The iPad’s overwhelming success in the wake of Microsoft’s own failed tablet push proves there’s an ingredient more important than megahertz or memory: magic.
I was at the EMC World cloud computing conference last week, and once again I observed a number of people who otherwise would have been using notebooks, using iPads instead. The number is small, but telling, because initially when Microsoft announced the tablet computer, I observed similar behavior, but missing the critical part. It wasn’t what people were using, but how they were using it that was important. The difference may highlight why a company like Apple can launch a product that drastically departs from what people are currently using, and why a company like Microsoft has to follow the paths that companies like Apple forge.
Just because your product creates a market, that creation doesn’t mean you’ll own what results. The Apple II created the PC market, but initially Commodore benefitted the most, and eventually Microsoft. On the other hand, Apple defined the MP3 market with the iPod and remained the biggest beneficiary, had arguably the same success with the iPhone, and is on track to repeat with the iPad, so betting they won’t succeed with this last platform may be a fool’s bet.
Why can’t Microsoft drive change, while Apple can do it consistently? I think it comes down to one core skill that Apple has that is unique, not just to technology, but to business in general: understanding how to win over the hearts of consumers.
Is Manipulation a Bad Thing?
When we call someone “manipulative,” it is generally considered an insult. The most famous manipulator was likely PT Barnum, and it didn’t help that his most memorable saying was “there’s sucker born every minute.” He was incredibly successful and thought of himself as a showman. Like Steve Jobs, he had some tough times, but emerged from them stronger than when he went in, and actually went on to be a politician for a time. I maintain that Steve Jobs is our generation’s PT Barnum, and given that Barnum died in 1891, folks with his unique talent who rise to power in business are a very rare breed.
It is interesting to note that unlike Jobs, Barnum did apply his skills to philanthropy, and was the initiator of a philosophy that Google “invented,” called profitable philanthropy. I believe Jobs could embrace this concept as well, but I’ve drifted off topic.
Manipulation, like any other tool, isn’t in itself good or bad. But it is incredibly powerful, and if used for good, the results are more powerful and farther reaching. If used for evil, it results in pyramid schemes and confidence scams, and can do just as much damage. Folks that excel at this skill tend to think rules no longer apply to them, and their falls from grace are both certain and catastrophic. Both Jobs and Barnum had a number of close calls, but are generally regarded in a positive light.
Microsoft vs. Apple’s Great Magician
Steve Jobs seems to inherently understand that products requiring people to do things differently have to have some magic to them, and that this magic is largely an artificial construct created by the initial presentation and marketing of the product.
If you look at the iPad, it really isn’t that special in terms of hardware. To an engineer, it’s a hobbled netbook without a keyboard, a crippled interface (compared to a Mac), and an inability to multitask or run Flash. I’m sure plenty of engineers at Apple competitors think the iPad is crap.
But the iPad is incredibly simple, physically beautiful, and promotes behavior that folks currently aren’t demonstrating on their PCs or phones often. In other words, regardless of its shortcomings, it is designed to be in a story, and the result is magic.
Magic is about illusion, but it is nonetheless wonderful, and we actually love magical things. I mean, wouldn’t it be great if fairies actually did create the iPad?
Microsoft doesn’t get the need for “magic” in getting people to do things differently – and I would say this is true of 99.9 percent of companies in the world. The most popular Windows tablets came in clamshell designs that people effectively used as heavier, smaller, more expensive laptops. That’s not magical, that’s stupid. There was no magic, and the people I saw using Windows tablets years ago were using them just as if they were laptops, and they generally weren’t smiling like the iPad users are.
If you look at Microsoft projects like Origami, Mira, and the new Kin phones, you see a distinct lack of magic, yet each were attempts to change how people were currently doing things. It wasn’t that these offerings didn’t have potential, but that the folks creating them didn’t understand how to create magic, so none of them prioritized the magical parts, or presented the products in a way that captured our imaginations.
Microsoft’s most successful and magical product launch was Windows 95. It was magical, and the company has never repeated it. It is almost as if Microsoft execs said, “Oh crap, this was ‘too good,’ let’s not do that again.” Meanwhile, Apple relearned magic formula again with the return of Steve Jobs, and effectively used it to help make the iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air, and Steve Jobs became CEO of the last decade.
People in Microsoft with magical inclinations, like Kathleen Hall, aren’t in a position to do more than add glamour to an existing offering. Her team was at the core of why Windows 7 has been vastly more successful than earlier Windows offerings. But imagine what could happen if Windows 8 or any other Microsoft product was designed to be special like Apple’s offerings.
The Power of Manipulation and Magic
Most people live miles from where they are born, have beliefs that aren’t that much different than their parents, drive the same make of cars year after year, and still use computers mostly like typewriters on steroids. We mostly eat at the same places and rarely try new things. To get us to move to something different requires a cattle-prod-like skill, and whether you call the wielder of such a skill a manipulator or a magician, it is critical to making products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad successful.
I think it is a skill that more companies should develop, a skill that likely will be lost once Steve Jobs leaves Apple (it was a long time from PT Barnum) and a skill that provides too much enjoyment to lose. It is also the skill that explains why Apple can be successful with the iPad, but Microsoft wasn’t successful with its tablets. There should be a little PT Barnum or Steve Jobs in every CEO. Wrapped with a strong ethical core, the end result would be more magical products like the iPad, more successful companies like Apple, and more truly special products we could enjoy.
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RSSI am an old graphic designer that worked in the era of darkroom, ink and vellum and paste-up to produce collateral for many high tech companies in the valley. I saw the light early in the late 80's when the MacPlus came out and embraced it completely. When I bought my own and brought it to work to help me be more productive the Engineers laughed at it sitting on my desk like an ugly lunch box. They were to blind (except for one) to see it's potential. He was one of the founding fathers of the company I was at and loved to run so much he wore his running shoes and shorts to work every day.
He walked by my desk one day (He was a hardware engineer) and just starred at the little Mac. He told me he lifted the hood on Postscript and found it unbelievably elegant... He could see the value what others mocked because Apple never follows the rules... IT REMAKES THEM and continues to remake them today.
And everytime some new magic appears from Apple and todays younger Naysayers poo-poo the changes I think of him.
Baloney. The huge success of iPods and iPhones and iMacs, and now iPads is only mysterious from a rigid, myopic view of tech that's the electronic equivalent of judging the worthiness of every car by its horsepower to weight ratio. Apple makes better hardware, period. Sure, it's pretty. That's called "design." Sure, it's marketed brilliantly. And it's (ewww) "consumer friendly." But show me another desktop with a 27" led LCD screen housed in it's own aluminum moncoque chassis and a standard wireless, solid aluminum keyboard barely thicker than a quarter. As for the iPad, it's no illusion either. It's a color Kindle with a Nook thrown in, that will surf the net, fetch your e-mail, and play music, games, podcasts and movies for 10 hours straight. Oh, yeah -- it's also solidly built and gorgeous, and feels good in the hand. Which means you'll enjoy using it, which means you'll get more out of it. In short, Apple's stuff *seems* cool . . . because it *is* cool. It ain't magic, folks. It's making a better, smarter product. If Microsoft and the rest want to catch up, they should try it.
http://bit.ly/dt5SWz
What makes Apple special, is that they're willing to ignore those voices and focus on user experience. Why other tablet computers have failed/will fail is their companies' inability to ignore those voices. Within a few months we'll see a bunch of tablets with USB ports, cameras, flash, etc etc etc, and they will be also-rans, because they're focused on specs and not user experience. The exact same thing happened/is happening in the phone market. The exact same thing happened with the iPod.
Focus on user experience: is that really "magic"? If so that's a sad statement about the computing industry.
Marketing!
Apple is using the marketing value they've had since 1984 for being "the rebel" for all it's worth now. And a lot of people don't realize Apple isn't an underdog anymore. Then there's even more people who think "We'll everyone else had a go at it, now it's Apple's turn, and decide to look the other way when Apple does something evil, under the pretence that someone else has done something evil before them.
Now apple releases products with a high WAF (wife acceptance factor), they look good, and they can do a few things well, and they just don't implement stuff that isn't 110% ready yet. They talk shit about their competitors in a snarky witty way, making them seem slightly more intelligent. They've got Jobs, who is one of the worlds best presenters to be their face outwards.
Now if only they opened up so consumers could install what they wanted, let developers use what tools they like, and let owners of the gadgets choose if they want to install something that's only 80-90% ready, they'd actually have a good thing going.
However, it seems that the iGreed movement has taken a liken to the smell of marked dominance, and so they remove the choise from the user, while explaining slyly that "It's better for you if we decide what you can and can't have, we're profiting, and you just don't know what you are missing." And with this blockage of so many things we take for granted on devices today their devices will always be unimaginative and inferior compared to the competition. There are so many fancy tablets out there, granted the iPad looks the best, but it performs the poorest.
Why does it sell so well.. Marketing.
LOu
www.web-anonymity.cz.tc
"Why Microsoft is succeeding in Database Servers, Development Platforms, Web Servers, and Productivity Applications where Apple fails: Magic"
I think the iPad is just particularly timely in that it represents the convergence of advances over the last couple of years in hardware, software and the internet to enable an appliance that can satisfy the majority of functional requirements that most people need for personal use.
This is just the beginning...
What engineers are those? If it's such crap hardware, where are the copies? No one has a tablet of the same form factor with the same battery life. The few we have seen are all larger, heavier, thicker, have pathetic batter lives, and terrible screens. It's not the engineers saying those things.
Disclosure: I am an electrical engineer.
minds come first. They say "this could be cool, this could be beautiful". Then the engineers are tasked with making it work. At MS the engineers start the project and the cool and beautiful are after thought. Also i know from having two brother-in-law computer engineers that they are SO smart, so into getting things to work, that they have a really hard time seeing the easy, straight line between two points. Making things much more difficult than need be.