apple's success has left a lot of us scratching our heads. This was a company that just ten years ago was left for dead. Since that time apple has staged one of the largest come backs in corporate history. How did they do it? apple's comeback is a story about a company that eschewed the major trends of its day in order to create a refreshing line of products that would attract consumers the world over.
Ten years ago the major computer manufacturers were Dell, HP, Gateway, and Compaq. These four companies essentially sold the same product: PC's running Windows. In order to win over consumers all three companies decided to attract consumers to their products by offering lower prices. While this strategy may seem logical it led to disastrous results for all involved. Casualties ensued with Gateway going out of business and Compaq being acquired by HP.
Even with Compaq and Gateway out of the way HP and Dell continued to compete on price resulting in very low margins for both companies. In order to cope with these low margins Dell and HP began cutting corners by using inferior components in their products. This resulted in low quality devices.
Of course HP and Dell couldn't just compete on price, they also competed on features in the form of software. HP and Dell began offering their computers with preloaded software.
The software strategy was a complete failure. Dell and HP were more concerned about offering a large suite of software than they were about improving the user experience. Essentially they were hoping that their consumers would see that one brand offered more software than the other and mindlessly conclude that they were getting a better deal. In the end most of the software that came with these PC's was useless, and since the software would hog computer resources the computers actually began to run slower.
The result of this war between Dell and HP was HP and Dell were getting poorer and consumers were getting frustrated with the inferior offerings that were coming out of these companies.
HP and Dell were locked in a losing battle, and apple refused to play along. apple launched a new Macintosh computer running their new OS X operating system.
apple's approach towards marketing the Macintosh was different from HP and Dell in almost every way. Instead of competing on price apple competed on quality. apple's strategy was to offer a premium product at a premium price and reap premium margins. HP and Dell were charging less than $1,000 for their computers, and apple was charging closer to $2,000.
apple's dedication to quality has paid off. Today Dell and HP are famous for their poor quality products; whereas apple can boast that it has the highest consumer satisfaction rate of any technology company. apple has become synonymous with quality.
apple didn't just offer a high quality product, they also eschewed HP and Dell's tendency to favor features over the user experience. apple understands that a great user experience isn't just the result of what's available in a product, it is also the result of what isn't in a product. Instead of packaging a bunch of worthless software, apple carefully packaged in software that they knew their users would use. This minimalist approach would become a staple for apple in their future products.
apple's approach to their Macintosh helped them to carve out a healthy niche in the market, but it's their highly successful ipod that has catapulted apple to their status as a strong leader in technology. apple has cultivated their ipod product line from a simple mp3 player to their flag ship product.
The original ipod has apple's minimalist fingerprints all over it. When the ipod was released competing mp3 players were encumbered with a myriad buttons. The ipod had a wheel and one button. This simple user interface allowed users to do everything they needed to with their ipod.
Today the ipod has evolved to become the standard bearer for handheld computing devices. The most powerful devices in the ipod line are the ones that run the iphone OS. These include: the iphone, the ipod touch, and the ipad. Each of these devices is elegantly designed, simple to use, stable, and incredibly powerful.
The iphone OS devices are incredibly powerful, and it must have been tempting to cram a bunch of features into these products. apple managed to exercise the restraint it is famous for and again favored usability over feature. The ipod touch is so simple that my two year old son was able to figure out how to use it without any direction from myself or my wife. I seriously doubt I could put my two year old in front of my Windows 7 computer and expect him to figure out how to operate it. Sure the ipod touch isn't nearly as powerful as my PC, but that's part of the beauty of the ipod touch. apple deliberately left out the powerful features of the PC in order to deliver a streamlined device for its customers.
Now apple has released the ipad. If you've followed me on Facebook you know that I love to make fun of the ipad. It's poorly named, and it really is just a giant ipod touch. The fact that the ipad is just a giant ipod touch is actually a tribute to apple's genius. apple realized that the only real limitation that kept the ipod touch from being a great content consumer device was its size, so instead of cramming a bunch of unnecessary features into their product apple just made it larger. Once again apple favored the user experience over features. The results? The ipad is the first successful tablet computer, a feat that Microsoft has failed to achieve over the last ten years.
apple garnered success by eschewing the popular trends of its day. Instead of focusing on price, apple focused on quality. Instead of focusing on features, apple focused on the user experience. There's one more trend that apple had to eschew in order to make its products a reality, openness.
With the rise of the internet came the rise of openness. The internet relies heavily on open standards as provided by the w3c, and it has provided open source products with a great distribution model. The guiding wisdom today is that openness leads to better products. The guiding wisdom is wrong.
Open standards and open source rely heavily on collaborative efforts in order to succeed. Unfortunately collaboration doesn't play well with the creative process, and technology is a creative process. Somebody needs to have the creative vision for a product, without that you end up with a mess.
Witness HTML 4, JavaScript, and CSS, the results of the w3c. These technologies are a mess. JavaScript is one of the most arcane programming languages available, HTML 4 is completely insufficient for our needs, and CSS is just a kludge to make up for HTML 4's many issues. You don't believe me? Try writing a full blown highly interactive application with these technologies. Now try using a technology that came out of a closed shop, like Microsoft's Silverlight.
What's worse is these collaborative efforts takes forever to come up with new results. Silverlight has been out for 2 1/2 years and we're already on version 4. The w3c projects that they won't finalize the standard for HTML 5 until 2022.
In the opening paragraph I criticized apple for being closed. The irony is apple's success could not have happened if they were open. apple needed to create high quality products that focused on the user experience. If apple had employed the open model that could not have happened. Too many people would have thrown in too many features, and the products would have been ruined.
With apple's success we can witness apple's influence. Simple user experiences are becoming increasingly popular. Nintendo took apple's lead and created a controller that was simple and easy to use. Microsoft is taking that even further with project Natal, a user interface device that is completely void of buttons. In the 90's Software packaging typically contained a matrix that would compare their features to their leading competitor. Today we see software companies focusing on simple slimmed down software that focuses on the user experience instead of features.
apple's success story is inspiring. apple went from a dying company to a vibrant leader in technology. apple succeeded by changing the landscape of the technology industry, by focusing on quality and user experience over features and price.
