“Thousands of new gadgets released every year all using the same-old crappy unfriendly, unintuitive, unattractive software,” christhebrain writes. “It’s no wonder so many are flocking to Apple when we can just pickup one of their simplistic products, start taping and swiping our fingers, and lo and behold… it just does what we want it to do. Of course, it isn’t easy, or cheap, to make software this user friendly, which is why everyone is having such a hard time keeping up.”
“Sony is, in my opinion, the worst offender. In the past decade, I have seen Sony release cutting-edge gadgets to the market before anyone else,” christhebrain writes. “The PSP was an amazing gadget when it came out, in theory. It played music, videos, viewed photos, surfed the web, and of course, played games. The problem was that, excluding the last feature, it didn’t do any of them well. In fact, all the claimed features were so hard to use that almost no one could figure it out. Then, even more idiotically, Sony received reports that users were not using the extra features and stopped improving them! Sony could have been the what the iPod touch is today, but lost the chance with bad software.”
“But I don’t just write this to rant, I write this as a warning to other business owners and entrepreneurs out there,” christhebrain writes. “Developing software and technology is one thing, but making it user friendly is another. In fact, usability can consume up to 80% of a project’s time and resources.”
Full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: There’s no substitute for insanely great and incredibly demanding leadership.
@Geo
Lrn2English…
The two things that make Apple great that Steve is responsible for:
1. Artfulness – not just in the hardware and software, but the marketing and the execution which includes the manufacturing, the retail, the internet.
2. OS/X – Its object oriented design allows for rapid development that the competition can’t match. They can morph it into alot of different versions visually but it will still be the same underneath. Until one of the competition finally figures this out, Apple is on the way to becoming the largest corporation on the planet.
Please, everyone pray that this man, Steve Jobs, stays alive for a long long time.
“What does Apple get that Sony, HP, Microsoft, Dell, Samsung, and LG don’t? “
my money…
I heartily agree with the author. Sony is clueless. We have a Sony widescreen television, and the menu for many of its functions is called a “WEGA Gate.” What the hell is that supposed to mean? The PS3 o.s. is crummy, too, making you wade through gobs of crud every time you just want to play a game.
Additionally, we have a cheapo LG phone we got free from AT and T for adding a family member to our service, and the crappy “operating system” on the thing is impossible to use. Finally, a friend was using a Droid the other day to show me pictures. It took several taps and swipes and so on just to show one photo then go back to the library. Not fun.
Don’t complain about Sony’s operating system until you’ve tried Panasonic’s GUI for their dvd recorders. I had to resort to inviting an IT professional to set it up. His response was: “It’s like you got a bunch of Windows’ guys who decided to create a GUI from hell.” Then there’s the claim that it uses dvd-r and dvd+r discs, as long as you reformat the drive when you decide to switch between the two…you know like we do with with our computers (NOT!).
Apple are the only show in town because they actually make money from their products. You can only make their legendary profit margins if you have insanely great products.
Unfortunately (for them) nobody else is up to the task.
iAds will change everything.
A bitmapped screen, a pointing device and an easy to understand interface that you don’t need a 3 inch thick manual to figure out.
Apple not only figured this out back in 1984 – it’s in their DNA
@ TowerTone
you put a smile on my face…
This article is blindingly obvious to anyone who has bought Apple products over the years. But if you are thinking it’s over prices and don’t make the move, you will never understand.
The Apple put a lot of effort in to developing a very simple ‘User Interface’ for all it’s products. And refines every ‘work-flow’ to what 90% of users want. Some people will say this is ‘controlling the user experience’ and think it takes away freedom. But with most apple products, if you dig deeper in the menus, you will find all the advanced features you ever wanted. Or it discover it’s time to ‘Step-up’ to Pro Applications.
Apple just likes to keep the UI clean and always contextual. No extra buttons or clutter!
Keep up the good work Apple
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