Nokia’s new N9 phone based on MeeGo looks wonderful and according to Engadget, it’s a delight to use as well. But supposedly it’s dead on arrival because it’s not going to have a massive platform. Excuse my french, but fuck the platform.

For all the 200,000 apps in Apple’s app store, I use two on a regular basis: Echofon and Bloomberg. Once in a while, I use Instapaper and play Civilization. And yet I use my iPhone all the time. It’s my favorite piece of technology and has been for years.

Do you know why? Because Apple nailed the basics. Safari, Camera, iPod, Clock, Weather, Photos, Messages, Mail, and Maps are the apps that I use 95% of the time. Those are the ones that made me buy the phone and stick with it. If I had to read Bloomberg on the web and couldn’t play Civilization, I’d be sad, but my day would surely go on.

I know I’m not alone. The pattern I’ve seen for many people new to iOS is a rush to try a bunch of apps and then never use most of them again. There’s a large market for people who just want the core ten apps executed even better. I’d be happy to trade my iPhone for a N9, if that core experience was stronger.

But the established wisdom now is that you cannot win without hundreds of thousands of apps. And unfortunately Nokia bought that “wisdom” and now they’re just going to become a WinPhone distributor with benefits. Woopedidoo.

Part of growing is reevaluating. Running the business we have now is simply not the same as the one we ran five years ago. That’s why we’re announcing a dramatic shift. In light of recent difficulties we’ve faced working effectively as a virtual organization, we will be relocating our entire staff to Chicago. No one on our team will be permitted to work remotely. We realize this runs counter to much of the advice we’ve given in the past, so allow us to explain why we’re shifting course.

We used to believe time zones didn’t matter
We were wrong. In the past months we’ve experimented with holding two-hour status meetings every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But with people located all over the map, timing has proven to be difficult. Uniting our staff will fix this.

As we’ve grown, security has become more important.
Sure, we trust our employees. But we don’t know who else is in their house. What happens if there’s a messy divorce? Or some teen pranksters lurking around? We can’t risk it. Now everyone will get a dedicated work iMac instead of a laptop. This iMac will be chained down in our new office. Work programming and design is no longer allowed on our staff’s personal computers. (Staffers are still free to play around with open source toys, if they must, as long as they do so on their own time)

We also want to make sure our productivity is best of breed
If we demand 99.9% uptime from our servers, we should demand that amount of productivity from our employees too. To that end, everyone will work in our kitchen, sitting around a big table. This will make it harder for any team member to slip into “lazy mode” on Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, or Twitter. We pay for all hands on deck and that’s what we’ll get with our new setup.

Given the incredible design of our new office, we want our employees to take just as much pride in their own physical appearance too
So we’re instituting a dress policy. We have created an official 37signals uniform, with help from our friends across the street at Threadless. It is a unisex, one-piece, uniform that is functional and minimalist, just like our apps. We are confident our employees will love their new mandated attire.

Change is never easy. But we’re willing to do whatever it takes to be the most efficient company we can be. Now please excuse us, we’re off to get more productive. And secure. And dressed the same.

P.S: Please refrain from posting any snarky comments on this serious matter. Our employees are getting the word at the same time you are (openness is the best policy) and we’d like them to have a chance to tell their families before having to read something inappropriate from an anonymous coward.

Next week Trevor Turk will be joining 37signals as our newest programmer. His application impressed us with great code, open-source contributions, and strong writing skills. Plus he’s in Chicago which is an added bonus. Welcome on board, Trevor!

We’re still looking to add one more programmer to the team. Please see the job posting.

When people talk about their IT departments, they always talk about the things they’re not allowed to do, the applications they can’t run, and the long time it takes to get anything done. Rigid and inflexible policies that fill the air with animosity. Not to mention the frustrations of speaking different languages. None of this is a good foundation for a sustainable relationship.

If businesses had as many gripes with an external vendor, that vendor would’ve been dropped long ago. But IT departments have endured as a necessary evil. I think those days are coming to an end.

The problem with IT departments seems to be that they’re set up as a forced internal vendor. From the start, they have a monopoly on the “computer problem” – such monopolies have a tendency to produce the customer service you’d expect from the US Postal Service. The IT department has all the power, they’re not going anywhere (at least not in the short term), and their customers are seen as mindless peons. There’s no feedback loop for improvement.

Obviously, I can see the other side of the fence as well. IT departments are usually treated as a cost center, just above mail delivery and food service in the corporate pecking order, and never win anything when shit just works, but face the wrath of everyone when THE EXCHANGE SERVER IS DOWN!!!!!

At the same time, IT job security is often dependent on making things hard, slow, and complex. If the Exchange Server didn’t require two people to babysit it at all times, that would mean two friends out of work. Of course using hosted Gmail is a bad idea! It’s the same forces and mechanics that slowly turned unions from a force of progress (proper working conditions for all!) to a force of stagnation (only Jack can move the conference chairs, Joe is the only guy who can fix the microphone).

But change is coming. Dealing with technology has gone from something only for the techy geeks to something more mainstream. Younger generations get it. Computer savvyness is no longer just for the geek squad.

You no longer need a tech person at the office to man “the server room.” Responsibility for keeping the servers running has shifted away from the centralized IT department. Today you can get just about all the services that previously required local expertise from a web site somewhere.

The transition won’t happen over night, but it’s long since begun. The companies who feel they can do without an official IT department are growing in number and size. It’s entirely possible to run a 20-man office without ever even considering the need for a computer called “server” somewhere.

The good news for IT department operators is that they’re not exactly saddled with skills that can’t be used elsewhere. Most auto workers and textile makers would surely envy their impending doom and ask for a swap.

The tech world is obsessed with what’s next. It has become so used to the constant flow of new products and new companies that newness itself has been placed on a pedestal. But outside of a few breakthroughs here and there, most things that are good are good because they got there slowly.

That’s why it always irks me when you hear entrepreneurs being asked “what’s next for you”, usually with the implication of either “what new product are you going to put out” or “what new company will you start next”. Not what improvements or tweaks are you going to make to what you have. All I can think of is the old Spolsky article Good Software Takes Ten Years.

I understand that reporters and outsiders aren’t interested in hearing about how you made this thing a little better or that thing a little smoother. They want fireworks: complete rewrites, massive new features, something brand-new. To people who actually use the product, though, that little tweak you made to remove a nagging problem is often way more important than something big and flashy.

It’s not only good software that takes a decade to develop, good companies do too. If you agree that’s true, it follows that you wouldn’t want promising entrepreneurs to go chasing waterfalls before they know how to paddle in the pond. Or something like that.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to see evolution get a chance to work its magic, but if great products and companies keep getting abandoned or bought after 3-5 years, there’ll be less of that. And that’s a damn shame.