Thoughts about "iPhone killers"

For a little background, read a little of this sitehttp://aaplinvestors.net/stats/iphone/iphonedeathwatch/

There have been Apple Haters for as long as Apple has been in business. Through all the successes and failures, the core of the company has pretty much remained. When Steve Jobs returned as iCEO in 1997 he got the company to retrain their focus back to the core principles that made them what they are. The iMac, OSX, the iPod and everything that has grown from those products are results from that focus. The results may not be immediate - most times it takes a couple revisions for the brilliance to shine through. Apple has rarely ever released a product and then just dropped it after it failed to meet their expectations. The Newton was a product of the darker days and it was an unfortunate casualty of the refocusing... however it always drifted around the halls of Cupertino. It was the ghost that refused to pass on. The G4 Cube's only sin was to be overpriced, but it still lives on in spirit in the MacMini today.

What does this have to do with iPhone killers? The whole process of Apple's R&D is more than just "what's gonna make us money?" and "let's make sure it doesn't cause blindness in laboratory rats." Some ideas go through more internal iterations than you'd believe. Many never make it farther than the scribblings on a note pad. The physical product is only one part of the grand picture. If you looked at all of the really big successes Apple has had, you'd see that there's an unspoken quality that gets overlooked by the mainstream media and can't really be showcased by some glossy PR still photos. The original 128K Macintosh in 1984, the Newton, the iMac, the iPod, and the iPhone all share something their competitors just don't seem to get - and probably never will.
When the original Macintosh hit the scene, there was something about it was was different from anything else that was on the market at that time. Other than the unique, small, all-in-one form factor and the famous 1984 "Big Brother" commercial, there was a buzz about this machine that truly revolutionized the world. The operating system was unlike anything else seen outside of research and development labs in Silicon Valley. In 1984 it was years ahead of its time. There have been many competitors to come and go all claiming to be Mac killers but the only serious threat to stick around was Microsoft's Windows operating system. Sure, they gobbled up 95% of the market but their success had absolutely nothing to do with product quality as much as it had to do with shrewd business decisions.

The Newton had a rocky birth during the Interregnum between Steve Jobs' departure and return to the company. It was revolutionary device that introduced a new term to our vocabulary: PDA. Before the newton, there was no such thing as truly portable computing. The portables of the day usually weighed in excess of 10 lbs and you needed a luggage cart to carry it anywhere. The first Newton MessagePad had "quirky" handwriting recognition built into it. Jokes were made about how it would misread what you wrote even if you had perfect penmanship. But when you compared it to other devic... oh wait... there weren't any competing devices at the time! It was awesome and flawed at the same time, but in subsequent revisions of the software and the hardware it was greatly improved. During the Newton's lifetime the only real competitor was USRobotics' Palm Pilot. The main reason it won the PDA war was because they made their product small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. Other than that, the Palm operating system required that you learn a new way to write in a way that was hardly intuitive. Once again, Apple was trumped by actions that really had nothing to do with the quality of the products.

In 1997 Steve Jobs comes back and hires Jonathan Ive as a designer. His first major product is the iMac. It brought back memories of the original 1984 Mac with its all-in-one design yet it was still nothing like anyone had ever seen before. However, Apple managed to take the lead and not just sit back on their laurels. The iMac introduced USB ports to the world and killed the floppy disk (which incidentally Apple spearheaded on the original 1984 Mac). Built-in Ethernet and modem meant that this computer was built for the internet. There have been many copy-cats to come and go and all have failed miserably because even though they might have had bigger screens or faster CPUs or bigger hard drives, they still didn't quite "get it".

The birth of the iPod in 2001 really kicked Apple into high gear. MP3 players already existed at the time but they were unremarkable and had limited capacity and sorting your music was a pain. Although the iPod had a hard drive for storing thousands of music files, that wasn't really what made it the most popular gadget since the Sony Walkman. It was the user experience. Transferring music from your CDs to your computer to the iPod had never been easier and was a very pleasant experience. Then once you got the music on your iPod, it was a piece of cake to operate the thing. The user manual was very minimal because the whole thing really was surprisingly…. "DUH EASY". The menus, the buttons, the iTunes software - it all really was self explanatory to do what most users would use it for. When I worked at the Apple Store I saw people come in with their and ask about these new-fangled gadgets. They admitted that they were barely computer literate but they were able to figure the iPod out with out my assistance. When Apple expanded iTunes to also be a place to buy your music the experience was, once again, far and above anyone else's efforts. No other portable music player has ever come close in any way to the iPod. Microsoft's Zune music player was touted as the iPod Killer. I think after 3 years, Microsoft sold 3 million Zunes... Good luck with that, Microsoft.

The iPhone has been available for 3 years and has done very well for itself. Its success can be explained by Apple building on top of the things that has given it great success in the past. Over 30 years of R&D have contributed to the iPhone that we see today. The thoughtfulness of the physical appearance is nice but not gaudy. The operating system keeps the user in mind. The interface between the iPhone and your computer (iTunes) is very polished. The multitude of competitors who all claim to be next in line for the crown may have a couple nicer and better features over the iPhone, but no successful gadget is just a collection of electronics. Successful products are greater than the sum of their parts. That's where Apple succeeds and everyone else fails miserably. OK so what if your Android phone has a higher resolution camera? So what if your Windows Mobile phone has more memory? So what if your Symbian phone has a physical QWERTY keyboard?

Sure Apple stumbles from time to time and it is inevitable that they will be usurped by an adversary - that's just normal American business. But today Apple is the target of everyone's envy. In the foreseeable future, those companies trying to tarnish Apple will all fail miserably because they just don't get it. It's the whole package that counts. In their rush to try to be the iPhone Killer, all these other companies have failed to see exactly what it is they are trying to kill. They add bells and whistles and flashy knobs and buttons to their products only to say "We have this… the iPhone doesn't! so that means we are better!" They are aiming their sights on a single gadget and not the very fabric of what makes Apple unique in the technology world. As long as the culture of THOUGHTFUL innovation exists within the walls of 1 Infinite Loop, Apple will be successful. Long live the iPhone.

[as for Apple's draconian practices on the App Store and other questionable practices… well I'll save that for another post while I gather my thoughts]