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I honestly believe that this is the difference between Apple and the rest of the competition. You see, the secret they have to their products is that they reali

I honestly believe that this is the difference between Apple and the rest of the competition. You see, the secret they have to their products is that they realize that most people don't have any idea whatsoever what the hell a frikkin' mp3 file is. Neither do they know the difference between lossy and lossless conversion. They are intimidated by all those fancy buttons on the screen and are too scared to try anything just in case they break something. Steve Jobs recognizes this and that's his genius in a way. So, instead of creating a widget that does everything they choose to make a widget that does everything the user wants. There's a subtle, but important difference over here. Only a small subset of their users want extensive options so that they can put FLAC and other stuff onto it. Those are the users who fret about the product to the nth degree and they know that they don't exist to serve them. So, they pick a feature and implement it in a way that those other users (80%+ of the market) know how to use it, and that makes all the difference. Just look at enterprise software and how hideously broken it is. You have SaaS that try to do everything at once which directly results in their users doing nothing at once. This instead causes grumbling against the software and in the longer turn your sales go down. The hardest lesson in business, I think, is learning how to bite the bullet. No one wants to admit that their software can't do something. So, they rush and put the feature in to satisfy themselves without checking if it works or not. Big mistake. What's worse is that it is so ingrained in us that we don't even realize what damage we have done. What I am trying to say is that it's perfectly fine to not have the insanely great feature X, but it's inexcusable that the user has to read a 300 page manual to use feature X. This is why I suggest everyone to read the Apple Human Interface guidelines. They aren't perfect, but they've gotten quite a few things right. (see: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGDesignProcess/XHIGDesignProcess.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002718-TPXREF101 http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/UserExp... )

JoeAltmaier 16y ago
"does everything the user wants" Then some OS X features completely baffle me. Like installing software. I'm not a "Mac guy" and each time I ask someone how to install software downloaded off the web I get a different answer, all preceeded by "You just ..." and then 10 or 11 simple steps. Apparently they have never heard of installers. I'd guess from this, that the average Mac has never had ANY software installed after it left the factory.
- powrtoch 16y ago
  I find it pretty hard to believe that this is really the most typical response. Most Mac software downloaded goes like this: Double-click to mount, drag Application into Applications folder. Two steps, usually with big arrows to make it as clear as possible. The only other use case I know is: Double-click to mount, Double-click installer, click through till you're done. And most Mac users I know (non-techies) have installed several third party applications.
  - xinsight 16y ago
    You left out the most important and confusing step: Running the app. That requires not clicking on the icon you see in the dmg folder, but opening the applications folder and scanning all the apps looking for the unfamiliar one that was just installed.
    - djacobs 16y ago
      I've had several friends come to me after installing their first OS X application, saying they thought they had a virus. "Whenever I try to run this application, I get the warning 'This was downloaded from the internet', etc., etc. I have to click 'Okay' every time I use the app. It doesn't seem safe." The problem? They had dragged the app straight from the disk image onto the dock. That said, OS X installation is about as simple as you can get. (Though I wish Apple would finally include Homebrew as its default package manager.)
- jsolson 16y ago
  Apparently the the drag/drop install thing is not intuitive to even technical users. I don't remember what my reaction was to this the first time I encountered it, but I'd guess it wasn't entirely positive. There's a perfectly good system wide Installer on the Mac, but nobody uses it unless they have to, because installers suck (they ask, among other things, which drive you'd like to install the software to -- what normal user knows the answer to that question?). A number of vendors are working to improve application downloads by distributing applications as self-extracting zipfiles that put the original archive in the trash on extractions, and making it so that if the application is launched from the downloads folder or the desktop it initially politely asks if you'd like to "install" the application. This is pretty foolproof. Even if the user declines to move it, the Application will still work from the Downloads directory or the Desktop, it just won't be as easy to find.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago

"does everything the user wants" Then some OS X features completely baffle me. Like installing software. I'm not a "Mac guy" and each time I ask someone how to install software downloaded off the web I get a different answer, all preceeded by "You just ..." and then 10 or 11 simple steps. Apparently they have never heard of installers. I'd guess from this, that the average Mac has never had ANY software installed after it left the factory.

powrtoch 16y ago
I find it pretty hard to believe that this is really the most typical response. Most Mac software downloaded goes like this: Double-click to mount, drag Application into Applications folder. Two steps, usually with big arrows to make it as clear as possible. The only other use case I know is: Double-click to mount, Double-click installer, click through till you're done. And most Mac users I know (non-techies) have installed several third party applications.
- xinsight 16y ago
  You left out the most important and confusing step: Running the app. That requires not clicking on the icon you see in the dmg folder, but opening the applications folder and scanning all the apps looking for the unfamiliar one that was just installed.
  - djacobs 16y ago
    I've had several friends come to me after installing their first OS X application, saying they thought they had a virus. "Whenever I try to run this application, I get the warning 'This was downloaded from the internet', etc., etc. I have to click 'Okay' every time I use the app. It doesn't seem safe." The problem? They had dragged the app straight from the disk image onto the dock. That said, OS X installation is about as simple as you can get. (Though I wish Apple would finally include Homebrew as its default package manager.)
jsolson 16y ago
Apparently the the drag/drop install thing is not intuitive to even technical users. I don't remember what my reaction was to this the first time I encountered it, but I'd guess it wasn't entirely positive. There's a perfectly good system wide Installer on the Mac, but nobody uses it unless they have to, because installers suck (they ask, among other things, which drive you'd like to install the software to -- what normal user knows the answer to that question?). A number of vendors are working to improve application downloads by distributing applications as self-extracting zipfiles that put the original archive in the trash on extractions, and making it so that if the application is launched from the downloads folder or the desktop it initially politely asks if you'd like to "install" the application. This is pretty foolproof. Even if the user declines to move it, the Application will still work from the Downloads directory or the Desktop, it just won't be as easy to find.