steve jobs

Apple Products

Here’s Why Apple’s A ‘Design-First’ Company

June 23, 2019 Design Technology

It won’t come as a surprise for a generic world-class electronics company to squirm at the mere motion of discontinuing any present-day technology that is evidently in rampant use with its current user-base, including peripherals or hardware systems. Imagine the plight of several million loyal customers when they hear how their favourite features and functions have been impertinently withdrawn with immediate effect from the brand’s high-end product line. But of course, we aren’t talking about Apple.

Here’s what everybody, including most designers, gets it completely wrong about Apple whenever the discussion surrounding its deeply intricate ‘design philosophy’ happens. There will be an unequivocal and optimistic pronouncement that Apple’s success is due to its “user-first” mindset. It’s not and it never was. On the contrary, Apple’s innovation strategy is ingrained in making its products future-proof by pursuing a ‘design-first’ framework in a valiant effort to promote and invest in technologies, which in Steve Jobs’ prophetic words, are having an upwards swing. That pursuit of integrating innovative technology is partly the reason why some of their design decisions seem impractical and in complete contradiction to current technical norms. The unpopular decision behind the removal of the headphone jacks from the iPhone 7, for instance, was necessary to make the device thinner and add space for larger batteries in a world that is hankering for more juice. That single design change has virtually turned the tide towards wireless Bluetooth headset manufacturers and prompted iPhone buyers to shop for them (read, ‘AirPods’) and has sparked a wave of innovation in the industry.

[…]Apple is a company that doesn’t have the resources that everyone else has. We choose what tech horses to ride, we look for tech that has a future and is headed up. Different pieces of tech go in cycles… they have their springs, and summers and autumns, and…then they go to their graveyard of technology. And..so we try to pick things that are in their ‘springs’ and if you choose wisely you can save yourself enormous amount of work versus trying to do everything, and you can really put energy into making those new emerging technologies be great on your platform rather than just ‘ok’ because you’re spreading yourself too thin. […] So we have got rid of things..we were one of the first to get rid of the optical drives with the MacBook Air, and I think things are moving in that direction as well. And sometimes when we get rid of things like the floppy disk drive on the original iMac people call us crazy. But sometimes you just have to pick the things that look like they’re gonna be the right horses to ride going forward.

Steve Jobs – D8 conference, 2010.

So, where modern PC brands were feverishly banking on the ubiquitous USB Type-A on the basis of its adoption rate and the competition Apple boldly moved forward to replace them with USB type-Cs on their Mac devices. It’s a debate for another day that Apple’s ‘design-first’ decision on the 2015 MacBook also prompted an extravagant usage of physical adapters to attach almost any 3rd-party Type-A peripheral on almost every major device launch.

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Happy 64th Birthday, Steve Jobs!

February 24, 2019 Quotes

At Apple, we come at everything asking, ‘How easy is this going to be for the user? How great it is going to be for the user?’ After that, it’s like at Pixar. Everyone in Hollywood says the key to good animated movies is story, story, story. But when it really gets down to it, when the story isn’t working, they will not stop production and spend more money and get the story right. That’s what I see about the software business. Everybody says, ‘Oh, the user is the most important thing’ but nobody else really does it.

CNN Money/Fortune, 21 February 2005

2018 Apple MacBook Pro

2018 Was An Impressive Year For Apple

November 3, 2018 Design Technology

We’re still a few weeks from saying our goodbyes to 2018, and unless Apple is planning to hold an unprecedented fifth keynote this year, 2018 will go down in history as the year when Apple launched a range of innovative products. In the hype and the hoopla that generally accompanies all Apple events; some individuals might even be vindicated in assuming they are just normal product launches, although undoubtedly the company has given us a sneak peek into its future direction of integrating the best-in-class design and tech elements into great-looking, innovative products. In short, there has never been an exciting moment to anticipate which product and tech iteration Apple would demonstrate at their next glittering event.

2018 should set the tone for Apple’s future design roadmap

It was last year when Apple’s approach in breakthrough hardware and software design gained fruition and we finally began to see the perfection with Apple’s design iterations. To cite an example, it was September 2017, when along with the Apple Watch Series 3, the Apple TV 4K, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, Apple unveiled a revolutionary form factor of its flagship product the iPhone X on its tenth anniversary. The bezel-less design of the iPhone X was what impressed many, a paradigm shift in the iPhone ergonomics that was hitherto accompanied by a home button. The new form factor certainly met the expectations of the markets but then it was also the introduction of the Face ID technology a new generation of secure digital authentication which also made a mark. In a nutshell, that event marked a significant detour in the way products were going to be designed and integrated with advanced technology. In fact, not very long ago, I had mentioned a critical aspect of Apple’s future design roadmap that was supportive of modern & imminent technologies and in the process, they were also influencing behaviour change with user interaction. That being said here’s what I liked from Apple’s ‘orchard’ this 2018, 3 revolutionary product ideas with their underlying hi-tech, that I believe would eventually transform the way we interact with the world around us, and my strategic learning from the product launches so far.

Design Iterations in the form factor for the iMac
Instance of design iterations in the form factor for the iMac

The product design philosophy of Apple could be easily summarized with this insightful quote by French aviator and poet Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, he says, “perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” That sentiment is so deeply ingrained in every aspect of Apple’s design DNA.

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Steve Jobs’ Dialogue on Consulting

March 30, 2018 Design Happenings

I came across this germ of discourse from Steve Jobs referring to the consulting industry. In his ridicule of consultants for their lack of experience in the implementation of their projects, there was a strong message for owning and understanding the experience from an end-to-end perspective. He says:

I don’t think there’s anything inherently evil in consulting..I think that..without owning something over an extended period of time, like a few years, where one has a chance to take responsibility for one’s recommendations, where one has to see through all action stages and accumulate ‘scar tissues’ for the mistakes and pick oneself up off the ground and dust oneself off, one learns a fraction of what one can. Coming in and making recommendations and not owning the results, not owning the implementation I think is a fraction of the value and a fraction of the opportunity to learn and get better. And so, you do get a broad cut at the companies but it’s very thin, it’s like a picture of a banana, you might get a very accurate picture but it’s only two dimensional. And without the experience of actually doing it, you never get three dimensional.

So you might have a lot of pictures on your walls, you can show it off to your friends like “look I’ve worked in bananas, I’ve worked in peaches, I’ve worked in grapes” but you never really taste it. And that’s what I think. You’re also a variable expense in hard times and you’ll find yourself…(getting fired, is probably what he meant)

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The Facts vs Fiction In ‘Steve Jobs’

March 30, 2018 Movies

Steve JobsHaving enjoyed Walter Isaacson’s insightful book ‘Steve Jobs’ ages ago, and after amassing enough confidence, I was left disappointed watching its cinematic version recently. Especially after a feeble attempt was made in the ‘Jobs’ movie wherein Ashton Kutcher helmed the legendary Apple founder’s role my expectations from the official film had peaked. In the book, Isaacson has detailed the vibrant journey of Steve Jobs; personal and professional, and his varied mix of emotion, passion, vision, and an unfettered streak of wisdom which distinguished him from his contemporaries and enabled him to build Apple and NeXT. As a long time devotee of Steve Jobs one thought that the biopic written by Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) failed to do justice not just to the Isaacson book on which it was purportedly based but to Jobs as well who continues to captivate the industry even today, pathetically reducing his awe-inspiring story into a dramatized narrative.

The movie outlines 3 events which shaped the life and times of Jobs beginning with the launch of Apple’s flagship Macintosh computer in 1984, Steve Jobs’ famed departure from the company after his tumultuous association with CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), and his grand comeback to Apple with the iMac launch. Throughout, the film captures the complex relationship with his estranged daughter Lisa and his colleagues all of which was truthfully captured in the Isaacson book though regrettably, that content has been sensationalized on the big screen. For instance, scenarios such as Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) having an argument with Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) and Jobs’ badgering of Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) 40 minutes prior to the launch of the Mac to fix the voice demo never happened in reality, likewise there is a list of instances where the movie deviates from the book itself. Alas, with a personality such as Steve Jobs, the film could have ended up becoming a splendid saga of triumph & trials, instead, the makers could only manage a burlesque version to keep the audiences entertained.