Brian PrenticeFor reasons that still stupefy me, Apple seems to be one of the scant few companies in our industry that understands the power of simplicity. This goes way, way beyond user interfaces and gesture recognition. Their skill is both in matching functionality to purpose and being able to identify purposes which are meaningful. That is the true essence of simplicity.
I have been somewhat amused at the extent to which the digital intelligentsia are trying to assess the iPad by deconstructing it’s feature set. The logic is clear – the more things the iPad (or any product for that matter) does the more people it will appeal to. Therefore, for every missing feature one must subtract a segment of its potential audience in order to determine its total market appeal. This thinking is most humorously conveyed by the deep disappointment Adolf Hitler felt on learning what wasn’t included in the iPad.
This logic, however, is flawed. I am convinced that Apple went the other direction. They found a target audience and determined what features were necessary to meet their minimum expectations. Who is this audience? It’s the vast sea of humanity that sees the computer as merely an appliance. And appliance computing nowadays boils down to four categories; 1) creating simple documents, 2) storing and accessing digital content, 3) exploring the internet and, 4) interacting with friends and family. As an appliance, the iPad is a near perfect fit. It does what the Mac family shouldn’t and the iPod family can’t.
There’s a lot of different people that fall into this category. It could be the student that does a little word processing for homework, a bunch of research on the internet and a whole lot gaming. Maybe it’s the retired guy who keeps up with former colleagues and stores his grandkids school photos. Maybe its the stay-at-home mom who coordinates her children’s activities, does some online shopping and stays on top of family health issues. But what so many of these people share is a fatigue with computing devices that force them to navigate a sea of superfluous functionality to achieve their modest objectives. Computing devices designed by the digital intelligentsia for the digital intelligentsia.
In this regard I don’t see the iPad as a tablet – whatever the heck that is. I consider it a technically-sophisticated anti-technologist statement. It is designed to debunk the conventional wisdom that the only way to find a common intersection between the diverse needs of different human beings is to build products with as many doohickies and thingamabobs as possible.
If the iPad turns out to be the success that Gartner, and others, are predicting then this will largely be a testament to the power of design thinking and Apple’s commitment to it. Design thinking doesn’t concern itself with the reaction of the deconstructionists. In fact, I think the iPad brand will only get stronger the more the technologists reject it for lack of this feature or that.
The most compelling aspect of the iPad, in my mind, is its restraint.
And that’s a concept that I sincerely hope many more participants in the IT industry will grok onto sometime soon.
Category: Feature-itis & The Design Imperative Tags:
10 responses so far ↓
1 Ben Ingersoll February 3, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Brian–well written blog…enjoyed it. As a former PCer, I am now a MAC person and started with the gateway drug [ipod]…now have the MacBook, iPhone and plan on purchasing the iPad. Primarily, it will be used for an e-Reader, plus for sales calls, the iWorks/PDF viewer will be nice for sales presentations instead of bringing the laptop.
Best, Ben
2 Brian Prentice February 3, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Ben Ingersoll – thanks, glad you enjoyed it. I have a MacBook Pro and an iPod. But I don’t see myself buy an iPad for myself. There’s nothing it will do for me that my MacBook Pro won’t. On the other hand I see my wife getting one. She’s sick of battling my kids for time on our home Mac. And when I look at what she does with a computer I think the iPad is an inexpensive solution. It’s supposed limitations won’t factor into the way she uses the computer.
3 joseph kingsbury, Text 100 February 3, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Brian – agree with the notion of ‘anti-technologist’ statement. A company like Sony – or any engineering-led company – would seem to be the opposite of Apple in that features and not user experience dominate the approach to design.
Also, i think people may be underestimating the appeal of simple photo/video sharing in physical groups where crowding around a computer or tiny LCD on the back of a camera aren’t conducive to a good social experience.
i’m not an Apple fanboy but this is smart design in my mind.
joseph kingsbury, Text 100
twitter.com/jkingsbury
4 Brian Prentice February 3, 2010 at 9:31 pm
Joseph Kingsbury – thanks for your comments. I agree – this was smart design.
While I’m sure Apple is quite happy to see the Apple faithful book their advance orders I’m sure they’d agree that this isn’t their target market.
The biggest opportunity in my mind are all the people who are living with a 6-8 year old PC – probably running Windows 2000 or XP – that have no motivation to spend money on a new machine just to run Windows 7. It’s not that they hate Microsoft – they’re probably indifferent. They don’t upgrade because their old machine basically does what they need it to do and having the latest and greatest PC isn’t a criteria in their lives.
If the iPad can motivate these types of people to become new computer consumers again then the market potential for Apple is massive. The iPad is not about appealing to the Apple customer base – it’s about growing the customer base with new users.
5 uberVU - social comments February 3, 2010 at 11:42 pm
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6 Merlin Francis February 4, 2010 at 4:59 am
Hi! Brian,
Great post. I completely agree with you, when you say what works for Apple is its simplistic approach towards technology. And it is their design which wins them their ardent fans and users – be it the Mac, the iPod and now the iPad.
I personally loved their iPod and recently bought a Mac – I can never imagine myself using anything else other than an Apple product hence forth. Its like they thought of me before making one
I am sure, iPad will find its users – the ones whose need they identified and created the product for.
7 Scott Nelson February 4, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Brian: I agree with your take. The key to the iPad is that it is the result of the move to cloud computing…and as such, is all about accessing content. Not about computational ability. There is a place for the later, and will be for some time. But as more and more of our computing needs exist in the cloud, we will see more and more of these sorts of products. You know that Google is thinking the same thing. Follow the content. That is the future of computing.
8 Laurent Meurisse February 8, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Hello Brian,
Thanks for your post, I think Apple is moving generally toward the great public market and have finish to be the specialist of “computers” … Effectively they stop, since a long time, to talk about all technical characteristics… that only “digital intelligentsia” are ready to ear and understand !
Thanks again.
9 Matt Asay February 10, 2010 at 6:04 am
This actually makes me wonder if there’s hope for a limited-purpose (instead of general purpose) Linux “desktop”, after all? I suppose we already have these in the TiVo, Kindle, etc., but why not more? Why not streamlined Netbook-type devices that don’t boil the computing ocean, but instead do just one thing (or a few things) well?
Part of the problem with the traditional Linux ‘desktop’ was that it was supposed to do everything that Windows did, and invariably fell down due to a lack of driver support, application support, or whatever.
But a more limited ‘desktop’ resolves that issue. (This doesn’t, of course, address the design problem, but I don’t think Apple has a lock on design simplicity. The new Litl device, for example, does a decent job of this.)
10 Brian Prentice February 12, 2010 at 10:12 am
Hi Matt – great observation. I would add the SugarOS as another interesting derivative.
But the fundamental question here is “what purpose is it limited to?” This boils down to a question of conceptual design. I have found myself wondering whether the assumption of community participation makes conceptual design impossible to sustain. How can open source development create the same type of restraint we’re seeing from Apple?