How Americans do it

A quote from The Long Strange Trip to Java (see below, thx Chris):

"The next few months were very hectic as James (Gosling) and Mike (Sheridan) and I (Patrick Naughton) worked through just what this project would be. We worked long hours on weekends writing up notes about how we could create something that was truly new in such a crowded market? We looked at how other products failed and succeeded. We looked hard at the mess we all made with X11 and NeWS. What about Beta versus VHS? Why had video games boomed, then busted, then boomed again? What role does art and design play in products? We looked at branding and consumer loyalty. We wondered if there would ever be a software equivalent of a vanity purchase? Something akin to a Rolex or a Mercedes, a product that is considered to be so superior that it is worth a substantial premium to consumers. We got a significant amount of Sun founder, Andy Bechtolsheim's time to discuss what a hardware platform might look like in the mid nineties. We discussed portables and PDA's. We bought strange portable devices like the prototype Go Lombard and the Sony Data Discman which only displayed in Kanji. We also shopped for real estate."