[brc]

Reminds me of a guy I once knew. He was unemployed and as far as I could work out - a sponge on everyone he knew, including his parents and girlfriend. He kept telling me that he hated 'real' jobs and wanted to be a writer.

I asked him what he had written. He couldn't answer me. This struck me as very odd (I was young). Of all the things in the world to do, writing has to have the lowest cost of entry. Just pick up a piece of paper and start writing. Of course, getting published is another matter altogether, but you would think writing something - anything- and submitting it for publishing would be the first step to being a writer.

Back to the article - I think they gloss over the utility of a concept a little too much. Certainly for car manufacturers, the example cited, launching concept cars is a very good way of gauging reaction to a certain style or type of vehicle. It's also a very long bow to string to say that GM is bankrupt because it spent time designing concepts while the Japanese spent time improving their cars. The Japanese love wacky concepts as much as the next place, and have created many concept cars with no thought as to production. It's an important way of introducing (and de-sensitising) the public to a new design language before it reaches a production model. And there are many cars which have been built as concepts and unveiled to the public, only for the public to demand it be built by placing down real money. There's plenty of examples where frustrated designers have used a secret concept car to ambush their management by conducting a very public focus group.

And onto software - launching simple prototypes and concepts is a very good way of testing the market for an idea.

So yes, real artists ship, but they also dabble as well. Smart dabbling is the right way to go. Perhaps if Apple had launched a concept Newton it mightn't have been such a monumental flop.