On Apple

For those that haven’t heard, I will be interning at Apple this summer, and thus, this will be the last Apple-related tweet or blog post for at least the next 12 weeks. This is most unfortunate, as I can scarcely remember a year in technology as momentous as this one has already proven to have been, and it will shock you to know I usually have strong opinions about such things. Therefore, I wanted to use this last Apple-related post to comment on three of the biggest Apple-related news stories and highlight why I’m so excited to be working in Cupertino.

3. iPad (the Products)

This, of course, is an obvious one, and the reason why most people like Apple – they make amazing stuff. But the funny thing is, when you ask someone why they like their Mac, or their iPod, or their iPhone, many have a hard time articulating just what it is that makes it irreplaceable. There’s no better example of this than the iPad, a device that seems superfluous at best, pointless at worst. What can you do that can’t be done on a regular computer, or even an iPhone? And, if you only consider functionality, the answer is not much. But when you consider use cases, the iPad becomes obvious - more and more people use their computers for entertainment (1), and the iPad is the first computer designed explicitly for entertainment (2). Of course it is superior for that increasingly common use case. Just like the iPad is superior for listening to music on the go, and the iPhone is superior for truly mobile computing. Each of Apple’s products is carefully attuned to and designed for user needs, not feature lists, and that’s what produces such strong brand loyalty. This sort of design-thinking is a philosophy I hold dear, and I am extremely excited to see it in action.

2. Flash (Think Different)

Considering its reputation for breathtaking advancement, the technology industry can remain stuck in the past for an amazingly long period of time. Heck, there are computers sold today that still have parallel ports! In so many cases it has been Apple that has been willing to break with convention, shipping the first computer that required a mouse for interaction, the first without a disk drive, and now the first without Flash (not to mention a phone without buttons!). From a business perspective, Apple has consistently differentiated itself in ways different than price, and targeted a certain segment that appreciates a quality user experience and that values their time, again, at odds with most of the industry. So many tech companies get their inspiration from other tech companies - Apple gets it from users’ actual needs.

In this, the idea of thinking different really gets back to the same philosophy that informs their products - human-centered design. Apple ignores the tech pundits, the commenters, and the fanboys, and makes what normal people, who have better things to do then post on Techcrunch, actually want. Consider something like copy-and-paste. Sure, it was late to the iPhone (oh, the angst!), but what wasn’t late was a fantastic user experience (iPhone 1 was arguably the greatest version 1 product in history). And, when copy-and-paste was added, it augmented that user experience, making it even better. Contrast that with certain competitors who simply add features that are half-baked at best, actively detrimental to the user experience at worse.

3. iPhone v. Android (Change the World)

There is so much that goes into the current battle between Google and Apple, currents that run far deeper and go back far longer than Google – or even Apple, for that matter – has existed. It’s why talk of being “open” or “closed” is far more complicated than it seems, and why who is right depends on your point-of-view.

Thus it is true, that from a developer or an expert user perspective, Android is more “open.” There are more choices in languages, platforms, and installation sources. But this “openness” comes at a cost: poorer performance, especially in critical functions like battery life, a greater chance of malware, and too many choices in both handsets and OS versions. These are not small things, especially from the perspective of a normal user who is not a developer or advanced user, and has no desire to become one. This user already hates their PC, and the last thing they want is another computer to manage and worry about. Instead, they want to write, or create music, or photograph, or do any number of things that capitalizes on their unique talents. They need a tool to help them do whatever it is they want to do, and if you look at the platforms that way, I would argue it is the iOS platform that is far more open. It enables you to take advantage of what is most definitely a computer without any of the headaches that have prevented the vast majority of people from using their computers to their full capabilities (3), headaches that are the flip-side of the very sort of features that, if added, would make iOS more “open.”

To look at the issue in such a way, from the perspective of normal people and with an appreciation of their unique talents waiting to be unleashed (as well as their unique pain points) requires a mindset that that must reside deep within a company’s culture. And so, while there are many fantastic clips of Steve Jobs speaking (4), my absolute favorite clip is from right after he returned to Apple, when the company was at its nadir:

The (slightly-edited) transcript:

For me, marketing is about values. This is a very noisy world and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us. Our customers want to know who is Apple and what is it that we stand for. What we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well. Apple is about something more than that. Apple’s core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That’s what we believe.

Changing the world does not happen because one person, or one company, decides to do so. It happens when millions of people pursue their passions with tools that magnify their unique talents, and the iOS platform with its explicit removal of what to geeks is “openness” but to most is “annoyance” comes the closest to being that sort of tool of any technological platform in history. Apple, today more than ever, is enabling people to change the world.

There’s still a big part of me that has a teacher mentality (5). I’m a natural maven, all too eager to share my knowledge, and I love being in the classroom. But what is most rewarding, and any teacher will tell you the same, is hearing about what your students have accomplished, and envisioning what they and their classmates will become. By having touched their lives I have by extension touched the lives of everyone they affect, and thus by proxy have had an indelible effect on the world.

That, above all, is why I identify with and admire Apple. Wish me luck.

1 Anything that is not work or school-related

2 In fact, I would argue that the reason the iWork apps were available at launch and featured so prominently in the iPad keynote was to offer justification for those feeling a bit guilty about buying a computer purely for entertainment. “See, I’ll do work!”

3 I think this is what Steve Jobs meant in his “freedom from porn” email. What are most users afraid of when it comes to regular PCs? Viruses, crashes, and being safe online. iOS explicitly address and alleviates all three. In fact, one could argue news about app rejections is actually a positive thing for Apple in the eyes of non-technical users.

4 If you haven’t seen Jobs’ famous Stanford commencement speech (3), it is an absolute must-watch

5 I was a teacher for several years prior to attending Kellogg