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It's the UI, period.

Indeed, and the fact is that Mac was a massive sucess. It was not a flop. Some people base their evaluation of Apple based on the false premise that Mac as not a sucess. If they accept that it was then the iPod and other Apple products can be viewed in the correct perspective. Just because M$ ended up with a monopoly on OS does not mean Mac was a failure.

Steve Ballmer was just on tv a few minutes ago being interviewed on one of these financial networks. At one point they asked him what he thought about the iPhone. He was condescending (shock!). He said that it would "certainly be the most expensive phone out there". And then, believe it or not, he criticized it for not having a keypad.

*rolls eyes*

The Mac never failed! It only waned a bit and is now coming on strong.

the [negative]<i.reaction to the iPhone is the same as the reaction to the iPod when it was released.</i>

How do you make fonts bigger?

YES ! !</pre>

That's a pretty good assessment. I think most people (who don't already believe in Apple) fundamentally misunderstand what it is about Apple products that makes them appealing.

Ballmer spewing mindless FUD? No way.




This is a guy who spends his days fascinated by how the doughnut could be designed around a hole. His first reaction to Vista was a grunt followed by, "Ooooo, shiny pretty" with a steady flow of drool as he tried to poke at it through the monitor.

Hey, Apple has been going out of business since 1984, at least that's what John Dvorak and those like him think

And this is precisely why the other manufactures will be unable to compete.

They will then blame it on the DRM instead of the real reason.

They won't see it, they won't compete, and Apple will succeed!

"To many observers it is one of the great mysteries of the electronics world. Not how the iPod became such a huge success, but how other manufacturers have still failed to effectively compete against the white ear bud toting little player from the company formerly known as Apple computer."

It's very, very simple. It's called iTunes and OS X. Every other device manufacturer has to rely on Windows and MS apps for DRM, and music file transfer and organization. The other factor is music ownership. People have demonstrated with their wallets that they don't want to rent music. Everyone but Apple ignores the message.

Oops,

The iPhone is nowhere near the most expensive hone out there. I paid nearly $800 for the Sony Ericsson p900 when it first came out acouple years ago. Sold it on eBay a few months later because a) it wasn't worth that much and b) the technology wasn't quite THERE yet.

Only Apple can do it right. Sad, but true.

Maybe you do the big font like this:

<font size="2" face="Verdana">
Big Font!!
</font>

apple will always be apple and all the products that apple made are genuis products,in my point of view ``ignorants`` are those who buy M$ products.

Its just amazing how stupid and stubborn people are. Its funny how many windows users are out there that still do not have a clue to why we use macs. The number of people that still say well I'm not a designer, or into editing movies. I mean yeah I am a designer, but thats not the sole reason for using my powerbook. I wonder when the rest of the world is going to step out of the dark and realize there is a better option.

On a better note I did have a friend call me from Vegas asking about the macbook so I guess one out of so many people just happen to get it.

Yes, I know the iPhone is not the most expensive out there. But Ballmer is already lying about it. Personally, I don't think you should get away with lying about a competitor's product. Then again, I don't think MS should get by with most of what they do.

"Well, much of the reaction to the iPhone is the same as the reaction to the iPod when it was released. Manufacturers are assuming it will be a failure because they offer devices with similar functionality for less money."

And this is EXCELLENT NEWS for Apple! Let them twiddle their thumbs and giggle at us while we dominate, the same way competitors regard the iPod. There is no greater gift you can give your enemy than that of underestimation.

I love the responses. Motorola thinks the RAZR will keep them safe. No wonder Steve Jobs said the iPhone is five years ahead of the pack, it will take them that long before they even begin to open their eyes.

iPod: "it has and FM tuner and it costs $10 less! And it can do subscription music services! And it's not locked into a "proprietary" format!"

iPhone: "Ours has a keyboard! Ours has more buttons! Ours works with Outlook!"

What we're seeing is what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance". This, per wikipedia is "the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, where "cognition" is defined as any element of knowledge, including attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior; in other words, it is the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time."

So we have two "cognitions" - one, that Apple won't succeed because it's "beleaguered", it's "expensive", or "not Windows", thus doomed to failure. The other cognition is the reality staring them in the face, that Apple is an increasingly successful company, a cultural phenomenon, a trend-setter up-ending one industry after another by its contrary vision. Many industry observers, therefore, are in a deep funk, unable to make sense of these two contrary positions.

It's certainly not a phenomenon unique to technology. It applies in politics as well. Heck, one could do a whole dissertation about the role cognitive dissonance plays in the Middle-East. But that's for another forum.

Brian Allen,

Drop Gregg Thurman a line.

Interesting blog post, but dear Lord, does he ever need a proofreader.

The iPod works because it's beautiful and it's easy to use, as is the rest of the Apple line. For inanimate objects, beauty will always overcome ugliness, and simplicity will always overcome complexity. All of this is not a hard concept to me to understand. To me it's common sense. Why can't the competitors get it?

Although the iPod has a commanding lead in marketshare in North America, how are it's numbers otherwise? I recall reading somewhere that beyond a few countries, it's nowhere near as dominant in the rest of the world.

> Many industry observers, therefore, are in a deep funk, unable to make sense of these two contrary positions.

Yep, and they need to remember that our glee is proportional to their angst. We're loving it up in here! Hehe!

Suck it, Zune: Go Apple Inc.!

The modern corporate brain is deformed...it only works from the left side and the right side has totally atrophied (beauty, the poetic, art and creativity)...it only values things that can easily be listed on a spreadsheet..things that have definite quantifiable numbers associated with it. As a result, they will never understand how Apple does it.

According to NPD Group, the iPod had 60% marketshare worldwide in 2004 and 75% as of July, 2006. This did not include cell phones that can also play music files but only flash and HD based music devices.

It's hot worldwide.

Oh geeze, Thomas Fitzgerald, when you think again about what you've written, you'll realize that you've made most of it up.

...Manufacturers are assuming [the iPhone] will be a failure because.... <-- Sez who, you? Based on what? What some troll wrote in his blog? And that makes it true?

The electronics industry is obsessed with features, while Apple is accused of form over function.... It never seemed to occur to anyone other than Apple that the “user experience” was an important issue.... It’s almost as if everyone else seems to be only capable of thinking in terms of raw features, rather than how those features are implemented. <-- They just don't have the expertise Apple acquired in developing the Mac GUI virtually from scratch after seeing the Xerox demo.

Electronics firms are not going to respond to the iPhone, because in their eyes, the iPhone couldn’t possibly be a success. Just like when the iPod was released, they will sit back absolutely convinced that device will to fail to capture the market. <-- How could you possibly know that? Crystal ball?

The Mac succeded, in that it completely changed the computer experience for most people. It just had problems as a product, because most people got to know the Mac through its knockoff Windows.

I declare the iPhone a success. Everyone else can give up now.

I thought Ballmer's fingers where to fat to press the buttons on a normal cell phone keypad?

But I'm sure the version of OS-X on the iPhone will be intelligent enough to turn the handset off (for its own protection) if it ever gets near his round, sweaty head...

iPod success is simple...quality look and feel, simple interface, click wheel scrolling, and iTunes browser (also sun-reflecting shiny back for campfires and eye-piercing weapony if needed).

No-one else is even close. Today we will hear the words "20 million iPods sold during the Christmas quarter".

I love Apple, but it is sad how no-one else gets it. In an ideal world, we'd have multiple Apple-like companies designing products that worked well, looked great, and lasted. How long can Sony, Dell, and the other large computer/electronic gizmo manufacturers just sit back and let Apple eat them for breakfast? How much money do they have to lose, I wonder.

This slow realization of the superiority of all that is Apple reminds me of the tsunami of 2005 in Indonesia. It didn't look like a big tidal wave when it was coming ashore, and the people on the beach didn't know what hit them until it was too late. Only in this case, the people on the beach are the Windoze apologists, analysts, and journalists.

he totally nailed it.

Whilst the UI is important it's not that solely that makes Apple stuff good. It's that Apple care about both everything, they don't try and sell you some hardware and chuck in some software out of necessity - they sell you the whole widget. They don't see a differentiation between the two. If they sold the best hardware in the world without an OS or with a shitty one, there hardware in turn would be shitty and vice versa. Take the mobile phone market, when you see adverts for phones or phone contracts you never see them advertise the software or how easy it is to use, it's always how light it is, how small, how thin, how many new things squeeze in.

For all we're told that the iPhone will deliver, it's a pretty good deal... except being tied into Cingular/AT&T;.

Figure $200 for an iPod, $200 for a phone, $200 for a PDA... $600.
ONE thing to lug. ONE charger.
Add that it'll be FULLY compatible with Mac OS X...

Not a bad deal at all!

Let's hope Apple's competitors never develop the ability to understand Apple's success.

Name one of iPhone's features that is better implemented on another device.

Boom. Apple wins.

Geeks always count features and reckon that bigger numbers are better. Businessmen always count the cost and reckon that lower numbers are better.

Real people want to know what something can do for them. If a deal is priced sensibly and they reckon that they will benefit from buying, then they buy. Most consumers are smart enough to know that cheapest isn't always best or that most expensive isn't automatically the best either. Neither the geeks nor the businessmen think the way that real consumers do.

I've got a mobile phone that has loads of great-sounding features, I've read the manual and properly understand how to use those features, but the reality is that it's simply too much trouble to go through all that hassle. The user interface doesn't work, therefore the some of those features are worthless.

This is something that Apple have been getting right for many years. Take an example like iMovie. You simply plug a camcorder into a Mac and the editing is truly simple. It's been out for many years, but rivals who try to copy it still end up with something that's much more complicated and still doesn't work.

Apple's secret is to think long and hard about what they're trying to achieve, then to refine everything down to it's simplest possible state and then to take immense care over every detail. There's no short cut to that position, but that's what others are trying to achieve. For as long as Apple's rivals think that all that Apple offers is a pretty exterior, then they will be copying the least important aspect and failing in the process.

Apple does one thing that most if not all electronics companies fail to do. They consider how the device would be used and the users experience. Period. Electronics companies just don't do that. They take their latest widget and stick it in a metal or plastic box with buttons, slap a price tag on it and ship it.

Electronics firms are not going to respond to the iPhone, because in their eyes, the iPhone couldn’t possibly be a success.

Which is exactly why the iPhone was created by Apple and not any of these other companies. I believe "clueless" is the appropriate term to describe their approach to the market. most of what they make is warmed-over crap that people buy only because that's mostly what there is to buy. Then along comes Apple saying "The emperor isn't wearing any clothes!" and slowly people start to wake up from their mediocrity-induced, stupified trance, but it takes a long time to turn a big ship around.

Steve Jobs says it over and over:

- they just want to make great products

- they want them to be easy to use

- they have had good fortune, good luck to do what they have...

- they have committed people who work hard

- and they 'think different'; go where the puck isn't etc.


The bottom line is that they love what they do, they have fun doing it, they love the companeeee, and they get to laugh at their competitors from Microsoft down.

And let's face it, making Ballmer throw more chairs round his office, and make Billy Gates' jaw drop would be reward enough for anyone!

People.


Understand that this reporter has also missed the point. He has no key understanding of anyhting. Apple never failed at anyhting but a few minor releases. Apple's success has always been dwarfed by Microsoft because of it's size. Apple has always been successful in it's space. The fact that these people don't get it is even more of a joke.

The phone will be wildly popular in it's coming revisions. It's already the coolest thing about to come out on it's first try! What phone carrier can sat that? NONE. the iPhone will, in time, get bigger memory, expanded capability, and for certain be the best communications device on the market.

You really think Apple hasn't thought of mobile video iChat? Please people. The technology just isn't ready. As is the rest of the world.

Pi has spoken

This is like the other mystery of why In-N-Out Burger survives against the awesome power of McDonald. Why anyone would choose an In-N-Out Burger is beyond me. Is it just because they lack additives, fillers and preservatives of any kind, and come exclusively from chucks, the front ribs and shoulder which are selected and ground up by In-N-Out butchers? I mean, what is the deal with quality? A burger is a burger. Who cares if the meat is from cancer ridden cattle which are half dead before they are slaughtered?

For those of us who've been with Apple since the beginning, one of the most infamous sayings that was going around about 15 years ago about Apple was, "Just because your product is better doesn't mean you're going to win." There was even a TLC documentary that explored Apple's apparent lack of success based on that exact statement. The philosophy makes me cringe to this day, and I've wondered for a long time since if/when Apple would prove that little subversion wrong. Well they already have with most of their product line, and even if they don't yet have 30 or 40% of the overall pc market, things are only looking better every year in that regard.

I guess my point is: The statement for this decade should be based around the idea that, mediocrity can never be rewarded in the long run, and quality really does matter.

Apple's products, nay Steve's products, are not simply the eye candy that so many would like to have the consuming public believe they are, they are highly functional AND pleasing to the eye. Market watchers and "opinion leaders" always want to create this synthetic mystique around Apple's products, and I just don't believe that there is ANY mystery here, xPhone looks sleek to the point of being professional, and its function follows at an equally high level of expectation. Windows has so indoctrinated us into a universal mediocrity that we stand amazed, time and again, at how a company will take the time, care, and effort, to put out above average products.

The real mystery is why Windows continues to have the market share it does. And in the long run, as history looks back on the technology of these times, I think it will be viewed as a painful mystery and lesson.

The biggest problem for Apple's competitors is that companies like LG, Nokia, Motorola, etc. are hardware developers. They may design new form factors, and perhaps even implement new technologies, but their primary focus is in the hardware.

Apple's primary concern is user experience. Steve Jobs has said numerous times that Apple's R&D;labs are littered with corpses of products that they initially thought would be hot, but in developing them, realized they needed to go in another direction or that it simply wouldn't work.

Apple succeeds because it puts the consumer's experience first, and designs the hardware and software to accomplish those goals and exceed user's expectations, usually with nice little unexpected features. Hardware developers look to make some goal with hardware, like a very thin phone, for example, and then try to make the user experience good. That approach severely limits the user experience because the experience has to conform first to the hardware designl.

Apple will continue to beat other companies until they figure this out. Sony used to know this, but lost it many moons ago. Now Sony is a hardware company, not a consumer experience company.

Other manufacturers - "More features is always better. More features means we need more buttons on the thing."

Apple - "We'll select the features that most people want. Then we'll design an interface that most people can use."

(to the cell phone companies)

Do. Or do not.
There is no try.

And that is why you fail.

Good article; he gets it.

Can anyone imagine the number of buttons and menus and options if someone invented the first electric kettle today, and Microsoft or Sony or Nokia launched their version?

"Our new eKettle has digital surround sound and a 640x480 display. And 15 buttons." "MS Kettle 1.2 (with sevice pack 3) introduces a whole new level of hot water enjoyment for end users, with improved websearch facilities."

Apple gets it, and the rest don't even get that they don't get it. Simple as that.

Reading through these comments, I was surprised to realize that I've been using my Cube (failed product that it is) for over five years. The only improvements I've made on it were OS upgrades (currently on Panther) and replacement speakers (alas, the audio digital-to-analog conversion system failed, necessitating replacement with a Griffin product). Interesting on that D/A system - it's housed in a piece of clear plastic that's shaped remarkably like an iPod mini!

Anyway, I must say that I'm on the third rebuild of a Wintel box that's been around for the same five+ years as my cube. Not just upgrades, but complete MB, processor, HDD, memory and power supply replacements. It has cost vastly more to maintain the Wintel box in a state utility comparable to the Cube (this PC's present configuration provides faster processing and much more storage, but is not a "better" machine by any stretch).

I hope to replace (or supplement) the Cube with an Intel-based Mac sometime in the near future, but am in no terrible hurry to do so. It's a testament to Apple's design foresight and its support of loyal customers that I can still reasonably use this machine. I see the same sort of thinking behind the iPhone as is evident in the Cube and have absolutely no doubt that one purchased in June of this year will still be functional, indeed fully so, in January of 2013.