Apple: Are they just really good at figuring out what people want, or do they decide for people what they want???

[Volpone]

I'm not a huge Apple fan. That said, for the entire life of the company, they've basically dictated what consumer technology will look like and how people will interact with it: Personal computers. The GUI operating system and mouse. MP3 players. Smart phones. By and large, I've been on board with the direction Apple has taken on things, although increasingly, it has killed some form factors that I prefer.

I loved netbooks. Had a little Eee PC running open source--Linux, etc. Slick. Then Apple came out with the iPad and basically killed netbooks in favor of tablets within a few years. I will argue that the iPad has also pushed the ballooning in size of smart phones. Back in the day, a smaller phone was sexier. Now people want a phone the size of a laptop computer. It's ironic because now Apple is the only company that still seems to make small smart phones for the US market. Batteries. I like a removable battery. When the battery dies I'll probably be getting a new phone anyway, but it's nice, if the OS freezes up, to be able to do a "hard reboot" by pulling the battery. iPhones don't have a removable battery and increasingly, neither do any of the other smart phones on the market. Removable media. OK, to be fair, a lot of that has been made moot by USB drives and broadband. I don't think anyone's clamoring for the ability to load software from a CD ROM, let alone save files on a 3 1/2" floppy. But c'mon, it's still nice to be able to pop in a DVD and watch a movie from your laptop if you're on the road or something. Increasingly, you can't do that anymore.

And I gotta say, I seem to be the outlier. The majority of consumers seem fine with this. And Apple predicted it and led the way all along. Or did they decide that was what people wanted and cause people to want it? :marathon:

 

[The Question]

I don't think a company can cause people to want something; look at Blackberry's efforts to appeal to non-corporate types, as an example.

Another area where Apple drove the concept of personal computing forward: SSDs. I may be mistaken on this point, but I have the impression that when Apple went from a spinning-platter hard drive to "flash memory", aka some of the first consumer-available SSDs in the iPod line, then started moving the same tech to their laptops, that led the charge and is (at least in large part) why we now have 1TB-and-up SSDs in desktops, instead of (or along with) HDDs.

USB-C is another. Macs have been rocking multiple USB-C / Thunderbolt ports for some time now, and it's only in the past year or so that Windows boxes are catching up, with a piddling one or two of the things to brag about.

Apple's big strength, though -- aside from what ya might call, "applied futurism" -- has been in its OS, particularly the UX. Windows 11 is the first version of Windows to offer a centered taskbar -- it's nice that they finally got around to a feature that users of ultrawide displays would have found useful for a good long while, now, but Apple's operating systems had that covered since OS X was in beta.

 

[The Question]

Having thought some more about this question, I might revise my answer this way:

It might be a little bit of both. Apple might have been guessing that what people want in a device is ease of use; their guess as to how to accomplish that involves minimalist design in the hardware -- thus explaining why they ditched things like optical drives and 3.5mm audio out jacks. If they follow the same trend, expect to see USB-A ports on their desktops disappear completely not too many redesigns from now; the USB-A port is getting damned long in the tooth, anyway.

Of course, Apple isn't entirely right on that first point, as evidenced by their share of the market compared to Windows-centric desktops and laptops. (They've absolutely nailed it with tablets, however.)

Some regard a computer as an appliance. You don't want a refrigerator or a microwave you have to troubleshoot or tinker with.

Then there are those who approach a computer with a "car guy" mentality. They not only don't mind tinkering, modifying, and optimizing their machines; they insist on it. Those are the kind of guys and gals Apple's machines are definitely not made for.

 

[Volpone]

There is a whole discussion about whether Apple is a product company or a marketing company (I would argue they are a marketing company), but for now I'll stay basic and address a few points:

The simplest one: Hard drive -vs- SSD is a no-brainer. SSD runs cooler, is faster, has no moving parts so it is harder to break and (on a related note) isn't anywhere near as susceptible to shock. The only drawback was that they couldn't figure out how to make them large enough to be practical. Having typed this, I will concede that, by coming up with the iPod, they came up with a marketable product where the relatively small memory size wasn't a drawback to being a valuable (and profitable) product. This funneled R&D $$ into solving the size problem and getting us to where we are today. (BTW, my netbook had an SSD drive. I loved it. Although it didn't take long at all before its version of Firefox was old enough that it didn't work well on a lot of sites and the drive was too small to update to newer versions.)

But I will, having thought on this, argue that Apple made the markets; it decided what people wanted before people knew what they wanted. No one knew they wanted a little portable storage unit that could play songs while you were jogging. Apple made the MP3 player market. Netbooks were fine. In fact I remember people initially laughing at the iPad. At the time, smaller phones were still sexier and the iPad was just weird. It was, like, 4x the size of a phone but didn't really do everything a phone does. And it didn't do everything a laptop does. It was just this odd gizmo. But now they're everywhere and netbooks are dead.

If you ever dig up 1996's "Triumph of the Nerds," there are plenty of interviews with Jobs (who was in exile from Apple at the time) that throw light on the Apple ][ and the Mac. But I've got stuff to do, so I should be going.

 

[The Question]

Re: that last point: It's funny, really. Apple kicking Jobs to the curb was at the same time the dumbest and the best move they ever made. He landed on his feet, came up with NeXT, and brought that back to Apple when they were at death's door. They gave him the shaft and he repaid that by bringing them back from the brink of destruction.

 

[Volpone]

On that note, before he came back, they'd started down IBM's PC path of licensing Apple clones. This seemed to me to be the sensible thing and that Jobs was nuts when, the first thing he did on his return, was to kill the clones. But when you realize that Apple *isn't* a product company, it's a marketing company, it makes perfect sense. Because Apple is less about the operating system (and to a lesser degree the hardware that runs it) than it is about the *experience*; the look and feel of the product. And they manage to charge a premium for that experience; always have, going way back to the Apple ][. There were other computers out there, and even the original Apple (which I've never seen but understand came in kit form where you had to build your own case for the components, etc), but they were crude and inaccessible to the average person. Apple ][s were fun and slick and easy to use (by 1980 standards). People were willing to pay thousands (and that's not inflation adjusted, the things cost on par with a car) for them. Commodore carved itself a nice little niche at the time for people who didn't have Apple bucks, but they fizzled out. As I type this, I realize Commodore's downfall came around the time Jobs was forced out. Were they consciously shadowing Apple? I don't know. But without a clear direction from Apple, it seems like they lost their way. Also, since they had a much lower price point (and profit margin) they just didn't have the cash piled up for R&D and to ride out tough times the way Apple did. Heh. It would be interesting to see an alternate reality where Jobs moved over to Commodore in the early 1990s.