The difference between Apple and everyone else
This snippet from a Fortune interview with Walter Isaacson seems to put a fine point on what makes Apple different than every other company today.
I do think at Apple you have engrained in the DNA not just being tough on suppliers, but driving engineering to make a product as insanely great as it can be. I love Amazon (AMZN), for example. The shirt I’m wearing—I order my clothing from Amazon. But they didn’t go insanely great when they made the Kindle Fire. They didn’t sit there the way Johnny Ive and Tim Cook and Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall would do, over and over again saying, “No, we have to start over, the curve is not perfect. This button isn’t exactly right.” We live in a country in which people sometimes cut corners, believe it or not. Even people on Fortune Magazine’s cover cut corners occasionally.
I don’t know about this. iPad 1 kinda sucked originally. I think I remember you said that on here. First iPhone sucked also.
Interesting. I look at the first iPad as a perfect example of this. And I’m trying not to say that as a big Apple homer, because as you pointed out the first iPad didn’t work for me, at least the way I was trying to use it (business-use mostly).
But you had companies try to roll out tablets before and Apple does it and suddenly there’s a HUGE market for it. I’d argue they did an incredibly fine job of nailing that product right out of the gate.
Also the first iPhone, while missing some key features (like cut/paste – jeesh), still was at the time far and away the best smartphone going. So oddly I look at those as big examples to support my point.
Now had you said the first AppleTV sucked, would have totally agreed. And Apple even admitted that it was a “hobby” for them, which is interesting unto itself to admit.