iPad tablet – Chemistry or Alchemy? What is at the core of Apple?
There is nothing like an Apple launch to inject a sense of magic and suspense into the technology sector. Yesterday’s launch of the iPad was no different.
So, what can we learn from Apple? Whilst the marketing is impressive, it is the substance that matters. I was fortunate last year to attend a presentation by Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs. Wozniak came across as the ultimate techie, not a marketing man at all, yet what he said still resonates with me.
From the outset he explained that their vision was to create technology which was “humanistic”. By that he meant that however complex the technology, it was the user interface that was paramount. The technology had to work in a way which mirrored human behaviour, rather than the human having to adapt their behaviour to the technology.
I had an excellent personal experience of this when the iPhone was launched. My wife, who for years has been the ultimate technophobe, decided she wanted an iPhone. Although she had hardly ever used a PC, I arrived home to find her watching a video demonstration of the iPhone on the computer. By the time we got to the store, she knew everything you could do about how to use it and what questions to ask. Now she is obsessed with new technology and I can’t get her off Facebook!
Magic or alchemy? Thanks Steve(s).
Posted: January 28th, 2010 under Martin Leuw.
Tags: apple, ipad, iphone, steve jobs, steve wozniak, technology sector
Comments
Comment from Paul Heritage-Redpath
Time January 31, 2010 at 7:20 pm
New York Times on Steve Jobs: “In choosing key members of his team, he looks for the multiplier factor of excellence. Truly outstanding designers, engineers and managers, he says, are not just 10 percent, 20 percent or 30 percent better than merely very good ones, but 10 times better. Their contributions, he adds, are the raw material of “aha” products, which make users rethink their notions of, say, a music player or cellphone.”
Comment from Rupert Ralston
Time February 5, 2010 at 8:18 am
“The problem is, in hardware you can’t build a computer that’s twice as good as anyone else’s anymore. Too many people know how to do it. You’re lucky if you can do one that’s one and a third times better or one and a half times better. And then it’s only six months before everybody else catches up. But you can do it in software.”
That is from Steve in 1994, the same is even truer for Apple today, what has set the iPhone and will set the iPad apart is the app store and the third party developed software. The hardware is new, and has some great marketing but a tablet is not revolutionary and we will see similar tablets launched in the first half of 2010.
Software and third party developed applications now more then ever will be paramount to hardware’s success.
http://www.macworld.com/article/146038/2010/01/ipad_future_shock.html
Comment from Paul Heritage-Redpath
Time January 29, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Someone gets the paradigm shift:
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