Industry Legend

“Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh.”

This sentence appears on the bottom of every Apple press release. Apple's revolutionary approach to product design has always been a double-edged sword. They are idolized for their product design successes then belittled for their financial failures. Several revolutionary products from recent history come to mind including:

• Newton (first handheld)
• iMac (first to defeat the floppy and beige plastic)
• iBook (first usable implementation of WiFi)
• PowerMac G4 Cube (first compact professional desktop)

Every one of the products was a small revolution, a radical new idea no competitor dared to try for fear of hurting the bottom line. The Dells and the Gateways watched Apple market share continue to shrink as they plundered the designs for anything worthwhile to duct tape to their clunky uninspired boxes (lidless ports, towers with doors for easy expansion, colored plastics, etc.).

In retrospect perhaps the "Think Different" campaign best defined the problem with Apple's revolutionary image. In every consumer the rebellious teenager empathized with Apple's message but the financially responsible adult would not bet their wallet on some radical new technology (that may or may not read Word attachments).

New Direction

I think it was the "Rip. Mix. Burn." campaign that signaled the beginning of a new trend in Apple. I remember during the iTunes 1.0 introduction Jobs talked about being late to the CD burning party and now leapfrogging the competition. I think this was key because for the first time Apple identified a mature, saturated market, saw major flaws, and tossed its design, engineering, and marketing prowess at the problem. Instead of inventing new products Apple chose to fix existing ones.

Needless to say the iPod became the definition of this approach. MP3 players were available to the general public at least since 1997. However upon its introduction in 2001 the iPod addressed most of the major issues that prevented the technology's widespread use including capacity, rechargeable batteries, interface, and synchronization in terms of both speed and ease. Instead of selling extra features like radio, voice memos, etc. they focused exclusively on improving key tasks like transferring and browsing music.

To be honest, at that time and even later during the introduction of the iTunes Music Store, I expected both products to be financial failures shortly eclipsed by disgusting but cheap copycats (Dell Jukebox comes to mind). I was so pessimistic about Apple getting the recognition is deserved, that I actually recommended against a friend's planned purchase of Apple stock (it was at $13 and went to $95, sorry jerry!). And I wasn't alone since Apple's foray into "evolutionary" products was widely dismissed, among my favorites being a Wired story from October 23, 2001:

“For all Jobs' excitement, though, Apple users at Mac discussion sites seemed a bit crestfallen that the device wasn't as revolutionary as the company had promised last week. Indeed, many said it was over-priced and under-powered. ‘Apple has introduced a product that's neither revolutionary nor breakthrough, and they've priced it so high that it's reminiscent of the Cube,’ a post on MacSlash said. Apple hailed Tuesday's announcement as ‘the unveiling of a breakthrough digital device.’ However, there are plenty of other digital music players on the market, many of them for a fraction of the price.”

No one was prepared for an Apple product that did not promise to bring world peace or at the very least summon Satan. But since then new products continue to embody this "evolutionary" approach including iLife suite of applications, iSight with iChat AV, and even the Safari web browser. For me the revelation came with the announcement of Airport Express. The product was so basic and obvious. A $129 router with some extra ports turns any livingroom into a media center, no magic tricks, no complicated manuals, no extra software. This natural evolution of their Airport + iTunes products was so logical it hurt.

Lessons Learned

There are clear comparisons to application design. By a total coincidence we at XD were working on a prototype podcasting application within two weeks of Apple’s announcement of podcasting support in iTunes. I analyzed the problem to death, developed a convoluted set of “revolutionary widgets� and crammed UI elements for every conceivable scenario into a single screen. Apple’s solution released several days later was painfully simple, blended flawlessly with existing iTunes metaphors, and anything it sacrificed in terms of functionality it made up for in ease of use.

I was disappointed with myself because I knew better. We used the same approach when working on the new version of Breeze. We identified key tasks that customers found confusing, made them easier to do and impossible to miss then tucked away lesser used features behind convenient menus, and most importantly cut features that would add noise.

Apple’s transition can be summarized in going from “ONLY on the Mac� to “BETTER on the Mac� and I think it is a good personal benchmark for application designers. Before shipping a product with 15 unique features and “ONLY in my App� stamped on the box, the first milestone should be implementing everything the competition has already done but being able to state with Jobsian confidence that everything is “BETTER in my App�.