Applesauce
Steve Jobs returned from exile on September 16, 1997. Since then, Apple Inc.'s stock price has risen nearly 2,500 percent. Revenues have jumped from $7.1 billion to $32.5 billion. In 1997, Apple lost $1 billion. In 2008, the company netted profits of nearly $5 billion. Today, Apple is the most renowned consumer products company in the world. Steve Jobs is widely viewed as the most brilliant and visionary businessman of his generation.
What secret to this applesauce?
Not any single product or marketing decision. Not the sleek MacBook, the sexy iPhone, or the iconic advertisements. The secret sauce is Jobs's tart disdain for his customers.
Apple succeeds because it violates every large-company, mass-consumer convention. Other companies reach out to their customers and design their products to measured and varied consumer needs. Apple stands apart from its customers, shaping its market, not shaped by it. Consumers worship Apple because the company is aloof and arrogant. Apple's products are totemic because they emerge fully formed - designed from a singular, secretive vision.
Jobs scorns focus groups. As he told Business Week, "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
Indeed.
Let's consider Mac and PC. The PC is inexpensive and suffers from efforts to be all things to all people, and hence very little to any one person. The PC's architecture is transparent, yet graceless. It invites customization, but thereby shears down the wall between its designers and its consumers, leaving all befuddled.
The Mac is different. By definition. The Mac is expensive because it means to be exclusive. It possesses a unitary, proprietary blend of hardware and software, designed to work hand in glove. Its guts are elusive and mysterious, plug and play but hidden away. Apple cleanly separates its customers from its products, and defines the relationship between the two in terms of that separation. It is that simple. The Mac and the iPod are what they are. There is no choice. You either buy them, and embrace them, and worship them. Or you don't.
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You do a disservice to your readers by lying to them about the products you obviously love. First, the Apples are made of commodity parts no different from any other laptop. Apples are equally likely to fail due to component issues-see the recalls for batteries and power supplies. My girlfriend gave her mac away because it failed as did her ipod. Get the extended service plan.
The other lie is that there are no Apple viruses. I first ran into the arrogant misapprehension that Apples were virus proof in a university computer lab where I was required to use Apples for a course. Viruses were rampant all over the lab and the lab manager declared straight-facedly that viruses couldn't run on macs, while I sat there with hours of work ruined.
Apple makes integrated products but they tie you in to their vertically integrated marketing scheme. That's fine if you like that, but Microsoft would be flogged if they used their market power to tie you in to a zune/Micro
Mac users just can't understand why everyone isn't a 'Pod person.
Even the so-called "Free and Open Source" advocates use Macs... and do so with no sense of guilt or irony. They know Linux sucks, and are required to hold their irrational hatred of all things Microsoft very near and dear to their hearts.
I work on both Macs and PCs. I had to reinstall printers on a touchscreen attached to a Panoramic X-ray machine recently. I had about 9 or 10 steps to do what I do on Macs in 4. I have had to install drivers for external drives for PCs more times than I want to count. I have never had to install drivers for either USB or FireWire drives on a Mac, Ever! Just plug it in and it mounts. I could just go on and on but I won't. Macs just work. I use Macs exclusively at home and probably always will.
With applications like Parallels Desktop, all the programs that run in Windows run faster on our MacBook Pros than they do on current nicely equipped HP laptops. It's like two computers in one.
Peter, you are either kidding or don't get it.
Jobs does not scorn his consumers, he tries to bring them his vision, which so far has been a big improvement on the Chevrolet world of the PC.
To paraphrase Einstein, "Men of vision and intelligence are seldom understood by mediocre minds."
Apple products are wonderful combinations of form and function and elevate the spirit, whether you like that or not. I don't want my life run by focus groups, or committees or bean counters. Obviously there are a lot of other people out there like me.
I sit here with no worries about viruses as I write this on a computer that has software that is completely integrated to help me work. I have an iPhone that syncs all my data and offers 35,000 apps created by all sorts of people, an iPod that lets me bring my whole CD collection to play on my car stereo on my drive to Yellowstone next week, and the ability to make a movie or photo album of anything that i want with amazing ease at the highest quality imaginable.
There is a lot more. I know better than to get into a Mac/PC debate on a blog. i have an older PC here that some of my friends like to use when they come over, but most of them have now gone Mac, which, as we all know, now runs PC programs too.
What have you got, Peter?
Don't take this wrong, but Apple is fashion. Fashion designers do not do large focus groups before the models hit the runway.
More accurately Apple is Fashion compared to a PC the same way a Lexus is Fashion compared to Toyota. There's no doubt that the Toyota will get you there just as well for less money, but the Lexus will have the extra details to make it seem nicer, not the least of which is boosting your own ego and bragging with other Lexus owners.abo
i don't take you wrong. You just don't get it.
I have had PC's since 1993. In 2007 I bought a MacBook Pro. The difference in performance is stark. Within a month, every PC I have ever owned started to degrade in performance. First, it takes longer to boot, then you start to get error messages about damaged files, programs start to run slower or disappear altogether, you pay $50 or so for anti-virus software, more money for ad-ware, registry repair tools, etc. which help a little for a while, but the PC performance continues to degrade no matter what you do. My MacBook Pro works exactly the same as the day I bought it and still takes less than a minute to boot without any outside maintenance programs . I dread the day Steve Jobs is no longer in charge of Apple.
To be perfectly fair, the reason why this is happening to your Windows box is that you are (undoubted
In a word, "Macs don't do that," and it utterly baffles me why Windows machines in Home deployments (still) do. Home editions, in fact, make it quite difficult to do otherwise. (I openly suspect that they're making too-good money from the anti-virus folks.)
You =can= make your Windows installation stable and secure... if you possess expert knowledge that millions of unfortunate Windows users do not have. The simple, and yet so obvious, genius of Apple is that they "do the right thing" FOR you, "and that's that." The question becomes, not "which system (Windows' or Mac's) is stronger," but "which system is ... turned on!"
Luv my Mac, and yet I continue to wonder why Microsoft doesn't "get it." There is absolutely no technical reason for it.
Years ago I bought a Mac, after being driven crazy by DOS computers by different companies. I've owned Macs every since and won't go back. They work...the
At one point, I had a G3 laptop..on
Apple succeeds because it is the only alternative to a monopoly and it has built a very loyal customer base. That being said, Apple will never be much bigger than it is, because they can't afford to take a large risk that might fail. Unlike Microsoft, one gigantic failure would bankrupt Apple. MS can afford to throw millions of dollars away on any crazy idea, Apple has to be more focused to survive and make sure its customer continues to see it as worth the extra cost.
Point taken, but bigger is not always better. I hope Apple never gets "too big to fail."
On the other hand, one mistake will NOT bankrupt Apple. They are doing just fine thank you.
And when they bring pout the next big thing, they will be even better.
Apple isn't a monopoly?
Mac is a leader. PC, as you say, tries to be everything to everyone.
I buy Mac because it's a better product, pure and simple. My iMac has lasted 9 years and I've never had to purchase anything additional to keep it going (besides a keyboard after spilling wine all over it when Obama won the election).
My friend's Dell lasted 3 and barely that... also required spyware, software. It's like they get you in on the cheap, but catch you on the back end. Also, and most importantly, its really inferior to look at and to work on. It's like a stripped down version of what could be.
I don't mind paying a little more for quality. It's like with a car or TV purchase. I'm not going to get what's cheapest. I'm going to spend a little more and get a high-quality product.
Great article! It's interesting how the most effective product design in this case was showing people something they didn't know they needed. Creating needs like that almost gets into ethical questions, like how far is too far? At what point does it become manipulative? The old 1984 Macintosh commercial http://www
The other thing I take away from this is the importance of information deprivation, and the illusion of depth, to product design. It's not just about addressing needs. Maybe it's about wrapping up those solutions in a pretty black box, giving a sense of mystery that invites the imagination ... informatio
Wow. You don't even make sense.
The subtlety of human endeavor escapes you. People like things that are beautiful and useful and reliable. Why not?
Apple products are a wonderful combination of form and function. The are not cheesy and throwaway. What is wrong with that? I for one happen like to own things that work, look nice and last a long time.
OK, tell me how i have been duped or manipulated?
Nice story, but I absolutely do not agree with your conclusion.
Now, I briefly pondered whether to write my response on my Mac, my Windows box or my Linux box. As a software developer I have and daily use all three. But that would be an irrelevant choice, of course.
People choose and use Apple equipment for the very simple reason that it works. A single piece of equipment has been engineered "from the ground up" and "in every meticulous detail" to do its job and to do it well. A tremendous amount of software and hardware engineering has gone into achieving that result, and every bit of it is unobtrusive.
Strangely enough, Microsoft could compete extremely well against Apple if only they would. Windows is not a second-rate system, yet its "Home Editions" ARE. Why a system would have tight, role-based security and then turn every bit of that security =off= is entirely beyond me. Why Microsoft continues to make the choices that Apple lampoons them for ... is also baffling. Microsoft employs some of the best software engineers in the business and some of their products are astounding. But...
Anyhow, Apple's machines are popular because they are "tools for a job," and the sexy marketing, while certainly great fun to watch, isn't the reason why their products are preferred by so many.
Lets just say it isn't the only reason. I have several reasons for liking Apple products and my mac computers.
The poster has a rather narrow view of things. That much is clear.
How can you be antifascist if you would like one corporation to dominate hardware, software, and content delivery? In computerese, that's totalitarianism.
Okay... so what?
Exactly. God one. Much said about nothing.
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