Five Obvious Mistakes and How Apple Made them Work

Apple, as every Apple fanboy can attest, does no wrong. The iPod sock? That is pure frickin gold; the laughable looks and questionable utility are there for reasons mister, and if you don’t like them that’s because your taste isn’t sufficiently refined. That stupid iPod boom box thing? Sheer genius: the sound rivals speakers that a serious audiophile* would gladly pay ten times the three hundred dollar cost for. It isn’t that Apple made an overly bulky, semi-useless, mostly unwanted product; it is that the average guy just doesn’t get it. As far as music systems go that you can’t fit in your jailhouse billfold, the iPiece of crap is the best option for music KNOWN TO MAN!

Which is great, as the fanboys are entitled to their opinions, overly convoluted logic, and mindless devotion to all things i. The rest of the world, the 99.9% that doesn’t spend every waking moment apologizing for Apple, doesn’t care at all. If Apple produces a worthwhile product the interest is there, and if not they’ll move on to a court date for Paris Hilton (due to stellar ratings the tentative dates are 10/02/07, 12/1/07, and 4/3/08 by the way). So the hype isn’t enough to propel Apple to success, and there has to be some substance to the offerings from Cupertino’s biggest taxpayer.

So how does Apple stay successful? Apparently the key is taking bad ideas and making them work. Thanks for reading! Wait, for this to work we’ll need some examples. What is more example friendly than a list? Wrong, James R. Stoup, Sam’s Club is more “sample” friendly, and I said “example” friendly.

5. Apple Stores

Why it was obviously a bad idea:

When the first Apple store opened, the question wasn’t if the internet was going to replace brick and mortar stores, it was a question of if that would happen Tuesday or possibly Wednesday. There was plenty of evidence. Computer maker Gateway was suffering from the affliction of physical stores like a merchant marine suffers from lack of penicillin after a port call in Thailand. Amazon was already huge and, aside from milk, there didn’t seem to be anything that wasn’t cheaper online. The undoubted shift from bricks to clicks was only the most obvious reason not to open up retail stores, and there are plenty of more boring and mundane reasons to stay away from the local mall. With retail, Apple incurs not only extra cost with every product sold (buying over the internet is much more efficient as far as Apple is concerned), it also stood to piss off Apple’s network of retailers and CompUSA. To top it all off, the logistics of holding stock that people can buy is a terrible burden. Ask, heh, a Gateway store. Any reasonable executive would have looked at the idea and said: F—!

How they managed to pull it off:

For all the easy logistics of being an online-only deal, there are drawbacks. Apple products weren’t displayed in the best possible way at most resellers unless you think that great presentations are defined by thick layers of dust and non-working units. The sales people employed by, say, CompUSA, weren’t indoctrinated into the Apple way of things. And even when actual Apple employees were working at CompUSA they were surrounded by, well, CompUSA.

The success of the brick and mortar has as much to do with the feeling the retail spaces convey as the products they sell. That feeling is crucial and Apple was able to set the scene because they went to great lengths to get the feel of the stores just right. The company hired a Target VP, designed the store in secret, and offered on-site tech support. Toss the fact that there isn’t a $399 bare bones PC to be found in an Apple store (so Apple prices don’t seem so high) and you’ve got a recipe for success.

4. Switch to Intel

Why the move was ridiculously stupid:

From time immemorial, well, since the early nineties at least, the triumvirate of evil for every Mac fan was Microsoft, Dell, and Intel. These three represented every reason why the Mac wasn’t dominant. Microsoft sold an inferior operating system but coupled said systems with cheap computers. Dell powered the computers with Intel chips that ran at much higher speeds than the PowerPC chips powering the Mac. If you weren’t a Mac fan you could be forgiven for thinking a Windows PC was cheaper (Dell), faster (Intel), and better (Windows).

Of course, no Mac fan really believed that. Dells weren’t cheaper when specced similarly. Windows was operating system hell (just how did those millions muddle through?) and Intel chips were overheating power hungry whores that couldn’t match innovations like Altivec. Apple was happy to reinforce at least one of the beliefs and produced a series of ads in an attempt to expose the megahertz myth, ads aimed specifically at Intel.

So, when the question comes up: How about switching to Intel? Most people would laugh at the notion. Not only was there every chance that Apple would seriously disenfranchise the steady base, they had been fed the notion that Intel sucked for decades after all. There was also the risk of looking ridiculously hypocritical, the possibility that users might think that Apple had been delivering subpar performance for years. It’s not as bad as donating a kidney to a complete stranger, but it was still right up there with attempting to clean your ear canal with a Philips screwdriver.

Why it worked:

If you’re doing something like this, the first thing you do is blame someone else. People instinctively understand that some things are beyond your control. When Steve Jobs promised chips running at 3 GHz and then couldn’t deliver the faithful forgave him as they knew the fault was IBM’s.

Since IBM dropped the ball justifying the move was pretty easy for Steve. Stop talking performance, start talking energy savings. For the larger market the move was shrewd to say the least. People stopped seeing the Mac as running off a weird incompatible chip but on standard chips everyone wanted and used.

3. The original iMac

Why the iMac was stupidity on display:

As far as bad decisions go, this one was right up there with running a dog fighting ring when you’re cashing paychecks from sponsors. The first rule of dog fighting? YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT DOG FIGHTING!

In the age of modular computers, Apple introduced an all-in-one. That’s right, when every maker was shipping a system in multiple boxes when easily upgradeable computers were accepted by the masses, Apple said, “Hey, we’ve got a great idea. Now that everyone is familiar with video cables and audio cards let’s insult their intelligence with an all-in-one computer!” The entire industry, save Apple, thought that the days of an easy to use, all-in-one machine were as gone as the career of Debbie Gibson. 

The belief was well founded in something called logic. Everyone who wanted a computer had a computer. Introducing an all-in-one would be asking users to jettison their entire system and asking them to do it for no particularly good reason; after all, the iMac was no more capable than a regular Mac.

Making success happen:

How did Apple get it right and the rest of the industry get it wrong? In 1998 there was a little thing that was gaining traction known as the internet. Suddenly not everyone who wanted a computer had a computer. Those who just wanted the internet flocked to the iMac, not so much for translucent plastics and USB ports, but because the iMac promised an easy road onto the internet.

The iMac didn’t do anything new but it did what people wanted: get on the net with a minimum of fuss. The fact that every other Mac sold at the time got on the internet with the same amount of fuss is irrelevant. The iMac played off the desire of people to get on the internet easily. Make a computer visually different, pretend it is made for a single function, and congrats, you’re Steve Jobs.

2. The iPod

The iPod a bad idea? Right up there with storing gas-soaked rags and newspapers next to the water heater.

If you were going to build a monument to stupid decisions, it would have an iPod as the focal point. Can you imagine a decision worse than entering an already marginal market with an obscenely expensive option?  On the one hand, you’ve got the fact that a few devices sell to a few geeks every year; on the other hand, you have the fact that if you examine the listening habits of people, you’ll find that 99% of the population needs less than an hour of music at any one time.

Selling the iPod:

Thanks to Apple’s name, people knew that it was an mp3 player done right. Turns out the market wasn’t so marginal, as sales of previous mp3 players would lead a dispassionate observer to believe.  Screw the fact that the iPod relied on FireWire, screw the fact that it was Mac only, people knew it would be easy, thanks to Apple’s reputation. The iPod was easy and it stayed easy when Apple started making Windows compatible iPods.

1. The iPhone

Worst Apple Decision Ever:

If you purposely slam your car into a tree, you damage the tree and the car. If you purposely slam your car into a transformer, you damage the car, the transformer, and leave a bunch of people without electricity. A classic example of where the bad decision has a wider impact than harming only you. The iPhone had every chance of seriously undermining the Apple name and hurting all of Apple’s business rather than just being a plain flop.

And the iPhone seemed destined to be a flop. Apple was going to sell a phone in a tricky market against large and seasoned competitors. Oh, and the phone was going to be unsubsidized and carry a hefty contract.

If anyone ever comes to you with an idea to sell an already established product at a premium that doesn’t do anything that other products don’t do the prudent, in fact the only, rational response, is to punch them right in the mouth for wasting your time.

One can only imagine how the conversation went with AT&T:

SJ: I want to sell an unsubsidized cell phone.
ATT Exec: Wow me Steve, what does it do that our phones don’t do right now?
SJ: It doesn’t suck.
ATT: That’s it?
SJ: Pretty much.

Not exactly a stellar plan for success.

How they got it right:

Sure, the iPhone doesn’t do anything that other phones can’t. The slick gadget is honestly rivaled by a Motorola RAZR if you only look at capabilities. But where everything is hard to do on most phones, everything is easy to do on the iPhone. The contract is easy to understand, mail is easy to send, the internet is easy to browse, and it is very easy to take crappy pictures with the iPhone. It is the ease of use people are paying for, the knowledge that if it comes from Apple users won’t have to scroll through cryptic menus and punch unmarked buttons to get things done.

In the end there is one realization about all these products that stands out. Apple doesn’t sell products so much as they sell a promise. The promise is that Apple will sell you a product that lets you do the most popular things and insulates you from the annoyances. It is a carefully crafted message and one Steve Jobs is fully exploiting.

*Were it left to me, and it unfortunately isn’t, serious audiophiles would be exiled to Greenland. Were they to start arguing about which rocks gave the truest bass when banged together they would be garroted.