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People say Apple is a tech company or a toys for millenials company, but I claim that fundamentally Apple is a user experience company (maybe the only one). Th

by avn2109 11y ago

People say Apple is a tech company or a toys for millenials company, but I claim that fundamentally Apple is a user experience company (maybe the only one). They dominate because Steve Jobs realized what business they're in, and none of their competitors have. This is like when the railroads' lunch was eaten by the tractor trailer because the railroads thought they were rail companies, when in fact they were transportation companies. Samsung and all the other competitors think they're in the device business, but they're not. They're in the UX business. It helps to have Steve Jobs, who was actually a user experience zealot and in a normal org would have been the CUXO, masquerading as a CEO. As an example, think of the difference between being an Apple vs. Samsung customer, all the way through the value chain. Shopping in that beautiful airy Apple store, experiencing those matte textures and ingenious packaging while unboxing your new devices, the industrial design wizardry that constructed a machine with such amazing fit and finish and tight panel gaps and textures, software that (sometimes, mostly) just works. Jobs was a strong enough leader to make a bunch of mostly-orthogonal disciplines (e.g. manufacturing, industrial design, software engineering, packaging design) subservient to the company's ultimate objective, which is UX. It doesn't hurt that Apple tends to execute best-in-class on each of these axes, but that's tactics not strategy. The big question for the future is whether Tim Cook understands this. It's left as an exercise for the reader whether the Apple watch is a product made by a UX company or by a company intent on duplicating the financial success of the ipad and iphone by cargo-culting the "create new device class" methods that worked before.

tosseraccount 11y ago
The whole apple worship thing is kind of creepy to me. Sorry. (edit: go ahead fanboys, I got lots of karma for next time. go ahead and down vote my previous threads while your at it.)
- avn2109 11y ago
  GP here: Don't get me wrong, I would rather see out-of-the-box Linux win in the laptop market and I strongly dislike walled gardens (mobile and otherwise) on philosophical grounds. But that doesn't stop me from hypothesizing about why Apple is making a boatload of money.
- curiousjorge 11y ago
  >(edit: go ahead fanboys, I got lots of karma for next time. go ahead and down vote my previous threads while your at it.) now that is creepy. I'm not even an Apple user but it doesn't mean I can't analyze and form my own opinions. So your argument here is moot that there's a massive conspiracy of Apple lovers downvoting your comment. I certainly am not a fan of Apple but you gotta give credit where it's due, it's headed to be the first trillion dollar company this year or the next so I pay attention. And I can't downvote anyone since I'm a mere peasant with under 300 karma points.
curiousjorge 11y ago
I think this is a very good insight. UX is a huge differentiator. In the early to mid years of Android, Apple had no real competition. Although I have some qualms about Material UI designs (why does it lag when I press ON and OFF? why does it look and feel like dreamy cotton candy world?), the UX has gotten considerably good on the Android due to faster and cheaper phones. However, I do agree that Jobs absolutely nailed it with UX and focus on that area (much like how luxury car brands focus on the little things). My answer to your exercise is that Tim Cook indeed tried to duplicate the same formula to a new device. Some problems are that there is such a small screen real estate, the UX would need a different approach. Another is market fit for the demographic that are into luxury. Would wearing the apple watch make you look cheap and "techie" or send other unintentional messages about you? The people who wear watch these days seems to be those that wants to flaunt their 100k Rolex or older generation. I remember people stopped wearing watches when cell phones displayed time, (I never wore one, I relied on my internal clock), an entire generation might have never wore a watch before, could the apple watch end up like the iPad where people first buy it out of curiosity and nobody bothers with it afterwards? Who knows but Apple will have enough cash to screw up several times now (if they do reach trillion dollar market cap). If Tim does make the Apple Watch a success, it would be huge for Apple. You just convinced your loyal iPhone buyer they need a watch now too. Experience and lessons gained with Apple Watch could lead to more wearables, maybe we'll see Tim do his take on the Google Glasses.
- lazylizard 11y ago
  i wish they would make databases and webservers and cacheing proxies and clustering tools and distributed filesystems or something like that. the ux on android, windows phones , symbian, etc are all plenty good already.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
UX and ecosystem, which includes the software, services, content, and work of other users. The hardware is a key into the walled garden. Apple's biggest asset is the fact that it's the only computer company to care about UX. All other companies try to sell computers as if they're engineering or business tools designed for engineers or business people. So you'll often get a load of crap and bloatware which is only really there to underline the fact that a lot of engineering has happened. (It's like Japanese hifi which always has something like "SuperDynamic Extra Bitwidth HyperTechnology" on the front somewhere, so you can tell it's not just another generic amp, or something.) Only Apple tries to sell computers to non-technical people. Nokia would have done the same thing if they'd moved into the computer market, but they didn't. They got very close with phones, but Nokia were never run by a dictator, so the culture was too unstructured and chaotic to really nail it. Microsoft tried it with Win 8 but got it unbelievably, insanely wrong, mostly by thinking all you have to do is dumb down the UI and add really loud colours. (Clue: no.) Unfortunately I think the plot has been lost with Watch, which is a lifestyle product whose only real point is to be a lifestyle product. Unlike everything else Apple has made, it's not obviously useful and trying to be beautiful - it's trying to be beautiful, because Apple. I hope that's not the beginning of a trend. Maybe a serious use case will appear, but it's clearly not doing it for the market yet.
- arjunrc 11y ago
  I agree with yours & the parent argument very much. I feel like the Watch could usher in Security/Identity features, that no other consumer device is capable of. Imagine not having to carry your Company ID card, your credit/debit/loyalty/gym card or any home/car/locker keys or your insurance/drivers license whatsoever for the rest of your life. This combine with tracking your health, could be its USP. As the hardware evolves (in 2 years - where its hopefully independent of your Phone), all you need is your watch to go to the gym, or take your dog for a walk. Iteration/Execution is key, of course. As long as Apple realizes its more important to fix bugs & not keep adding broken features to more broken features (like Apple Music & iTunes 12.2 - which have been horrible IMHO) they should have enough of a user base to make the Watch a household product like the Phone.
- yvsong 11y ago

by avn2109 11y ago

tosseraccount 11y ago

The whole apple worship thing is kind of creepy to me. Sorry. (edit: go ahead fanboys, I got lots of karma for next time. go ahead and down vote my previous threads while your at it.)

avn2109 11y ago
GP here: Don't get me wrong, I would rather see out-of-the-box Linux win in the laptop market and I strongly dislike walled gardens (mobile and otherwise) on philosophical grounds. But that doesn't stop me from hypothesizing about why Apple is making a boatload of money.
curiousjorge 11y ago
>(edit: go ahead fanboys, I got lots of karma for next time. go ahead and down vote my previous threads while your at it.) now that is creepy. I'm not even an Apple user but it doesn't mean I can't analyze and form my own opinions. So your argument here is moot that there's a massive conspiracy of Apple lovers downvoting your comment. I certainly am not a fan of Apple but you gotta give credit where it's due, it's headed to be the first trillion dollar company this year or the next so I pay attention. And I can't downvote anyone since I'm a mere peasant with under 300 karma points.

curiousjorge 11y ago

I think this is a very good insight. UX is a huge differentiator. In the early to mid years of Android, Apple had no real competition. Although I have some qualms about Material UI designs (why does it lag when I press ON and OFF? why does it look and feel like dreamy cotton candy world?), the UX has gotten considerably good on the Android due to faster and cheaper phones. However, I do agree that Jobs absolutely nailed it with UX and focus on that area (much like how luxury car brands focus on the little things). My answer to your exercise is that Tim Cook indeed tried to duplicate the same formula to a new device. Some problems are that there is such a small screen real estate, the UX would need a different approach. Another is market fit for the demographic that are into luxury. Would wearing the apple watch make you look cheap and "techie" or send other unintentional messages about you? The people who wear watch these days seems to be those that wants to flaunt their 100k Rolex or older generation. I remember people stopped wearing watches when cell phones displayed time, (I never wore one, I relied on my internal clock), an entire generation might have never wore a watch before, could the apple watch end up like the iPad where people first buy it out of curiosity and nobody bothers with it afterwards? Who knows but Apple will have enough cash to screw up several times now (if they do reach trillion dollar market cap). If Tim does make the Apple Watch a success, it would be huge for Apple. You just convinced your loyal iPhone buyer they need a watch now too. Experience and lessons gained with Apple Watch could lead to more wearables, maybe we'll see Tim do his take on the Google Glasses.

lazylizard 11y ago
i wish they would make databases and webservers and cacheing proxies and clustering tools and distributed filesystems or something like that. the ux on android, windows phones , symbian, etc are all plenty good already.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

UX and ecosystem, which includes the software, services, content, and work of other users. The hardware is a key into the walled garden. Apple's biggest asset is the fact that it's the only computer company to care about UX. All other companies try to sell computers as if they're engineering or business tools designed for engineers or business people. So you'll often get a load of crap and bloatware which is only really there to underline the fact that a lot of engineering has happened. (It's like Japanese hifi which always has something like "SuperDynamic Extra Bitwidth HyperTechnology" on the front somewhere, so you can tell it's not just another generic amp, or something.) Only Apple tries to sell computers to non-technical people. Nokia would have done the same thing if they'd moved into the computer market, but they didn't. They got very close with phones, but Nokia were never run by a dictator, so the culture was too unstructured and chaotic to really nail it. Microsoft tried it with Win 8 but got it unbelievably, insanely wrong, mostly by thinking all you have to do is dumb down the UI and add really loud colours. (Clue: no.) Unfortunately I think the plot has been lost with Watch, which is a lifestyle product whose only real point is to be a lifestyle product. Unlike everything else Apple has made, it's not obviously useful and trying to be beautiful - it's trying to be beautiful, because Apple. I hope that's not the beginning of a trend. Maybe a serious use case will appear, but it's clearly not doing it for the market yet.

arjunrc 11y ago
I agree with yours & the parent argument very much. I feel like the Watch could usher in Security/Identity features, that no other consumer device is capable of. Imagine not having to carry your Company ID card, your credit/debit/loyalty/gym card or any home/car/locker keys or your insurance/drivers license whatsoever for the rest of your life. This combine with tracking your health, could be its USP. As the hardware evolves (in 2 years - where its hopefully independent of your Phone), all you need is your watch to go to the gym, or take your dog for a walk. Iteration/Execution is key, of course. As long as Apple realizes its more important to fix bugs & not keep adding broken features to more broken features (like Apple Music & iTunes 12.2 - which have been horrible IMHO) they should have enough of a user base to make the Watch a household product like the Phone.
yvsong 11y ago