小音箱有大能量

    因生产蓝牙耳机、音箱、健身腕带等产品出名的Jawbone公司昨日又推出了一款最新的音箱。它的体格比Jawbone生产的其它两款蓝牙音箱都小，与它的老款——也就是同类最畅销的Jambox音箱相比，尺寸只有它的一半，而且还有九种颜色可供选择。这款小巧的蓝牙音箱取名为Mini Jambox。它的材质和骨架由一整块铝合金制成，内置一块续航时间10小时的电池。而且它的重量也很轻（只有9盎司重，大概只相当于两块好时巧克力的大小和重量），因此可以随手塞到包里，带到任何地方。

    这款Mini音箱与老款Jambox的价格持平，均为179美元。不过据这家公司称，新款音量更足，而且音质更好。网上有关于这款音箱的评测基本上涵盖了大家想知道的关于产品本身的一切内容。

    但是评测文章里可能注意不到一些更重要的事，也就是像Jawbone等这些有趣的公司到底是怎样做到让我们这些消费者购买他们的产品的。Jambox的产品开发负责人塔维斯•博加德说：“一款产品怎么才能适应人们的生活，这一点对我们来说和产品本身一样重要。”

    当然，要想让一款产品适应人们的生活远远不止是把它做得更小更轻这么简单。虽然Jawbone公司声称Mini jambox比Jambox音箱的尺寸小了一半，但它的声音范围相差无几。虽然Mini的确更小、更轻了，但其实并不显著。它真正的优势体现在更加微妙的地方，也就是非常擅于与其它设备进行无线连接。这可不是件小事。

    苹果之所以取得了成功，一个重要原因就是每一种苹果设备都很容易与另一种苹果设备进行互联。一旦你迷上了苹果，基本上就难以脱身了。大家可以很轻易地利用MacBook笔记本调整iPhone的设置，或者与iPad共享一个文件，或者是把设备上的文件导到Apple TV上播放。这种能力才是苹果生态系统的杀手锏，也是让顾客迅速变成死忠果粉的原因。

    Jawbone之前的音箱产品在连接手机、平板和电脑时表现得也不错。不过要想调整这些音箱的设置，必须得先把它连到一台电脑上，然后联入网络，登录该公司的网站，这套程序对于以无线为最大卖点的产品来说太繁琐了。就在Mini音箱推出的同时，这家公司还同期推出了Jawbone移动应用来解决这个问题，同时它也给其它所有音乐服务提了个醒。

    Jawbone, the bluetooth headset, health band, and speaker company, came out with a new speaker yesterday. It's smaller than the two other speakers Jawbone already makes -- half as small, in fact, as its predecessor, the Jambox, which is the bestselling speaker in its category -- and it comes in a choice of nine colors. Made out of a solid piece of aluminum that's both skin and skeleton, the new speaker, called the Mini Jambox, has a built-in battery that lasts 10 hours, and it's light enough (9 oz., or roughly the size and weight of two Hershey bars) to throw into a bag and carry anywhere.

    Though the Mini costs as much ($179) as the first-generation Jambox, the company claims it "packs more volume" and has "even better audio clarity." There's the two-cent review -- pretty much all you need to know about the product itself.

    But to stop there misses the point of something greater that Jawbone -- and all interesting companies that make things in the hopes that we, the consumer, will buy them -- is up to. Travis Bogard, who oversees product development at Jambox, put it like this: "How a product fits into your life is as important to us as the product itself."

    The challenge to get a product to fit into people's lives, of course, goes far beyond just making it smaller or more portable. In fact, though the company claims the Mini Jambox is about half the size as the original Jambox, its footprint is similar. The Mini is narrower and lighter, sure, but not dramatically so. Its real virtue is more subtle: It is incredibly good at connecting wirelessly to other machines. No trivial thing, that.

    A huge part of Apple's (AAPL) success has been due to how easy the company has made it to connect one of its devices to another. Once you get locked in to Apple you are, well, locked in. The ease with which one is able to adjust settings on your iPhone through your MacBook or share a file with your iPad, or maybe have it project on your television via Apple TV, is really the killer aspect of the Apple ecosystem, and the quality that keeps its customers so rabidly loyal.

    Jawbone's previous speakers were pretty good at connecting to phones, tablets, and laptops as well. But to adjust the settings of the speakers required plugging it into a computer, then connecting to the Internet and pulling up the company's website -- a cumbersome process for a product that's, in theory, all about wire-cutting. Along with the release of the Mini, Jawbone is releasing the Jawbone App, which is both a fix to this and a shot across the bow to every other music service.