Apple and the pursuit of perfection
It appears Apple (AAPL) will be the most valuable company in the world tomorrow when the stock market opens. It has surpassed software companies, oil companies, and companies which sell cheap products made by cheap labor (not that Apple isn’t guilty of some of this cheapness). I will try not to delve into the political and social ramifications of Apple’s business, and instead talk about how they have rocketed to (or near) the top of profitability, and market cap.
For me, it comes down to a focus on perfection. Perfection is a virtue for some, but a vice for others. One of the greatest challenges in product management is the balance of perfection with what can be done easily and/or quickly. It’s rare that perfection can be achieved without great time, effort, and most intriguingly, a lack of trade-offs. Perfection requires a consistent choice of “the best”, rather than “good enough”.
About 3-4 years ago I decided to delve into the land of smart phones. With my prior experience at Microsoft, I decided to give the “Windows Phone” Blackjack a try. It was terrible. The stability wasn’t close to what a phone should be, and the UI was worse. I had the phone for such a short time, that I’m struggling to remember all of its faults. I returned the phone and went right back to a cheap (free, probably) flip phone. I wanted to be smart with my phone, but I didn’t think this was smart enough.
Not long after that, I got my wife the iPhone (3, I think). I didn’t give it much thought. I knew she wanted it, so I just went to the Apple store and got it for her as a Christmas gift. I didn’t give much thought to going smartphone myself at the time (as the Blackjack had discouraged me a bit), but within a few months, I started thinking about a smartphone again. I compared everything; form factor, usability, applications, stability. As unlikely as it seems, the iPhone seemed to lead in every single category. I’d never had such an easy decision for an electronics purchase. No phone came close.
How did Apple and (I can’t believe I’ve gone this far without mentioning) Steve Jobs pull this off? They must have set out with a philosophy of perfection. Innovation also helped (touch screen, iTunes, app store), but every aspect, they aspired to be the best.
- Design - It was small, and pretty. No phone matched its sleekness. The iPhone (and its iPod predecessors) proved that high design quality can be appreciated and enjoyed by the masses. If there’s a single takeaway for folks at Microsoft, it’s this. Design is critical. As civilization and technology continue to advance, I think design will play a bigger and bigger role.
- Usability - I’ve never been an Apple fanboy. Still can’t bring myself to use a Mac laptop. But phones should be easy. Make a call, (and now) launch a program. That’s it. And that’s what Apple did. They built a platform. They made it simple for the masses to understand and appreciate.
- Applications - From almost the beginning, Apple led the way. Unfortunately for the open source movement, Apple, closed things up tightly here. I thought this was a great move. Ensuring a higher quality application ecosystem was a critical piece of the puzzle. I actually think they’ve let too many apps into their system now, but it’s more of a filtering problem at this point, and I think they’re hesitant to filter/rate apps, because it could stifle innovation.
- Stability - Don’t crash. Windows has had the deserved reputation of instability, but you can’t get away with that for a phone. Our phones lasted a solid 2+ years with a crash once every 6 months or so.
Oddly enough, the iPhone’s greatest weakness has been said to be call quality. How long are people talking on phones these days? 10% of the time? Maybe 20%? Apple and Steve Jobs focused on the 80%-90%. And they required perfection (or near perfection).
I have yet to read Steve Jobs’ biography, but I suspect it alludes to a typical Apple meeting.
Employee says, “We can’t process the camera’s photo size/quality with our current software/hardware. We’ve got to reduce the resolution or reduce the quality of the final output.” Steve says: “Write better software, or design and build a better chip.
There’s a big difference between hard and impossible. I think most things in software and hardware are hard. But I think few things are impossible. It’s all about hard work and the pursuit of perfection. To accomplish something hard, or near impossible, requires a focus on—and even expectation of—perfection. I think few people aspire to that. But I think somehow Steve Jobs managed to bring a lot of those types together at Apple. And I think we continue to see those “dividends” in the form of units sold, revenue, profits, stock price, and, dare I say, love of Apple products.
