Scobleizer: “It’s sad that Bill Gates tried to get Microsoft to deliver the Tablet PC vision but Microsoft mostly failed where Apple has largely succeeded. Some because the market is more ready for a Tablet PC today (we have wifi in a lot of places now, and 3G coverage is getting there). Some because technology has evolved (battery life is dramatically better than back then and lighter too). Some because prices have come down.” – Think about Apple for a minute, their successes, their failures. The iPod, Sony was in this space long before Apple. Apple perfected it, brought us integration with the desktop, and great online store integration. The iPhone, there were many, many, other cell phone companies. Apple perfected the smart phone, brought us integration with the desktop, a great online store, and the web anywhere, at any time, the way we wanted it, and gave developers a way to make money and not have to worry about distribution. Now, we have the iPad, Apple has once again perfected, or at least have a great start to perfecting it. Apple brought us great integration with the desktop, a great online store, web anywhere, books anywhere, movies anywhere, and gave developers a great way to make money and not have to worry about application distribution.
See a pattern here? Apple may not be first, but they definitely know how to perfect the user experience.
3 replies on “Being first isn’t always good”
I think the key difference is in the OS. By taking the iPhone OS and scaling it up, Apple has been able to create a vastly simpler experience built for the relative inaccuracy of touch control (compared to a mouse) which will be augmented and refined as the platform grows. The coming crop of Windows tablets are still going to try to shoehorn Windows 7 in there, which will require more hardware to run acceptably and have a hard time achieving similar battery life in that form factor. A lot of them are going to try to develop their own “interaction layer” on top of Windows 7 to try to make it more touch-friendly as well. It will be interesting to see how the coming Android tablets turn out. Just running it as the phone OS on a tablet won’t be as compelling. Apple clearly put a good amount of time into rethinking their core applications and improved the experience with the larger screen of the iPad. Having nice hardware is great but without well conceived software to go with it, it’s just a pretty slab of metal.
Apple is doing what it does. Thoughtful design, with the user experience at the center. Keep it simple, keep it clean.
Microsoft’s continued use of the Windows name on everything is hideous. Windows 7 Phone, how sexy is that! Then to drop this message on developers yesterday, <http://j.mp/cqhLeo>, what are they thinking? Seriously, which platform would you rather develop for? For me, it’s easy, Apple’s platform. It’s unified and it’s a winner.
I’ve always thought that Apple does what BASF used to advertise.
“We don’t make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.”
Apple always seems to keep the User’s Experience at the forefront and running next to Innovation. Whereas with Microsoft, I always feel the user’s experience is an After Thought.