> ''Steve made some very interesting observations very
early on about how this was about navigating content,
'' Ive told The New York Times. ''It was about being
very focused and not trying to do too much with the
device -- which would have been its complication and,
therefore, its demise. The enabling features aren't
obvious and evident, because the key was getting rid
of stuff.''
I remember back in 2002 or so I had bought an ARCHOS because it had a camera, video camera and played movies. I then saw non technical friends starting to talk about the iPod. I honestly felt it was like hearing non technical people discussing recursion. I knew the iPod must be different. Sure I had plenty of friends that new what MP3's were and downloaded them, but they were my technological friends. So to hear these non techies talk about the iPod, I was like "Whoa".
I took a step back to compare the ARCHOS that I bought with the iPod. And I realized wow Steve Job's is very smart [1] and at that moment I realized Apple is going to be bigger than Microsoft. As Jon Ive says in the quote above:
"It was about being very focused and not trying to do too much with the device -- which would have been its complication and, therefore, its demise." I had already realized this works very well for In-N-Out Burger. So well that when Chipotle came out I knew it would be a success.
It has really surprised me how Steve Jobs laid out the winning model for making a product 9 years ago and few companies have followed. It is actually rather frustrating. Every time Apple comes out with a new product (for the most part), a few people are like "Yes, this is amazing" and everyone else complains "It doesn't have enough features. It sucks."
[1] The ARCHOS had a bunch of features such as a camera, camcorder and it could play videos. But I never used the thing. The interface sucked and the battery life sucked. When I bought an iPod I used it constantly. I still use it. It is much better to have a product that does one thing extremely well than a product that does a bunch of things mediocre or not well at all.
No, it's about delivering the essential things first. If they wasted effort doing all that other stuff first, all of those features would be badly integrated into the product. This means that they would be hard to learn about and use. And if they're jammed in before the technology is ready, they'll make the device ugly because they'll add so much bulk and heft that the essential feature of the device is hampered or lost entirely.
I remember back in 2002 or so I had bought an ARCHOS because it had a camera, video camera and played movies. I then saw non technical friends starting to talk about the iPod. I honestly felt it was like hearing non technical people discussing recursion. I knew the iPod must be different. Sure I had plenty of friends that new what MP3's were and downloaded them, but they were my technological friends. So to hear these non techies talk about the iPod, I was like "Whoa".
I took a step back to compare the ARCHOS that I bought with the iPod. And I realized wow Steve Job's is very smart [1] and at that moment I realized Apple is going to be bigger than Microsoft. As Jon Ive says in the quote above: "It was about being very focused and not trying to do too much with the device -- which would have been its complication and, therefore, its demise." I had already realized this works very well for In-N-Out Burger. So well that when Chipotle came out I knew it would be a success.
It has really surprised me how Steve Jobs laid out the winning model for making a product 9 years ago and few companies have followed. It is actually rather frustrating. Every time Apple comes out with a new product (for the most part), a few people are like "Yes, this is amazing" and everyone else complains "It doesn't have enough features. It sucks."
[1] The ARCHOS had a bunch of features such as a camera, camcorder and it could play videos. But I never used the thing. The interface sucked and the battery life sucked. When I bought an iPod I used it constantly. I still use it. It is much better to have a product that does one thing extremely well than a product that does a bunch of things mediocre or not well at all.