If iPads are “post-pc devices” why must I sync with iTunes before I can use one?

As an iPad owner who just ordered a kindle, pre-config'd w/ my amazon account, I wish Apple would fix the must-sync-w/-iTunes problem

1. Allow selection of Mac or Win file-system type during iDevice ordering, default to FAT32 otherwise (3rd party sales, etc.) 2. Configure iDevice w/ ordering account before shipping, or as on-site set-up @ brick & mortar 3. Customers purchase content without syncing their iDevice on PC 4. Profit $$$

Apple wouldn't want people not living close to one of its stores buying its products, after all.

This seems to be another way of describing disruption (and I like it):

Companies serve their customers. They improve their product along a dimension that their customers want. Equivalent to your "weakness" - as soon as their customers care about this, they work hard to fix it.

If you create an alternative product for those very same customers (and for the very same use) that's not as good in that dimension, they won't buy it. If it's better on that dimension (a sustaining innovation), the incumbents will work hard to beat it - and historically, they usually will, as they have all kinds of advantages over you.

But if you build for different customers, who currently have nothing, they will be delighted, and the incumbent won't care because you don't threaten their customers. Now, usually such a product will have other benefits that the competitor's product lacks - at the very least, a cheaper price, but maybe also convenience, flexibility, customizability, simplicity etc. This benefit is usually a result of a tradeoff against the above dimension - a "drawback".

Over time, you naturally will improve your product, and (perhaps) it will approach being good enough to threaten that competitor. But even as they see you approach, they really can't fight you, because it would require they let down their customers. And, what's even worse, at this new way of doing things, you are now the incumbent, with all the experience with engineering, customer acquisition and business model etc, and they are the entrant.

But I think you add a new idea to disruption, that the "drawback" is incompatible with the value proposition, as opposed to being orthogonal. Different business models are often like that; also many engineering tradeoffs. It's exacerbated by when you improve at something, you often specialize in it; and specialization in one thing implies de-specialization in something else.

Note that such incompatibilities are not restricted to engineering issues: if Apple somehow became dependent on tethering, or on iPad users requiring an Apple desktop, as part of their business model, it would then become a "drawback", that you could attack on.

Nice observation, I never tied Reis & Trout's explanation to disruption quite like that. They were describing a "Flanking Attack" which really fits with what you're describing quite well. And yes, the incompatibility is the key.

Going back to The Innovator's Dilemma, this explains why companies become trapped by their customers: Their existing customers hate anything that addresses the drawback because it is incompatible with the value proposition that appeals to them.

Although Microsoft won the battle by burying Netscape, they seem to have lost the Internet war, in large part because the Internet is incompatible with the value proposition of operating systems and desktop office productivity software. For example, the Internet does away with installing software binaries. Which is a drawback of desktop software and operating systems. But that is incompatible with the value proposition that an IT department gets to control what runs on an office computer.

yawn

That's the best you can do? How I initially transfer over my big photo/music libraries when I buy a new toy is of vanishingly little significance to me. (BTW, Apple has a few well-known applications for this, like iTunes and iPhoto and Aperture. Perhaps you have heard of them?)

Talk to me about a superior user experience. Talk to me about a superior applications base. Talk to me about a more responsive, reliable device with better battery life. Then I'll be interested.