"Don't Ask Customers What They Want" still gets it wrong. It's not that you shouldn't ask customers what they want. It's that you need to intelligently examine customer feedback and decide
A. If a problem needs fixing at all
B. How to solve that problem or customer desire without doing away with what you got right the first time.
Customers often don't know what is practical to achieve or what the tradeoffs are. It is the job of the business to look at those things and find solutions that will make customers as happy or happier with the product/service.
The flip side is, some companies go out and design products based on their own desires and assumptions, and sometimes get that wrong too. The latest Macbook Pros are a good example. Yeah the product is slim and pretty, but slim and pretty is not a good thing to optimize for at the detriment of powerful and useful. The new Macbook Pros aren't a flop, but one has to think they would've sold a lot more of them if they sacrificed a bit of thinness for significantly more computing power.
> slim and pretty is not a good thing to optimize for at the detriment of powerful and useful
Well... most of the market seems to think that thin and light is the most important thing. It's just that there is a power-user market segment that has different needs that are not as well served by the new models.
[Posting from my 2011 17" MBP, in case you're wondering which side I'm on]
I think the more general market would've bought the new Macbook Pros either way. If they were the same thickness as before with more RAM and a few more standard ports, the casual users would've bought them up and the more professional users would've been happier. Maybe throw in a new color and you're done.
Right, when you ask someone what they want, what they tell you might not be physically possible. We all want a super fast, cheap, small turning radius, small footprint, large interior car.... but some of those requirements are contradictory.
If you ask someone what they wish was different about the choice they made, they will likely wish it had some of the features they had to give up to get the features they wanted more.
Crash safety is the big requirement that's contradictory with those. My daily driver has everything you listed, and good gas mileage too - but it doesn't even have airbags.
In terms of computing power, though, well, the new MBPs are using, generally, the same class of components as the old ones. And Intel doesn’t really make a mobile class above that. They could have increased the battery life by keeping the the same size, but not really made them much faster (except by going for desktop chips, but even very bulky laptops that do that have abysmal battery life).
They could potentially have gone for more RAM with a bigger battery, but they’d still suffer on standby power usage by abandoning LP-DDR; non-LP uses someth8ng like five times more power in standby. They could also have gone for a heftier GPU in the big ones, I suppose, but how many people are buying them for the GPU?
Personally I’m quite glad they slimmed them down a bit; made a 13” an easier replacement for an old Air. Though, I have a 2017 15” in work, replacing a 2013 15”, and I’m less convinced of the benefits of the size reduction there.
Well automakers have more ability to understand their customers; the same applies to a large number of products; as product and even brand focused sites exist that are privately run. Even reddit is likely to have a sub which ties in either directly or indirectly to a product.
I will say that Chevrolet got it right with the second generation Volt. People wanted more EV range, better gasoline efficiency when using the REX, real climate controls with knobs, and such. They got it all and then some. Packaging took a hit as designers wanted a more racy look so back seat head room too a hit but overall it was much improved in usability.
still it is evident watching various models through the years that roominess tends to force models up tier in the size category which in turn leads to a new model filling the original vehicles size niche.
A. If a problem needs fixing at all
B. How to solve that problem or customer desire without doing away with what you got right the first time.
Customers often don't know what is practical to achieve or what the tradeoffs are. It is the job of the business to look at those things and find solutions that will make customers as happy or happier with the product/service.
The flip side is, some companies go out and design products based on their own desires and assumptions, and sometimes get that wrong too. The latest Macbook Pros are a good example. Yeah the product is slim and pretty, but slim and pretty is not a good thing to optimize for at the detriment of powerful and useful. The new Macbook Pros aren't a flop, but one has to think they would've sold a lot more of them if they sacrificed a bit of thinness for significantly more computing power.