It's not the money. They did it with the iMac when they were headed for the ground, and with the iPod when they were in a better position but still without infinite funding. Reality is actually quite simple: they spot technology advances, and integrate them into a neat, well-designed package that people actually want to buy.
The first iPod was a fancy shell around an IBM 1.8'' hard drive. There were MP3 players before but they were very bulky, or could store only a handful of files. They saw the hard drive coming, did the math, and went all in.
Same thing with the iPhone: there were smart phones before, but they spotted the capacitive digitizer that was orders of magnitude more accurate than the competition, and boom, multitouch.
Same thing with the AirPods: the killer feature being their fancy Bluetooth chip, which made the experience much better than the competition that was established for a decade at that point.
It is quite interesting that they do it over and over, going as far as saying what they do in interviews, and some people really don't see it for what it is.
> Are they the only ones who can create products?
They are not. They just have a vision of what they want to do, and once they start they put the effort needed (sometimes killing advanced designs before release). Then, they iterate relentlessly generation after generation. They play the long game, and often introduce their first generations at higher price points and keep improving and driving their price points down even if it is not an initial resounding success. Any company can do it, if they take design seriously and optimise for long term strategic goals rather than short-term economics.
> Competitors work for ages and ages fighting each other, refining v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, v2.25, and then suddenly Apple comes out with something v8-ish and the whole industry scrambles.
If you look closely, when Apple comes in, it's because they have found a differentiating factor that they think will make the difference. They always have a compelling message about why you should choose their product above the competition. And it's never "same product, but cheaper".
Apple is AFAICT the only company in the world (outside of ultra-luxury brands) that actually cares about user experience enough to spend however much it takes to make it good.
Agree. And in a world where most technical people assume differentiation means better specs, Apple repeatedly prioritizes better UX: easier and/or more fun to use.
Agreed. I wasn’t trying to say Apple gets every bit of UX perfect (or even acceptable) in all products.
But they do have a history of disrupting markets by leveraging superior UX. Mainstreaming the GUI, the click wheel, the all-glass multitouch phone, etc, etc.
It's not the money. They did it with the iMac when they were headed for the ground, and with the iPod when they were in a better position but still without infinite funding. Reality is actually quite simple: they spot technology advances, and integrate them into a neat, well-designed package that people actually want to buy.
The first iPod was a fancy shell around an IBM 1.8'' hard drive. There were MP3 players before but they were very bulky, or could store only a handful of files. They saw the hard drive coming, did the math, and went all in.
Same thing with the iPhone: there were smart phones before, but they spotted the capacitive digitizer that was orders of magnitude more accurate than the competition, and boom, multitouch.
Same thing with the AirPods: the killer feature being their fancy Bluetooth chip, which made the experience much better than the competition that was established for a decade at that point.
It is quite interesting that they do it over and over, going as far as saying what they do in interviews, and some people really don't see it for what it is.
> Are they the only ones who can create products?
They are not. They just have a vision of what they want to do, and once they start they put the effort needed (sometimes killing advanced designs before release). Then, they iterate relentlessly generation after generation. They play the long game, and often introduce their first generations at higher price points and keep improving and driving their price points down even if it is not an initial resounding success. Any company can do it, if they take design seriously and optimise for long term strategic goals rather than short-term economics.
> Competitors work for ages and ages fighting each other, refining v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, v2.25, and then suddenly Apple comes out with something v8-ish and the whole industry scrambles.
If you look closely, when Apple comes in, it's because they have found a differentiating factor that they think will make the difference. They always have a compelling message about why you should choose their product above the competition. And it's never "same product, but cheaper".