I love this post from 37signals. (Then again, I love most of the things they do.)
Cell phone sound quality was bad enough, but now we accept further degradation introduced by bluetooth headsets.CD-quality sound is being replaced by further downsampled downloadable digital music.
Now you can buy TV shows and movies online that are lower quality than the ones you can see for free on an actual TV.
Text messaging is introducing new lexicon that eschews punctuation and sentence structure for simply getting the point across.
YouTube brings pixelated motion to the masses.
Judging by quality, these products are getting better by “getting worse.†Convenience trumping quality is nothing new, but its pace seems accelerated these days.
Which companies do you see bucking this trend? Who is competing by delivering higher quality goods and services? Who is saying convenience is important, but it’s not the most important thing? What opportunities are out there for companies looking to differentiate through quality? Who is excelling by raising the bar on both convenience and quality?