What makes Apple different?
While this is a subjective opinion, @Apple seems to be the only large company that continues to innovate and build high quality products and features year over year (both software and hardware). Every other tech company, either ship half baked products/feature and leave users suffer. Or stop innovating all together out of fear. Examples: Fb app, youtube, google maps, linkedin, android, fb portal, alexa… When I use these products, I feel like these teams have never tested their work in an actual user setting, as if they live in … a bubble. I understand why these companies ship shit, but the question is how does Apple do it? Is it because of the top/down culture? Is it because they’re user driven as opposed to data driven? Would love to learn, especially from people who worked there before. Blind tax: 340k
They listen to their customers. They prioritize quality over quantity.
Sure, but how do they get engineers to do and believe in the same? For example, fb says we care about our users wellbeing, but as an engineer I get rewarded for shipping features that bring in clicks.
Apple hasn’t came up with any new product, it’s just iterations on the products that Steve Jobs came up with. Apple isn’t a software company either, it’s a hardware company period.
😂😂😂😂
The beautiful software is just packaged in hardware. The hardware is just the delivery vehicle
Youtube and Google maps are the market leader and great products. How can you put them near fb portal?
Right. Comparing these against each other is not fair. But back to the point of comparing apple products with youtube and google maps. Youtube recommendations is a shit show. And their biggest innovation in the last decade is removing the dislike button. And google maps didn’t change ANYTHING since it came out. Don’t get me wrong, they work and I use them. That’s not the argument here.
It’s the perceived brand. They spend a lot on marketing and building that expert quality, luxury image. Executives in clean, crisp clothing, intros with amazing graphics, minimal aesthetic (which is great as people can easily derive different meaning out of its aesthetic qualities) I am a Designer (and have friends who’re designers at Apple - so user driven nature is true but not as much as thought so, it’s inline with other companies), so I can tell for a fact that they’re not any significantly different. They have fair share of inconsistencies in their experience, but what works is people tend to overlook mistakes if you make them believe they have something special in hands. Examples: HomePods, Apple Maps, Siri are all substandard executions yet they have a good following. Imagine if Picasso was alive and to make a pencil stroke, it would sell like crazy and people will still flock, find their own meaning from it. Why did he make something outside of cubism? What does this signify, is the broken tip the state of our society today? You get the idea? Now take a pencil stroke from a not-so famous artist. They will see it for what it is.
It's a luxury brand. People aspire to associate with that brand. Some people even will eat 💩 if branded with 🍎. But it doesn't not take away the fact that they excel in design and some implementation. But there are many others like them also. Ex - iPhone has some features launched recently which was present in android since ages but no one talks about that. Apple will add incremental 5yr old feature and fans go crazy about that.
Absolutely! One thing I’ve also noticed is their iteration cycles are crazy fast after the initial release for softwares. Examples: Fitness+ (more recently), iOS (when they moved to flat colors led to a lot of accessibility concerns)
I guess, all other companies has “it is okay” attitude ie, even if they know there is some minor issue, they would still ship that feature unlike apple. Being in HW, even a small issue which happens very rarely, we would give utmost importance to analyze it and better it.
This is insightful. I wonder how do they foster such culture. Are people rewarded heavily for this during yearly reviews?
This is an example where literally everyone has bought into the brand. People believe the marketing, and it helps shape most opinions of who they are Their products aren’t all that special. There are phones and laptops with way more functionality and subjectively better UI. They also have the App Store which really helps cement their dominance. That’s basically all it is.
It has nothing to do with marketing, if you have an eye for quality and actually try out different products to compare, you’d know the difference. Most people who say it’s marketing have never worked extensively with apple products and just guessing by looking at spec tables. On paper, Samsung has under screen fingerprint unlock feature and Apple phones don’t. However, it’s a nightmare to get it to work on Galaxy devices. It’s laggy, it takes 2 sec to respond, and good luck unlocking the phone if your finger is a tiny bit wet. This lack of detail and care for user experience is replicated across most of the products I listed.
Lmao, if you go to any reputable mba program, Apple is always part of many case studies for this exact reason: their ability to use various positioning strategies to drive consumer perception of premiumization. 50% of what you’re paying for is brand. I use an iPhone and I know it’s nothing special compared to other phones out there with equal or better function for much less. You should try any of the myriad of Chinese phones and phones out there made by not apple, Samsung or goggle. There are dozens as good or better technology and UI (I.e. pointer finger finger print on the back of your phone a long time ago which makes sense as your finger is always back there, etc) at half the price. The funny thing is you talk quality, yet one survey showed up to 42% of iPhone users planned to buy a new one in the year surveyed (2018). Many people are buying a new phone every year. These Chinese manufacturers create great phones at like 50% 75% the price, and others like Samsung, lge are still under that with great function and UI. While quality is obviously important, when people are buying new phones every year and claiming it’s for quality (when there are other great devices out there for significantly less) - that’s marketing!
PM is the king at Apple unlike developers at other companies.
PMs are kings at other companies too, but they don’t do as well. Are Apple PMs any different?