4 ms·

You make a good argument that follows logically from your initial assumption - that "clearly some people are willing to pay money for inferior products." So I'l

You make a good argument that follows logically from your initial assumption - that "clearly some people are willing to pay money for inferior products." So I'll just challenge that assumption ;-) By and large, I think you and the OP are defining inferior products as synonymous with less fully featured products. But it's not that simple (witness the iPhone, still lacking cut & paste). For example, compare Highrise with Salesforce. My company (a 50 person consulting firm) is moving away from SF to HR right now, even though SF has many, many more features. Why? Because HR has all of the features we need, and most of the features we like (but don't absolutely require). And we are much, much more productive when using HR. It's easier to use. I don't have to think much when filling in information. The reports take me about 5 seconds to read and comprehend. This time savings is very valuable to me and my company - I've got better things to do than think about how to use a CRM application. The features Salesforce possesses that HR lacks, by contrast, don't have any value. You'll get it if you just look at things through a slightly different lens. You might be getting tripped up by the confusion of effort and size with value. Value is what software has to a customer - effort is the cost software has to developers. And size is just a number. It would be nice if these three number always correlated. But unfortunately, that isn't the case.

axod 17y ago
I'd say a sure fire signal that it's inferior is if it can be replicated by someone else easily. If so, they can replicate it, then improve it - making the original inferior. The iPhone looks extremely simple. But it's a ruse - it's actually massively complex and a feat of engineering. It's hard to copy. I agree, it takes a lot of thought to decide what to leave out - lack of features can be a good thing. But those decisions are not really defendable in terms of IP (Unless you complain Huddlechat 'stole' your whole UI and they roll over) I haven't used basecamp or highrise extensively, so perhaps they make up for campfire.
rmalik 17y ago
I am not stating that 37 Signals products are inferior at all. The classical mindset was that people would move from one product to another because of some killer feature or low cost alternative. 37Signals has seemed to flip this idea and challenge the idea of what better software means. This brought me to wonder how other users felt about their products and their motivations for using them. I like your distinction between effort and value. I don't agree at all with the notion of the amount of effort put in equals the amount of value to the user. It simply doesn't work in reality. The effort is also a vague concept as it could be related to development time, marketing, customer service, etc. Effort in dealing with users, gathering feedback and iterating on the product based on that feedback is what gains value for a product IMHO.

axod 17y ago

I'd say a sure fire signal that it's inferior is if it can be replicated by someone else easily. If so, they can replicate it, then improve it - making the original inferior. The iPhone looks extremely simple. But it's a ruse - it's actually massively complex and a feat of engineering. It's hard to copy. I agree, it takes a lot of thought to decide what to leave out - lack of features can be a good thing. But those decisions are not really defendable in terms of IP (Unless you complain Huddlechat 'stole' your whole UI and they roll over) I haven't used basecamp or highrise extensively, so perhaps they make up for campfire.

rmalik 17y ago

I am not stating that 37 Signals products are inferior at all. The classical mindset was that people would move from one product to another because of some killer feature or low cost alternative. 37Signals has seemed to flip this idea and challenge the idea of what better software means. This brought me to wonder how other users felt about their products and their motivations for using them. I like your distinction between effort and value. I don't agree at all with the notion of the amount of effort put in equals the amount of value to the user. It simply doesn't work in reality. The effort is also a vague concept as it could be related to development time, marketing, customer service, etc. Effort in dealing with users, gathering feedback and iterating on the product based on that feedback is what gains value for a product IMHO.