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They seem prepared to go in at higher price points. Most other manufacturers seem to take the approach of getting as many features on the side of the box and t

They seem prepared to go in at higher price points. Most other manufacturers seem to take the approach of getting as many features on the side of the box and then compete on price. They cost engineer the crap out of everything and it ends up being somewhat disappointing. I often maintain that so much technology is 80% of the way to being amazing, but is stymied by commercial concerns that cause companies to cut corners and cheap out, or they hobble their own product to create barriers to interoperability. While Apple still have to strike the right balance between between features and cost, and also like to make their own walled gardens, they are able to go for the higher price points, and also integrate really well between a wide swathe of products. They are prepared to let specific products be less competative in general (e.g Homepod), because they know that they integrate well into their overall ecosystem.

wkat4242 3y ago
The price thing isn't just about competition. Meta and oculus before it has a stated goal to bring it to the masses. That's not going to work at a $3500 price point. You need to get Devs interested too and that won't work if only the top 1% of the western world can afford it.
fouc 3y ago
Yes, "stymied by commercial concerns" is a great way to put it. I get the feeling that many companies/managers don't have enough courage to make a different set of tradeoffs.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  A lot of the replies are pretty vague, like they’re just “good at product” or they just “understand this or that” as if it’s some kind of mysticism. But why, and how? What is the formula? I think this reply chain starts to get at why. I’m imagining a typical business school 2-axis chart where one axis is “willingness to take and commit to risks vs unwillingness/noncommittal” and the other axis is “acts independently vs. reacts to commercial/competitive pressures”. I guess what I want to understand is why is Apple kind of all alone on that plot, where the rest of the industry are clustered together far away from them? What are the business processes that lead to their position? Can a company follow a playbook and change their culture and have similar results? Are there other examples? A lot of our industry are so extremely risk averse, have tunnel vision trying to copy each others’ feature checkboxes, rush things to market to try to make money before they are fully baked, and then give up when they aren’t instant successes. Everyone seems to follow this playbook.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    As someone who is deep inside the Apple ecosystem after making enough to afford the devices, it’s because they make it pleasant to use. Before my first MBP, I had a Dell Inspiron which has good specs, but it was heavy, the plastic was flimsy and the screen was not good. The trackpad was abysimal. In my last work position, I got a Dell XPS and it was the same, so in the span of 8 years, nothing changes to show that they care for me as a user. Most people don’t want to think about how to do something or care about optimizing it when they can get it done and not think further about it. But companies seems to want to put a lot of barriers into what I want to get done, like popups, complicated screens, ugly interfaces. For the majority of user workflows, Apple offers a simple, unobstrusive way to do them. Starlink routers are almost the same in that regard (the mobile app could use some work, and perhaps add a desktop interface) My advice (as a user) is for to simplify the usual workflow to the point you only ask the few (0,1-3) indispensable questions, and then get out of the way. Further options can be buried inside Preferences and Settings. And then you perfect the apperance, ease of use, and general enjoyment of using the application/device.
    - whstl 3y ago
      Being pleasant to use also requires some courage to remove features, make compromises and spend extra time on the right things, rather than box-ticking. In the end you need courage both to make it pleasant to use and to give it a big price.
    - WWLink 3y ago
      Apple makes devices for the users. Dell makes them to sell as part of a service contract to a company. Microsoft makes an OS to sell to enterprises to provide a heavily managed experience for their employees so they can maximize productivity and profit. Apple makes an OS for people to use. (and get a 30% cut on almost every purchase the users make with it lol)
    - jimbokun 3y ago
      My personal machine is an M1 Air, and have to use PCs for work. The time it takes the PCs to wake from sleep until I can do actual work is a constant annoyance. The MacBook Air wakes just as quickly as an iPhone. It’s details like that, which set Apple apart.
WWLink 3y ago
TL;DR: Apple builds to a standard while everyone else builds to a price.
- manquer 3y ago
  Apple can afford to build to standards, It is not like everyone else is dumb , they simply cannot pull it off the brand strength Apple has is without peer in the market. If another brand launched first at same price points they simply will not get the traction Apple does. Even with $3,500 price Apple likely needs sales hundreds of thousands of units to break even , no other manufacturers cannot pull it off
  - halostatue 3y ago
    I think there are a lot of smaller companies that can build to standards, and then they either exceed their original vision or things explode to the point where they feel they need to move faster. I love my Apple Watch (on my second one now) and I didn't like wearing watches. Except the Pebble that I bought (I think that I got the first generation Pebble colour, but it's been a while). After that product, things went sideways for Pebble for a lot of reasons. But the initial products were great and the build quality was good (not great, but good). The same applies to the first few generations of the Palm Pilot (and to a lesser degree, the Treo), although I think that the best PalmOS device built was the Clié NX70. With respect to Apple's break even…I suspect that the research they did is going to produce benefits across all of Apple's product lines for the better part of the next decade (part of it already has, with the Apple Watch Double Tap hand gesture, although that is movement detection not camera-based).
    - manquer 3y ago
      > to the point where they feel they need to move faster They feel the need because unlike Apple others cannot wait years to release a product or upgrade to a successful one and still sell enough. Everyone else have limited brand recall, if they don't move fast a competitor will and they loose relevance. The point is nobody else can sustainably build to standards the way Apple can, because Apple can take its time enter a industry late and still win big.
chaostheory 3y ago
> Most other manufacturers seem to take the approach of getting as many features on the side of the box and then compete on price. They cost engineer the crap out of everything and it ends up being somewhat disappointing. This is a good summary of Windows Mixed Reality headsets, or Kinect

wkat4242 3y ago

The price thing isn't just about competition. Meta and oculus before it has a stated goal to bring it to the masses. That's not going to work at a $3500 price point. You need to get Devs interested too and that won't work if only the top 1% of the western world can afford it.

fouc 3y ago

Yes, "stymied by commercial concerns" is a great way to put it. I get the feeling that many companies/managers don't have enough courage to make a different set of tradeoffs.

ryandrake 3y ago
A lot of the replies are pretty vague, like they’re just “good at product” or they just “understand this or that” as if it’s some kind of mysticism. But why, and how? What is the formula? I think this reply chain starts to get at why. I’m imagining a typical business school 2-axis chart where one axis is “willingness to take and commit to risks vs unwillingness/noncommittal” and the other axis is “acts independently vs. reacts to commercial/competitive pressures”. I guess what I want to understand is why is Apple kind of all alone on that plot, where the rest of the industry are clustered together far away from them? What are the business processes that lead to their position? Can a company follow a playbook and change their culture and have similar results? Are there other examples? A lot of our industry are so extremely risk averse, have tunnel vision trying to copy each others’ feature checkboxes, rush things to market to try to make money before they are fully baked, and then give up when they aren’t instant successes. Everyone seems to follow this playbook.
- skydhash 3y ago
  As someone who is deep inside the Apple ecosystem after making enough to afford the devices, it’s because they make it pleasant to use. Before my first MBP, I had a Dell Inspiron which has good specs, but it was heavy, the plastic was flimsy and the screen was not good. The trackpad was abysimal. In my last work position, I got a Dell XPS and it was the same, so in the span of 8 years, nothing changes to show that they care for me as a user. Most people don’t want to think about how to do something or care about optimizing it when they can get it done and not think further about it. But companies seems to want to put a lot of barriers into what I want to get done, like popups, complicated screens, ugly interfaces. For the majority of user workflows, Apple offers a simple, unobstrusive way to do them. Starlink routers are almost the same in that regard (the mobile app could use some work, and perhaps add a desktop interface) My advice (as a user) is for to simplify the usual workflow to the point you only ask the few (0,1-3) indispensable questions, and then get out of the way. Further options can be buried inside Preferences and Settings. And then you perfect the apperance, ease of use, and general enjoyment of using the application/device.
  - whstl 3y ago
    Being pleasant to use also requires some courage to remove features, make compromises and spend extra time on the right things, rather than box-ticking. In the end you need courage both to make it pleasant to use and to give it a big price.
  - WWLink 3y ago
    Apple makes devices for the users. Dell makes them to sell as part of a service contract to a company. Microsoft makes an OS to sell to enterprises to provide a heavily managed experience for their employees so they can maximize productivity and profit. Apple makes an OS for people to use. (and get a 30% cut on almost every purchase the users make with it lol)
  - jimbokun 3y ago
    My personal machine is an M1 Air, and have to use PCs for work. The time it takes the PCs to wake from sleep until I can do actual work is a constant annoyance. The MacBook Air wakes just as quickly as an iPhone. It’s details like that, which set Apple apart.

WWLink 3y ago

TL;DR: Apple builds to a standard while everyone else builds to a price.

manquer 3y ago
Apple can afford to build to standards, It is not like everyone else is dumb , they simply cannot pull it off the brand strength Apple has is without peer in the market. If another brand launched first at same price points they simply will not get the traction Apple does. Even with $3,500 price Apple likely needs sales hundreds of thousands of units to break even , no other manufacturers cannot pull it off
- halostatue 3y ago
  I think there are a lot of smaller companies that can build to standards, and then they either exceed their original vision or things explode to the point where they feel they need to move faster. I love my Apple Watch (on my second one now) and I didn't like wearing watches. Except the Pebble that I bought (I think that I got the first generation Pebble colour, but it's been a while). After that product, things went sideways for Pebble for a lot of reasons. But the initial products were great and the build quality was good (not great, but good). The same applies to the first few generations of the Palm Pilot (and to a lesser degree, the Treo), although I think that the best PalmOS device built was the Clié NX70. With respect to Apple's break even…I suspect that the research they did is going to produce benefits across all of Apple's product lines for the better part of the next decade (part of it already has, with the Apple Watch Double Tap hand gesture, although that is movement detection not camera-based).
  - manquer 3y ago
    > to the point where they feel they need to move faster They feel the need because unlike Apple others cannot wait years to release a product or upgrade to a successful one and still sell enough. Everyone else have limited brand recall, if they don't move fast a competitor will and they loose relevance. The point is nobody else can sustainably build to standards the way Apple can, because Apple can take its time enter a industry late and still win big.

chaostheory 3y ago

> Most other manufacturers seem to take the approach of getting as many features on the side of the box and then compete on price. They cost engineer the crap out of everything and it ends up being somewhat disappointing. This is a good summary of Windows Mixed Reality headsets, or Kinect