done. Building an application is closer to growing a garden than it is to building a house.
• Second, it puts the emphasis on the wrong things. Building an application is about getting it right not about getting it perfect.

The article uses our favorite example company Apple to prove a few points. Like Apple launching the iPhone without Copy/Paste as an example of putting a non-perfect product onto the market. But I think this concentrates on the wrong side of things. Copy/Paste, and a thousand other things were not right on the iPhone, so Apple omitted them.

Courage and taste come from omitting what’s not right. Perfection, like an absolute grid in physics, is a pointless metaphor that only confuses the reality of the situation. The design of applications, or anything for that matter, requires rigid standards, and an unerring willingness to omit any single item that does not meet those standards.

The focus on maximum greatness is a red herring. We believe the real trick is to focus on the minimum acceptable answer that meets very high standards.

And Scott, (who I totally do not know) -sorry to disagree if you should read this. I usually agree wholeheartedly with everything else you say…