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Another way to put this, Apple loosely abides to the "Good, Better, Best" lineup for their product offerings. They don't follow it exactly, but in general, they
by dgallagher 15y ago
Another way to put this, Apple loosely abides to the "Good, Better, Best" lineup for their product offerings. They don't follow it exactly, but in general, they keep selection simple. This doesn't confuse customers, and allows them to easily compare one thing to another.
If you've ever eaten at Panera Bread, you'll usually see people staring at the menu on the wall for a few minutes. Their menu is huge and all over the place. Hot sandwiches, cold sandwiches, salads, specialty salads, bagels, breakfast items, pastries, plus much more including ingredients. What's inside a Strawberry Poppyseed & Chicken salad? Read the fine print under it. Do you want apple, chips, or bread on the side? What type of bread do you want on your sandwich? We have 20 different types. Cheese OK? Mayo OK? Fountain drink, one of the 8 different bottled drinks in front of you you've never heard of, or freshly squeezed OJ? Complex, like Dell/HP/Lenovo.
What about McDonalds? You order by number associated with a picture. At 10:30, the breakfast pictures are replaced with the lunch/dinner pictures. Cheese or no cheese? Coke, diet coke, sprite? Large, medium, small? Quick, easy decisions. You know what a Big Mac is. And if you want to know what's in it, you're out of luck! There are 10 pictures; pick one of them. Simple, like Apple.
- ShirtlessRod 15y agoIs that really the comparison you want to be using here? Panera versus McDonalds, where Apple is McDonalds? Seems more like an insult.
- CamperBob 15y agoNot if you look at their balance sheets, it isn't. McDonalds is one hell of a highly optimized operation, and nobody in business would object to being compared to them. Meanwhile, Panera's food is probably less healthy if you actually look at the numbers.
- dgallagher 15y agoYeah, I was mostly looking at it from the perspective of just comparing a complex-selection (Panera Bread's menu) vs. a simpler-selection (McDonald's menu). If you look at other variables like quality of food, speed which it's cooked, convenience of locations, charitable donations, etc, it definitely confuses the example.
- whatusername 15y agoEveryone can make a better/tastier/nicer hamburger than McDonalds. No-one can make a more profitable hamburger than McDonalds. That ties in pretty well to Tim Cook.
- dasil003 15y agoMost hamburgers are more profitable than McDonalds. The hard part is selling a billion of them.
- bostonvaulter2 15y agoIsn't it about selling the sides as well, like the soda's?
- razzmataz 15y agoThe volume is where McDonalds is making the massive profits.
- dasil003 15y agoRight. How does that add to my point?
- gcb 15y agogreat analogy. and just like with food, anyone who has a clue about what they are ordering, will never enter an apple store.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- aashay 15y agoPresumptuous. I, just like many HNers like me, have more than just a "clue" about what I'm ordering, and I love Apple products. As a sidenote, I hear these types of statements a lot from those in the anti-Apple crowd, but I can't remember the last time I heard someone switch _away_ from Apple products say things like this.
- sid0 15y agoI am going to switch away from Apple's shitty notebooks and probably never use one again, and I agree with the GP.
- wazoox 15y agoMy job is assembling special purpose, high performance storage servers with specially tuned OS. But I wouldn't buy any other laptop than an Apple at the moment.
- gcb 15y agogood luck buying an macbook air, which started the post from the article, that can even play video at decent frame rates.