Notes on life, art, photography and technology, by a Danish dropout bohemian.
When you drink the water, remember the river.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Why a simple product line is integral to Apple’s success
Why a simple product line is integral to Apple’s success, article.
It's what I've been saying for donkey's years: K.I.S.S.
4 comments:
Wonko
said...
I think there's a lot in what that article talked about. Last night I had dinner with friends and somehow the conversation touched on the subject of toothpaste (no really, it did). I expressed my frustration at the seemingly endless versions of the same brand, leading to a supermarket display that's about three metres of just toothpaste. Do I want a toothpaste that fights cavities, or whitens my teeth, or rebuilds my tooth enamel, or calms the nerves of sensitive teeth, or removes stains (and no, that's not the same as just whitening, apparently). Do I want one that freshens my breath, or has an anti-bacterial action, or does the dishes, walks the dog and pays the gas bill? Or one of the combination that does two or more of the above? Too much choice! I just want a toothpaste that helps clean my teeth, tastes nice and doesn't cost a fortune.
One of my friends picked up on this theme, but with honey. She said she had gone to the supermarket and needed honey, only to find about forty different varieties of honey on the shelves. There were different countries of origin, different kinds of flowers the bees had visited (how do they know?), claims of Omega somethings in some of them, claims of being organic on others. I'm surprised they didn't name the bees who had collected the nectar! As far as she sees it honey can be split into three categories: runny honey in a squeezy bottle, runny honey in a traditional jar, and set honey in a jar. So she bought the cheapest runny honey in a jar, which is what she wanted. Sometimes less is more.
Instead of three models of laptops, as the articles claims, there are many times that. MacBook, a MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro are really product lines, not products. For each of the three lines, there are different display sizes and other options to choose from.
And with PowerMacs, the number of models is nearly infinite.
The only thing that is different with apple is the naming. They only name the main branches of products, and don't bother naming the configurations with numbers and letters like some other PC manufacturers do.
I'm all for simplicity. And with Apple being so successful as they are with their complicated product line, you can only wonder how successful they might become if they realized the value in simplicity.
What if you could just buy an iPod Nano, instead of having to specify which one of the 9 (nine) iPod Nano models you want?
It is simple and easy to understand until you actually want to buy something.
Say, you decide you want a Mac Mini (because it is the simplest of all the Macs). Now, do you want a 120GB Mac mini (MB463LL/A) or a 320GB Mac mini (MB464LL/A)?
What's the difference other than the RAM size?
Well, one has NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 128MB of DDR3 SDRAM, and the other has NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM.
How do you know which graphics option you need?
So, even the simplest of all the Macs is not just one product identified by a single name.
If Apple printed the "MB463LL/A" on the chassis in a bigger font, then it would differ in no way from Sony and the others.
4 comments:
I think there's a lot in what that article talked about. Last night I had dinner with friends and somehow the conversation touched on the subject of toothpaste (no really, it did). I expressed my frustration at the seemingly endless versions of the same brand, leading to a supermarket display that's about three metres of just toothpaste. Do I want a toothpaste that fights cavities, or whitens my teeth, or rebuilds my tooth enamel, or calms the nerves of sensitive teeth, or removes stains (and no, that's not the same as just whitening, apparently). Do I want one that freshens my breath, or has an anti-bacterial action, or does the dishes, walks the dog and pays the gas bill? Or one of the combination that does two or more of the above? Too much choice! I just want a toothpaste that helps clean my teeth, tastes nice and doesn't cost a fortune.
One of my friends picked up on this theme, but with honey. She said she had gone to the supermarket and needed honey, only to find about forty different varieties of honey on the shelves. There were different countries of origin, different kinds of flowers the bees had visited (how do they know?), claims of Omega somethings in some of them, claims of being organic on others. I'm surprised they didn't name the bees who had collected the nectar! As far as she sees it honey can be split into three categories: runny honey in a squeezy bottle, runny honey in a traditional jar, and set honey in a jar. So she bought the cheapest runny honey in a jar, which is what she wanted. Sometimes less is more.
But Apple's product line is not at all simple.
Instead of three models of laptops, as the articles claims, there are many times that. MacBook, a MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro are really product lines, not products. For each of the three lines, there are different display sizes and other options to choose from.
And with PowerMacs, the number of models is nearly infinite.
The only thing that is different with apple is the naming. They only name the main branches of products, and don't bother naming the configurations with numbers and letters like some other PC manufacturers do.
I'm all for simplicity. And with Apple being so successful as they are with their complicated product line, you can only wonder how successful they might become if they realized the value in simplicity.
What if you could just buy an iPod Nano, instead of having to specify which one of the 9 (nine) iPod Nano models you want?
Good point. Still feels a lot easier to understand for me, though.
It is simple and easy to understand until you actually want to buy something.
Say, you decide you want a Mac Mini (because it is the simplest of all the Macs). Now, do you want a 120GB Mac mini (MB463LL/A) or a 320GB Mac mini (MB464LL/A)?
What's the difference other than the RAM size?
Well, one has NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 128MB of DDR3 SDRAM, and the other has NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM.
How do you know which graphics option you need?
So, even the simplest of all the Macs is not just one product identified by a single name.
If Apple printed the "MB463LL/A" on the chassis in a bigger font, then it would differ in no way from Sony and the others.
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