7 ms·

You Can't Innovate Like Apple

117 points by davidedicillo 16y ago

danielnicollet 16y ago
Before starting my company, I worked as a product manager for a good 10 years and few other things after that. Truths like the Henry Ford quote: "If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’" are good and true but as this article points out, there is only room for one Apple and one Ford at any one time or any one industry. The rest of us have to be pragmatic and consider product innovation as something that's very central and very interdependent with all other aspects of a company's strategy and tactics (people, technology, customers, capital, competition, etc.).
- ladon86 16y ago
  Can you elaborate further on why there is only room for one company of this type in any one industry? I am struggling to see why that would be the case.
  - yardie 16y ago
    I've actually heard the same for fashion. There is usually one fashion house that basically dictates style for a few years. All other highend designers are basically lockstep behind this and then it trickles down through ready to wear, and finally consumer brands (like H&M). You also see this in consumer electronics where bezels alternate between glossy black, flat black, silver, gold, white. If you go back further you'll find woodgrain, yellows, greens, etc. But it would never be one manufacturer. They all did it around the same time. Today, Apple has decided a keyboard isn't necessary on a smartphone. 3 years ago that wasn't that case. Nintendo has decided that motion was how to play games. 3 years ago that wasn't the case. Ford decided that 4 wheels on a chassis is what makes a car. Why not 3 wheels, 5 wheels, or 6 wheels? The market likes to be given new options, but not too many options. People are willing to take a chance but they won't accomadate everything. For now motion controllers are where it's at. Nintendo decided it, MS and Sony have to follow suit. In a few years it might be brainwave controllers. While those controllers exist they aren't marketable. The public isn't ready for it, yet.
- melissamiranda 16y ago
  Agree. Article quotes Apple as having just 20 designers who come up with the cool products. Article also says they don't do market research. This makes sense- 20 people come up with amazing ideas on their own (easy to reach consensus), and then I'm sure test prototypes in front of users. (They must get their products in front of users, even if it's a small set of users). Contrast to Microsoft, which has competitive designers and programmers working in silos, vying for their little feature to win real estate on one of their programs. No wonder everything is bloated. (Source: I heard this from MS employees when I worked a consulting project for them while at a well known design firm). Here's an interesting post on how Apple's "benelovent monarchy" stacks against Android's crowdsourced approach. http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/crowdsourced-curation-reputation-systems-and-the-social-graph/2010/08/10 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/crowdsourced-curation-reputati... Does Apple's innovation win in this case?
extension 16y ago
I think there are plenty of companies that innovate like Apple, but none of them make hardware. You can make a great piece of software with just a few programmers. But making a great gadget requires so many different specialized services and such a large scale operation that it's impossible to get everyone drinking the same kool-aid. If DIY manufacturing ever takes off, that's when you will see Apple caliber products coming from other people (but you'll have to print them yourself).
- andreyf 16y ago
  Do you really think we'll live to having a DIY manufacturing unit that builds me an iPhone 4?
  - asmithmd1 16y ago
    I think it is closer than you think. It won't be in your home but there will be shops like a Kinkos where you can send a design and pick-up any number of finished products. Check out these people who will turn a design into finished boards in just a few days: http://www.screamingcircuits.com/ http://www.screamingcircuits.com/ There are probably a dozen companies like them right now, I would guess it will be less than 5 years until there is one in every town.
    - andreyf 16y ago
      I think when you look at the details, there are a million things custom designed manufacturing processes do that general purpose manufacturing simply can't, so if it ever does happen, I hope it doesn't happen at the expense of taste.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  This is a fascinating hypothesis but I predict a big caveat: Much of Apple's quality derives from standardization. Everyone with an iPhone 4 has the same iPhone 4. You can design a case, a bicycle mount, a Twitter client or a learn-to-juggle app for the iPhone 4 and know that everyone will have the same experience. Consider the world of free software, for example, where we have DIY manufacturing. Everyone can write their own Drupal, Wordpress, or Rails. But the market is not moving toward such bespoke products. Quite the opposite: customers want something that is based on customizations -- as minor as possible -- of a standard product. Part of the problem, actually, is that you underestimate the effort of design. When you can turn a blueprint into hardware overnight, you'll still have to sweat over every line of that blueprint, and document it, and support it.
danfitch 16y ago
If this is true then how did ping and the new iTunes icon make it past the 10-3-1. I am joking but not everything is perfect. Just not sure how those two slipped through.
- lovskogen 16y ago
  Yeah, the new iTunes icon and the new Remote for iOS icon doesn't seem up to par with Apples aesthetics. Maybe they've gotten a new design lead that took those decisions.
- CamperBob 16y ago
  Exactly. He says, "Quick, identify 10 different pieces of technology that truly meet your needs and that don’t bug you due to a major flaw you either have to live with or compensate for in some fashion. Could you come up with more than five? I didn’t think so," as if Apple's strategy is to land on that list. I use and enjoy my share of Apple's wares, but even if I could come up with 10 different pieces of technology that never piss me off, none of them would be from Apple. Has this guy ever used iTunes, or dealt with the App Store?
  - lovskogen 16y ago
    I would argue that the iTunes and App Store experience is by far the best from a user perspective. From a hacker perspective... I don't know. But I think regular computer users are more than happy with iTunes and App Store. The ease of the App Store plays a good part in how sucessful apps has become.
  - bad_user 16y ago
    I am not enthusiastic about the App Store as a developer, but as a user I'm pretty happy as it is the best app store I've seen judging by the quality and number of the apps available. Surely I'm seeing Android taking over just because it will sell more devices, but the Android Marketplace is really shitty ... I can't even sell or buy apps for Christ's sake, as my country is not on their list (I can do both from the App Store). And you would think Google has experience in building web services. So the iTunes App Store may be painful with lots of restrictions and cursed with an awful workflow for publishing apps, but at least it works.
manish 16y ago
This was there on HN 6 months back. More discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1280304 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1280304.
skeletonjelly 16y ago
Lorem Ipsum is Greek huh? How can I read the rest of the article without vexation knowing that the writer can't identify a simple foreign language and a prolific tool of design?
- defen 16y ago
  Maybe he meant it in the "it's all Greek to me" sense.
- ubernostrum 16y ago
  "Greek text" is a bit of industry jargon for placeholder text such as... lorem ipsum.
  - Angostura 16y ago
    It has different meanings in different sectors. Typical in desktop publishing tools, such as Xpress and InDesign, 'greeking' occurs when actual representation of letters is replaced by a stylised texture patterns. Usually this occurs at font sizes or zoom levels where it is impractical to accurately render the type on screen. I must admit that after 20 years in publishing, I've never heard of Ipsum Lorem described as 'greek text', but I'm sure it is possible.
    - richmassena23 16y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeking
- msbarnett 16y ago
  "Greek" is the correct design term for any dummy text in a mock-up. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeking
  - skeletonjelly 16y ago
    No way. I would have called it Latining! Don't I feel like an idiot.
aditya 16y ago
"Apple wraps great ideas inside great ideas", reminds me of JJ Abrams Mystery Box idea at TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html http://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html
thought_alarm 16y ago
I'm reminded of the story of NUMMI [1], the American automobile plant that was a 1980s joint venture between GM and Toyota. (It was covered in an episode of This American Life). In a nutshell, the story of NUMMI involves American GM workers building Toyota-designed/GM-branded vehicles using Toyota's radically different manufacturing processes. The plant itself was a smashing success for GM; the plant achieved much higher quality and productivity than any of GMs traditional plants, and it gave GM valuable insight into their rival's manufacturing and design processes. But this insight into Toyota's processes failed to transform GM because the GM corporate culture was so entrenched. It took the company the better part of 20 years to really adopt these changes they learned in 1984, as they continued to bleed market share to the Japanese. The point of that story is that I believe the corporate culture of any large tech company is equally entrenched, and in my experience it's this corporate culture that utterly determines how a company's products are designed and produced. So it really doesn't matter how Apple does things, it only matters that they're different and successful; their competitors will be completely unable to react or change. Every company is full of powerful employees who have worked their entire careers to get where they are, and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent losing their position over anything else. Do you think all those PMs at Microsoft are going anywhere? So companies like Microsoft, Motorola, HP, Acer, Nokia, Sony, and Nintendo can only do what they've always done. And if you look at their products, that's exactly what they continue to do in the face of a radically changing landscape. That's why a Toyota or an Apple or a Google is so truly threatening to their entrenched competitors. They achieve dramatically better results by doing things differently. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI
- masklinn 16y ago
  > So companies like Microsoft, Motorola, HP, Acer, Nokia, Sony, and Nintendo can only do what they've always done. I'm not sure Nintendo fits well in this list. They have seemed pretty willing to "take risks" (in a controlled way) and do things differently in recent years (since 2002~2003 and the start of the DS project, though they weren't initially as bold with it as they could have been, calling it a "third pillar" alongside the GBA and the GC, which we now know was utter bullshit)
secretasiandan 16y ago
While their culture might be necessary, its not sufficient. You also need the high end of the market with its fat profit margins to support the cost of maintaining that culture.
ody 16y ago
"Apple designs for #2. No other mass-consumer products company puts as much attention to detail into the fit and finish of the box—let alone the out-of-box experience." I'm sorry but no they do not put as much attention to detail into their products as you would think. They didn't even have multitasking in the iPhone until recently! And what was the antenna problems all about? All I see is just enough attention to detail to make people go "wow, shiney." and that's it.
- eitland 16y ago
  This actually holds true for Macbooks/Mac OS X as well. I've been using a MBP for over a year now, and "attention to detail" is hardly the first words that comes to my mind. A few examples: * Different shortcuts in different programs. * "Home"( * ) and "End"( * ) mapped to different key combinations in different programs. (No, not just 3rd party apps, apple apps too.) * Holds true for hardware, too: ctrl is positioned differently on small and full size keyboards. ( * ) Of course, there are no home and end, but one of <fn>+<arrow key>, or <cmd>+<arrow key> or <ctrl>+<arrow key> will usually work. The only text movement combination that works almost in all apps are <alt>+<arrow key> which jumps by words. Of course, being unix, <ctrl>+a and <ctrl>+e works everywhere (?) but they can't be used together with <shift>
- jscore 16y ago
  I'd say 99% of Apple's target market were fine without multitasking plus it's a nice battery saver. And this is coming from a hardcore Android fan with a Nexus One.
  - trustfundbaby 16y ago
    > I'd say 99% of Apple's target market were fine without multitasking plus it's a nice battery I disagree. I think they put up with not having it believing it would come soon, or didn't realize how bad not having it would be (I know that last one describes me).
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  I'd actually argue the opposite; Apple pays so much attention to detail that they figured out that multitasking isn't really important, so they could just do it later. Copy and paste is awkward, it isn't absolutely necessary, they could just do it later. Even the antenna thing: only the tech press knows anything about this. Apple said that just under 2% of people returned an iPhone 4. During that whole scandal, I asked my friends that haven't ever heard of HN, "What do you think about the iPhone 4 antenna problems?" and they had no idea what I was talking about. Even among those of my friends that have iPhone 4s, only 2 out of 5 even had the issue at all, and lately, my Nexus One's antenna has been acting up... Apple is good at making MVPs, and then improving upon them. Eventually.
robgoodlatte 16y ago
Never tell me what I can't do.
cletus 16y ago
To me, the most important part of this (great) post was that Apple doesn't do market research. It reminds me of a recent episode of Mad Men ("The Rejected", season 4, episode 4). In this episode, the agency explores the idea of a cream being part of a beauty ritual rather than the traditional approach of linking beauty to matrimony. Near the end there was this exchange: > Dr Miller: Well, turns out the hypothesis was rejected. I'd recommend a strategy that linked Ponds cold cream to matrimony... a veiled promise. > Don Draper: A la 1925. I'm not going to do that. So... what are we going to tell the client? > Dr Miller: I can't change the truth. > Don Draper: How do you know that's the truth? A new idea is something they don't know yet so of course it's not going to come up as an option. Put my campaign on TV for a year then hold your group again. Maybe it'll show up. To me this so succinctly sums up the disconnect between market research and the best products. Take the iPad: I don't know why they decided to do a 10" tablet but I would bet money that they came up with several form factors then Steve Jobs walked into a room, picked one and said that's the one they're doing. This may be an oversimplification but I'm sure it's not far from the truth.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Market research is generally extremely difficult to do well. And for consumer products its less clear how useful it is. Most people use consuer products and Apple engineers/designers are probably fairly close to their target market, which are early adopters (others fall in line after early adopters). And we should also be clear, Apple has tons of market data. These Apple stores I'm sure supply them tons of data, as an example. While they may not do targeted focus groups, I'm certain that they go into meetings where they say things like, "Verizon would expand our user base by x%, but likely add these additional costs".
  - cletus 16y ago
    The Verizon iPhone story is both my favourite and most hated tech story. It's my most hated because I'm sick of hearing it. Every month it pops up. It's my favourite because it's a classic example of rumourmongering becoming "news" perpetuated by people who don't really understand Apple at all. See, it doesn't matter what % increase in revenue or market size Verizon would deliver to Apple, there is still one huge problem: CDMA technically doesn't support simultaneous voice and data. There is no getting around that (beyond the inevitable transition to LTE). Anyone who thinks that Apple will release a CDMA version of the phone and then try to explain to consumers that version A can do this but version B can't is, well, off their rocker. A CDMA iPad however is a completely different matter, but I digress... Just like Apple could make more money--at least in the short term--by releasing a new phone more often than every year. The fact is though that people don't like the instant obsolescence of tech products. You buy an iPhone 4 today and you know it's as good as an iPhone will get til mid next year. Compare that to the anarchic shotgun world of Android handsets. Apple is driven by product and user experience not market research ("market data" isn't quite the same thing).
brown9-2 16y ago
One interesting thing about the idea that most companies can't be like Apple because their super-focused design attitude is risky and costly is: how did Apple get here? If it's so hard for a company to bootstrap themselves into this philosophy (and get large while doing it), how did Apple pull it off? If my understanding of history is correct, it took a few failures and a dark period of non-success. Perhaps there is an additional lesson in there about recovering from failure and turning unsuccessful enterprises around. On a related note, can anyone recommend a good book about Apple's history and particularily the story of how Steve Jobs turned the ship around when he returned? I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of interesting stories in that history which probably haven't been widely disclosed.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Absolutely. The biggest factor in Apple's current success is their past failure. Apple's willingness to completely redo their OS is a result of their OS struggling, both in the market and technologically. The other thing that their failure also helped solidify is their base. Being the perpetual underdog they had a very strong enthusiastic core fan base. This allows them to get decent sales on even their worst sellings products. And for products with public displays (think iPod and iPhone) it helps them create early viral marketing. This base is much less effective for non-publicly displayed items (think their new touchpad or AppleTV). I think these two things have allowed Apple to do bolder moves, yet actually have less risk associated with it. The only other tech company I could think of that would have been able to do something similar was Commodore. But they self-imploded before publicly displayed technology devices were very viable.
gmlk 16y ago
It reminded me of something Knuth once wrote: "Judge an artist not by the quality of what is hanging on the walls, but by the quality of what's in the wastebasket"
ritusjain 16y ago
The reason Apple was successful at coming back from the dark period is because of Steve Jobs. Here is my question. Is it more important to have a CEO that has an innovative vision or is it more important to have a employee base thats is innovative? And I would argue that the former is the crucial sauce for success... which makes it hard to be sustainable...

117 points by davidedicillo 16y ago

Before starting my company, I worked as a product manager for a good 10 years and few other things after that. Truths like the Henry Ford quote: "If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’" are good and true but as this article points out, there is only room for one Apple and one Ford at any one time or any one industry. The rest of us have to be pragmatic and consider product innovation as something that's very central and very interdependent with all other aspects of a company's strategy and tactics (people, technology, customers, capital, competition, etc.).

ladon86 16y ago
Can you elaborate further on why there is only room for one company of this type in any one industry? I am struggling to see why that would be the case.
- yardie 16y ago
  I've actually heard the same for fashion. There is usually one fashion house that basically dictates style for a few years. All other highend designers are basically lockstep behind this and then it trickles down through ready to wear, and finally consumer brands (like H&M). You also see this in consumer electronics where bezels alternate between glossy black, flat black, silver, gold, white. If you go back further you'll find woodgrain, yellows, greens, etc. But it would never be one manufacturer. They all did it around the same time. Today, Apple has decided a keyboard isn't necessary on a smartphone. 3 years ago that wasn't that case. Nintendo has decided that motion was how to play games. 3 years ago that wasn't the case. Ford decided that 4 wheels on a chassis is what makes a car. Why not 3 wheels, 5 wheels, or 6 wheels? The market likes to be given new options, but not too many options. People are willing to take a chance but they won't accomadate everything. For now motion controllers are where it's at. Nintendo decided it, MS and Sony have to follow suit. In a few years it might be brainwave controllers. While those controllers exist they aren't marketable. The public isn't ready for it, yet.
melissamiranda 16y ago
Agree. Article quotes Apple as having just 20 designers who come up with the cool products. Article also says they don't do market research. This makes sense- 20 people come up with amazing ideas on their own (easy to reach consensus), and then I'm sure test prototypes in front of users. (They must get their products in front of users, even if it's a small set of users). Contrast to Microsoft, which has competitive designers and programmers working in silos, vying for their little feature to win real estate on one of their programs. No wonder everything is bloated. (Source: I heard this from MS employees when I worked a consulting project for them while at a well known design firm). Here's an interesting post on how Apple's "benelovent monarchy" stacks against Android's crowdsourced approach. http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/crowdsourced-curation-reputation-systems-and-the-social-graph/2010/08/10 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/crowdsourced-curation-reputati... Does Apple's innovation win in this case?

extension 16y ago

I think there are plenty of companies that innovate like Apple, but none of them make hardware. You can make a great piece of software with just a few programmers. But making a great gadget requires so many different specialized services and such a large scale operation that it's impossible to get everyone drinking the same kool-aid. If DIY manufacturing ever takes off, that's when you will see Apple caliber products coming from other people (but you'll have to print them yourself).

andreyf 16y ago
Do you really think we'll live to having a DIY manufacturing unit that builds me an iPhone 4?
- asmithmd1 16y ago
  I think it is closer than you think. It won't be in your home but there will be shops like a Kinkos where you can send a design and pick-up any number of finished products. Check out these people who will turn a design into finished boards in just a few days: http://www.screamingcircuits.com/ http://www.screamingcircuits.com/ There are probably a dozen companies like them right now, I would guess it will be less than 5 years until there is one in every town.
  - andreyf 16y ago
    I think when you look at the details, there are a million things custom designed manufacturing processes do that general purpose manufacturing simply can't, so if it ever does happen, I hope it doesn't happen at the expense of taste.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
This is a fascinating hypothesis but I predict a big caveat: Much of Apple's quality derives from standardization. Everyone with an iPhone 4 has the same iPhone 4. You can design a case, a bicycle mount, a Twitter client or a learn-to-juggle app for the iPhone 4 and know that everyone will have the same experience. Consider the world of free software, for example, where we have DIY manufacturing. Everyone can write their own Drupal, Wordpress, or Rails. But the market is not moving toward such bespoke products. Quite the opposite: customers want something that is based on customizations -- as minor as possible -- of a standard product. Part of the problem, actually, is that you underestimate the effort of design. When you can turn a blueprint into hardware overnight, you'll still have to sweat over every line of that blueprint, and document it, and support it.

danfitch 16y ago

If this is true then how did ping and the new iTunes icon make it past the 10-3-1. I am joking but not everything is perfect. Just not sure how those two slipped through.

lovskogen 16y ago
Yeah, the new iTunes icon and the new Remote for iOS icon doesn't seem up to par with Apples aesthetics. Maybe they've gotten a new design lead that took those decisions.
CamperBob 16y ago
Exactly. He says, "Quick, identify 10 different pieces of technology that truly meet your needs and that don’t bug you due to a major flaw you either have to live with or compensate for in some fashion. Could you come up with more than five? I didn’t think so," as if Apple's strategy is to land on that list. I use and enjoy my share of Apple's wares, but even if I could come up with 10 different pieces of technology that never piss me off, none of them would be from Apple. Has this guy ever used iTunes, or dealt with the App Store?
- lovskogen 16y ago
  I would argue that the iTunes and App Store experience is by far the best from a user perspective. From a hacker perspective... I don't know. But I think regular computer users are more than happy with iTunes and App Store. The ease of the App Store plays a good part in how sucessful apps has become.
- bad_user 16y ago
  I am not enthusiastic about the App Store as a developer, but as a user I'm pretty happy as it is the best app store I've seen judging by the quality and number of the apps available. Surely I'm seeing Android taking over just because it will sell more devices, but the Android Marketplace is really shitty ... I can't even sell or buy apps for Christ's sake, as my country is not on their list (I can do both from the App Store). And you would think Google has experience in building web services. So the iTunes App Store may be painful with lots of restrictions and cursed with an awful workflow for publishing apps, but at least it works.

manish 16y ago

This was there on HN 6 months back. More discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1280304 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1280304.

skeletonjelly 16y ago

Lorem Ipsum is Greek huh? How can I read the rest of the article without vexation knowing that the writer can't identify a simple foreign language and a prolific tool of design?

defen 16y ago
Maybe he meant it in the "it's all Greek to me" sense.
ubernostrum 16y ago
"Greek text" is a bit of industry jargon for placeholder text such as... lorem ipsum.
- Angostura 16y ago
  It has different meanings in different sectors. Typical in desktop publishing tools, such as Xpress and InDesign, 'greeking' occurs when actual representation of letters is replaced by a stylised texture patterns. Usually this occurs at font sizes or zoom levels where it is impractical to accurately render the type on screen. I must admit that after 20 years in publishing, I've never heard of Ipsum Lorem described as 'greek text', but I'm sure it is possible.
  - richmassena23 16y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeking
msbarnett 16y ago
"Greek" is the correct design term for any dummy text in a mock-up. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeking
- skeletonjelly 16y ago
  No way. I would have called it Latining! Don't I feel like an idiot.

aditya 16y ago

"Apple wraps great ideas inside great ideas", reminds me of JJ Abrams Mystery Box idea at TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html http://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html

thought_alarm 16y ago

I'm reminded of the story of NUMMI [1], the American automobile plant that was a 1980s joint venture between GM and Toyota. (It was covered in an episode of This American Life). In a nutshell, the story of NUMMI involves American GM workers building Toyota-designed/GM-branded vehicles using Toyota's radically different manufacturing processes. The plant itself was a smashing success for GM; the plant achieved much higher quality and productivity than any of GMs traditional plants, and it gave GM valuable insight into their rival's manufacturing and design processes. But this insight into Toyota's processes failed to transform GM because the GM corporate culture was so entrenched. It took the company the better part of 20 years to really adopt these changes they learned in 1984, as they continued to bleed market share to the Japanese. The point of that story is that I believe the corporate culture of any large tech company is equally entrenched, and in my experience it's this corporate culture that utterly determines how a company's products are designed and produced. So it really doesn't matter how Apple does things, it only matters that they're different and successful; their competitors will be completely unable to react or change. Every company is full of powerful employees who have worked their entire careers to get where they are, and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent losing their position over anything else. Do you think all those PMs at Microsoft are going anywhere? So companies like Microsoft, Motorola, HP, Acer, Nokia, Sony, and Nintendo can only do what they've always done. And if you look at their products, that's exactly what they continue to do in the face of a radically changing landscape. That's why a Toyota or an Apple or a Google is so truly threatening to their entrenched competitors. They achieve dramatically better results by doing things differently. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI

masklinn 16y ago
> So companies like Microsoft, Motorola, HP, Acer, Nokia, Sony, and Nintendo can only do what they've always done. I'm not sure Nintendo fits well in this list. They have seemed pretty willing to "take risks" (in a controlled way) and do things differently in recent years (since 2002~2003 and the start of the DS project, though they weren't initially as bold with it as they could have been, calling it a "third pillar" alongside the GBA and the GC, which we now know was utter bullshit)

secretasiandan 16y ago

While their culture might be necessary, its not sufficient. You also need the high end of the market with its fat profit margins to support the cost of maintaining that culture.

ody 16y ago

"Apple designs for #2. No other mass-consumer products company puts as much attention to detail into the fit and finish of the box—let alone the out-of-box experience." I'm sorry but no they do not put as much attention to detail into their products as you would think. They didn't even have multitasking in the iPhone until recently! And what was the antenna problems all about? All I see is just enough attention to detail to make people go "wow, shiney." and that's it.

eitland 16y ago
This actually holds true for Macbooks/Mac OS X as well. I've been using a MBP for over a year now, and "attention to detail" is hardly the first words that comes to my mind. A few examples: * Different shortcuts in different programs. * "Home"( * ) and "End"( * ) mapped to different key combinations in different programs. (No, not just 3rd party apps, apple apps too.) * Holds true for hardware, too: ctrl is positioned differently on small and full size keyboards. ( * ) Of course, there are no home and end, but one of <fn>+<arrow key>, or <cmd>+<arrow key> or <ctrl>+<arrow key> will usually work. The only text movement combination that works almost in all apps are <alt>+<arrow key> which jumps by words. Of course, being unix, <ctrl>+a and <ctrl>+e works everywhere (?) but they can't be used together with <shift>
jscore 16y ago
I'd say 99% of Apple's target market were fine without multitasking plus it's a nice battery saver. And this is coming from a hardcore Android fan with a Nexus One.
- trustfundbaby 16y ago
  > I'd say 99% of Apple's target market were fine without multitasking plus it's a nice battery I disagree. I think they put up with not having it believing it would come soon, or didn't realize how bad not having it would be (I know that last one describes me).
steveklabnik 16y ago
I'd actually argue the opposite; Apple pays so much attention to detail that they figured out that multitasking isn't really important, so they could just do it later. Copy and paste is awkward, it isn't absolutely necessary, they could just do it later. Even the antenna thing: only the tech press knows anything about this. Apple said that just under 2% of people returned an iPhone 4. During that whole scandal, I asked my friends that haven't ever heard of HN, "What do you think about the iPhone 4 antenna problems?" and they had no idea what I was talking about. Even among those of my friends that have iPhone 4s, only 2 out of 5 even had the issue at all, and lately, my Nexus One's antenna has been acting up... Apple is good at making MVPs, and then improving upon them. Eventually.

robgoodlatte 16y ago

Never tell me what I can't do.

cletus 16y ago

To me, the most important part of this (great) post was that Apple doesn't do market research. It reminds me of a recent episode of Mad Men ("The Rejected", season 4, episode 4). In this episode, the agency explores the idea of a cream being part of a beauty ritual rather than the traditional approach of linking beauty to matrimony. Near the end there was this exchange: > Dr Miller: Well, turns out the hypothesis was rejected. I'd recommend a strategy that linked Ponds cold cream to matrimony... a veiled promise. > Don Draper: A la 1925. I'm not going to do that. So... what are we going to tell the client? > Dr Miller: I can't change the truth. > Don Draper: How do you know that's the truth? A new idea is something they don't know yet so of course it's not going to come up as an option. Put my campaign on TV for a year then hold your group again. Maybe it'll show up. To me this so succinctly sums up the disconnect between market research and the best products. Take the iPad: I don't know why they decided to do a 10" tablet but I would bet money that they came up with several form factors then Steve Jobs walked into a room, picked one and said that's the one they're doing. This may be an oversimplification but I'm sure it's not far from the truth.

kenjackson 16y ago
Market research is generally extremely difficult to do well. And for consumer products its less clear how useful it is. Most people use consuer products and Apple engineers/designers are probably fairly close to their target market, which are early adopters (others fall in line after early adopters). And we should also be clear, Apple has tons of market data. These Apple stores I'm sure supply them tons of data, as an example. While they may not do targeted focus groups, I'm certain that they go into meetings where they say things like, "Verizon would expand our user base by x%, but likely add these additional costs".
- cletus 16y ago
  The Verizon iPhone story is both my favourite and most hated tech story. It's my most hated because I'm sick of hearing it. Every month it pops up. It's my favourite because it's a classic example of rumourmongering becoming "news" perpetuated by people who don't really understand Apple at all. See, it doesn't matter what % increase in revenue or market size Verizon would deliver to Apple, there is still one huge problem: CDMA technically doesn't support simultaneous voice and data. There is no getting around that (beyond the inevitable transition to LTE). Anyone who thinks that Apple will release a CDMA version of the phone and then try to explain to consumers that version A can do this but version B can't is, well, off their rocker. A CDMA iPad however is a completely different matter, but I digress... Just like Apple could make more money--at least in the short term--by releasing a new phone more often than every year. The fact is though that people don't like the instant obsolescence of tech products. You buy an iPhone 4 today and you know it's as good as an iPhone will get til mid next year. Compare that to the anarchic shotgun world of Android handsets. Apple is driven by product and user experience not market research ("market data" isn't quite the same thing).

brown9-2 16y ago

One interesting thing about the idea that most companies can't be like Apple because their super-focused design attitude is risky and costly is: how did Apple get here? If it's so hard for a company to bootstrap themselves into this philosophy (and get large while doing it), how did Apple pull it off? If my understanding of history is correct, it took a few failures and a dark period of non-success. Perhaps there is an additional lesson in there about recovering from failure and turning unsuccessful enterprises around. On a related note, can anyone recommend a good book about Apple's history and particularily the story of how Steve Jobs turned the ship around when he returned? I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of interesting stories in that history which probably haven't been widely disclosed.

kenjackson 16y ago
Absolutely. The biggest factor in Apple's current success is their past failure. Apple's willingness to completely redo their OS is a result of their OS struggling, both in the market and technologically. The other thing that their failure also helped solidify is their base. Being the perpetual underdog they had a very strong enthusiastic core fan base. This allows them to get decent sales on even their worst sellings products. And for products with public displays (think iPod and iPhone) it helps them create early viral marketing. This base is much less effective for non-publicly displayed items (think their new touchpad or AppleTV). I think these two things have allowed Apple to do bolder moves, yet actually have less risk associated with it. The only other tech company I could think of that would have been able to do something similar was Commodore. But they self-imploded before publicly displayed technology devices were very viable.

gmlk 16y ago

It reminded me of something Knuth once wrote: "Judge an artist not by the quality of what is hanging on the walls, but by the quality of what's in the wastebasket"

ritusjain 16y ago

The reason Apple was successful at coming back from the dark period is because of Steve Jobs. Here is my question. Is it more important to have a CEO that has an innovative vision or is it more important to have a employee base thats is innovative? And I would argue that the former is the crucial sauce for success... which makes it hard to be sustainable...