You Can't Innovate Like Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: You Can't Innovate Like Apple

#41

Post by steveklabnik » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 12:41 PM UTC

ody wrote: post #25

"Apple designs for #2. No other mass-consumer products company puts as much attention to detail into the fit and finish of the box—let alone the out-of-box experience." I'm sorry but no they do not put as much attention to detail into their products as you would think. They didn't even have multitasking in the iPhone until recently! And what was the antenna problems all about? All I see is just enough attention to de…

I'd actually argue the opposite; Apple pays so much attention to detail that they figured out that multitasking isn't really important, so they could just do it later. Copy and paste is awkward, it isn't absolutely necessary, they could just do it later.

Even the antenna thing: only the tech press knows anything about this. Apple said that just under 2% of people returned an iPhone 4. During that whole scandal, I asked my friends that haven't ever heard of HN, "What do you think about the iPhone 4 antenna problems?" and they had no idea what I was talking about. Even among those of my friends that have iPhone 4s, only 2 out of 5 even had the issue at all, and lately, my Nexus One's antenna has been acting up...

Apple is good at making MVPs, and then improving upon them. Eventually.

Re: You Can't Innovate Like Apple

#42

Post by wazoox » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 12:53 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #32

wazoox wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to make it clear : Nintendo really got back to its roots, the Gunpei Yokoi philosophy, after the departure of its old CEO. Before Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo was making playing cards; he conceived the first nintendo toys (Ultra hand, Ultra machine...) in the 60s, the first Nintendo electronic toys (Love tester, Light gunner ... ) in the 70s, the first Nintendo arcade systems, the Game & Watch concept in the 80s, the…

> For instance the GameBoy went out after the Game Gear. Yes, right, the GB (released in April 1989) went after the Game Gear (released in October 1990). The Game Gear project had barely even started (if that) when the GB was released. You also overlooked the GB being about half the price of the Game Gear and it being nigh-indestructible (where the Game Gear was plagued by hardware problems, especially early on) and…

OK sorry, actually the Game Gear came after. The Lynx came out about the same time though. Anyway, everybody at the time thought that the game boy will fail because it was so dull.

Re: You Can't Innovate Like Apple

#43

Post by gmlk » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 1:00 PM UTC

It reminded me of something Knuth once wrote: "Judge an artist not by the quality of what is hanging on the walls, but by the quality of what's in the wastebasket"

Re: You Can't Innovate Like Apple

#44

Post by notahacker » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 1:13 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #7

CamperBob wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. He says, "Quick, identify 10 different pieces of technology that truly meet your needs and that don’t bug you due to a major flaw you either have to live with or compensate for in some fashion. Could you come up with more than five? I didn’t think so," as if Apple's strategy is to land on that list. I use and enjoy my share of Apple's wares, but even if I could come up with 10 different pieces of technology…

I am not enthusiastic about the App Store as a developer, but as a user I'm pretty happy as it is the best app store I've seen judging by the quality and number of the apps available. Surely I'm seeing Android taking over just because it will sell more devices, but the Android Marketplace is really shitty ... I can't even sell or buy apps for Christ's sake, as my country is not on their list (I can do both from the A…

From the consumer point of view, the App Store could be _much_ better at finding relevant apps and the iTunes integration is pretty irritating

Re: You Can't Innovate Like Apple

#45

Post by jakevoytko » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 1:19 PM UTC

thought_alarm wrote: post #13

I'm reminded of the story of NUMMI [1], the American automobile plant that was a 1980s joint venture between GM and Toyota. (It was covered in an episode of This American Life). In a nutshell, the story of NUMMI involves American GM workers building Toyota-designed/GM-branded vehicles using Toyota's radically different manufacturing processes. The plant itself was a smashing success for GM; the plant achieved much hi…

The "This American Life" piece on the NUMMI factory was great, and triple-underlined a few points in the article, especially the importance of having a unified vision, and getting all decision-makers on board.

According to the piece, the major difference between the Japanese and American production methods involved flagging defects. If an American stopped the line for anything, they would be fired. So cars rolled down the line with fatal defects, needing either expensive repairs or a trip to the trash heap. On the other hand, Japanese workers were encouraged to stop the line for any flaws they saw. This limited the loss to individual parts and components, rather than entire automobiles. This sounds like Apple's 10->3->1 approach: design flaws are discarded as soon as possible.

The piece also asserted that GM failed to adopt these measures for two reasons: upper management deferred to individual plant managers for the practices to be used in each factory, and the plant managers preferred the don't-stop-the-line approach, since they already knew it. There was no Apple-like process in place to convince plant managers that they needed to switch their methods, so they never did.

Re: You Can't Innovate Like Apple

#46

Post by kenjackson » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 2:32 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #29

To me, the most important part of this (great) post was that Apple doesn't do market research . It reminds me of a recent episode of Mad Men ("The Rejected", season 4, episode 4). In this episode, the agency explores the idea of a cream being part of a beauty ritual rather than the traditional approach of linking beauty to matrimony. Near the end there was this exchange: > Dr Miller: Well, turns out the hypothesis wa…

Market research is generally extremely difficult to do well. And for consumer products its less clear how useful it is. Most people use consuer products and Apple engineers/designers are probably fairly close to their target market, which are early adopters (others fall in line after early adopters).

And we should also be clear, Apple has tons of market data. These Apple stores I'm sure supply them tons of data, as an example. While they may not do targeted focus groups, I'm certain that they go into meetings where they say things like, "Verizon would expand our user base by x%, but likely add these additional costs".

Re: You Can't Innovate Like Apple

#47

Post by cletus » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 2:42 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #46

cletus wrote: post #29

To me, the most important part of this (great) post was that Apple doesn't do market research . It reminds me of a recent episode of Mad Men ("The Rejected", season 4, episode 4). In this episode, the agency explores the idea of a cream being part of a beauty ritual rather than the traditional approach of linking beauty to matrimony. Near the end there was this exchange: > Dr Miller: Well, turns out the hypothesis wa…

Market research is generally extremely difficult to do well. And for consumer products its less clear how useful it is. Most people use consuer products and Apple engineers/designers are probably fairly close to their target market, which are early adopters (others fall in line after early adopters). And we should also be clear, Apple has tons of market data. These Apple stores I'm sure supply them tons of data, as a…

The Verizon iPhone story is both my favourite and most hated tech story.

It's my most hated because I'm sick of hearing it. Every month it pops up.

It's my favourite because it's a classic example of rumourmongering becoming "news" perpetuated by people who don't really understand Apple at all.

See, it doesn't matter what % increase in revenue or market size Verizon would deliver to Apple, there is still one huge problem: CDMA technically doesn't support simultaneous voice and data. There is no getting around that (beyond the inevitable transition to LTE).

Anyone who thinks that Apple will release a CDMA version of the phone and then try to explain to consumers that version A can do this but version B can't is, well, off their rocker.

A CDMA iPad however is a completely different matter, but I digress...

Just like Apple could make more money--at least in the short term--by releasing a new phone more often than every year. The fact is though that people don't like the instant obsolescence of tech products. You buy an iPhone 4 today and you know it's as good as an iPhone will get til mid next year.

Compare that to the anarchic shotgun world of Android handsets.

Apple is driven by product and user experience not market research ("market data" isn't quite the same thing).

Re: You Can't Innovate Like Apple

#48

Post by kenjackson » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 2:42 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #40

One interesting thing about the idea that most companies can't be like Apple because their super-focused design attitude is risky and costly is: how did Apple get here? If it's so hard for a company to bootstrap themselves into this philosophy (and get large while doing it), how did Apple pull it off? If my understanding of history is correct, it took a few failures and a dark period of non-success. Perhaps there is…

Absolutely. The biggest factor in Apple's current success is their past failure. Apple's willingness to completely redo their OS is a result of their OS struggling, both in the market and technologically.

The other thing that their failure also helped solidify is their base. Being the perpetual underdog they had a very strong enthusiastic core fan base. This allows them to get decent sales on even their worst sellings products. And for products with public displays (think iPod and iPhone) it helps them create early viral marketing. This base is much less effective for non-publicly displayed items (think their new touchpad or AppleTV).

I think these two things have allowed Apple to do bolder moves, yet actually have less risk associated with it.

The only other tech company I could think of that would have been able to do something similar was Commodore. But they self-imploded before publicly displayed technology devices were very viable.

Re: You Can't Innovate Like Apple

#49

Post by kenjackson » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 2:50 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #47

kenjackson wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market research is generally extremely difficult to do well. And for consumer products its less clear how useful it is. Most people use consuer products and Apple engineers/designers are probably fairly close to their target market, which are early adopters (others fall in line after early adopters). And we should also be clear, Apple has tons of market data. These Apple stores I'm sure supply them tons of data, as a…

The Verizon iPhone story is both my favourite and most hated tech story. It's my most hated because I'm sick of hearing it. Every month it pops up. It's my favourite because it's a classic example of rumourmongering becoming "news" perpetuated by people who don't really understand Apple at all. See, it doesn't matter what % increase in revenue or market size Verizon would deliver to Apple, there is still one huge pro…

"Anyone who thinks that Apple will release a CDMA version of the phone and then try to explain to consumers that version A can do this but version B can't is, well, off their rocker."

Apple does this with every product they ship. And in some cases they have even more extreme cases.

For example, upgrade to the latest iPod Nano and whoa, no camera. So wait, if I get the old version I get a camera and now I completely lose it. But if I go up to the iPod touch I get the camera, but the classic line never had one?

I seriously doubt Apple is not moving to CDMA because of the issue you site. If anything its because CDMAs life is a relatively short one now. Further, my point wasn't that they go to CDMA, it was that I suspect that they have analyzed that market up and down. I bet they've gotten data from ATT to know what percent of their users use voice/data concurrently. I think Apple knows more about the market then they let on.

Re: You Can't Innovate Like Apple

#50

Post by yardie » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 2:54 PM UTC

ladon86 wrote: post #16

danielnicollet wrote: post #2

Before starting my company, I worked as a product manager for a good 10 years and few other things after that. Truths like the Henry Ford quote: "If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’" are good and true but as this article points out, there is only room for one Apple and one Ford at any one time or any one industry. The rest of us have to be pragmatic and consider…

Can you elaborate further on why there is only room for one company of this type in any one industry? I am struggling to see why that would be the case.

I've actually heard the same for fashion. There is usually one fashion house that basically dictates style for a few years. All other highend designers are basically lockstep behind this and then it trickles down through ready to wear, and finally consumer brands (like H&M).

You also see this in consumer electronics where bezels alternate between glossy black, flat black, silver, gold, white. If you go back further you'll find woodgrain, yellows, greens, etc. But it would never be one manufacturer. They all did it around the same time.

Today, Apple has decided a keyboard isn't necessary on a smartphone. 3 years ago that wasn't that case. Nintendo has decided that motion was how to play games. 3 years ago that wasn't the case. Ford decided that 4 wheels on a chassis is what makes a car. Why not 3 wheels, 5 wheels, or 6 wheels?

The market likes to be given new options, but not too many options. People are willing to take a chance but they won't accomadate everything. For now motion controllers are where it's at. Nintendo decided it, MS and Sony have to follow suit. In a few years it might be brainwave controllers. While those controllers exist they aren't marketable. The public isn't ready for it, yet.