Om Malik:
How to find originality in a “networked society” is on my mind, because I have recently come across three individuals who have been original for such a long time. During a conversation for my new art project, Pi.co, Frank Clegg, a US-based bag maker put it best when he said, “If I make something different, then I don’t really have any competition. Either people like what I do, or they don’t like what I do.” Such a simple statement, but so hard to implement, because many find such comfort from hiding in the herd.
This is exactly how I see Apple. They make products that we don’t always know we need—people are going to like them or they won’t. Either way, it’s going to be different.
Apple “make products that we don’t always know we need.” There is some truth in that. But how much? IPod, iPhone, iPad and even Apple Watch – not one was first of its kind. But surely someone else knew we needed these products? (Let’s not go down the path of Apple perfecting these products. We are talking about perceived need.)
An incomplete or poor execution of a good idea can be enough to kill a product category entirely. In the examples you’re citing, “first of its kind” gives you bragging rights for having failed noticeably enough for someone else to get the details right.
I didn’t feel I needed either an mp3 player or a smartphone until I saw the capabilities Apple gave each of them. And how many people gave a shit about the 1999-era Windows tablets? Real people, not gadget nerds.
Going decades further back, I never felt a need to own a personal computer until Apple released one that could do the things I needed it to do. Had I been born only five years later, my computer science degree might have played a larger part in my current career.
Personal computers, mp3 players, smartphones, and tablets mostly sucked until Apple stepped in and redesigned them for human beings.
That’s “perceived need” enough for me.
Yup. I wrote software for PDAs and smartphones for years before Apple introduced the iPhone. The iPhone was the first smartphone I wanted to rely on.
Palm was too slow-moving and hadn’t hit good yet. Windows CE was an also-ran with too many additional problems. BlackBerry’s tech was years behind the others, for the most part.
I not only didn’t need those early smartphones, I needed to avoid them.
I was curious about them. I mean, how many years could such an important product category offer so much crap?
Right around the time Windows took over the Palm Tungsten phone, I started asking people I worked for how their smartphones were working for them. I got some exasperated looks. It was comical.
Just based on some of the application-level architecture decisions, you could tell they were going to be poor phones.
The most exciting thing about the iPhone wasn’t really the screen or the scrolling, but the imposition of constraints. An incoming phone call is going to get handled, for instance. The front app is guaranteed to go away when the user taps Home. (This is more complex now, but same general idea.)
Putting the user’s security and needs first, even ahead of possibly their desire and potential features, was the really groundbreaking thing about the iPhone. Yes, it’s cool that it was shiny. But it was more important that it worked.
Yep.
Does anyone still have questions about “perceived need”?