[Isu570-f08-rpf] The struggle to compete creating new designs - interesting article - Apple and "the others"

[Bob Futrelle]

From
http://www.thomas-fitzgerald.net/2008/10/05/the-rush-to-add-touch-screens-to-cellphones-demonstrates-that-innovation-in-the-industry-is-further-than-ever-behind-apple/

Oct 5, 2008

The Rush to Add Touch Screens to Cellphones Demonstrates That
Innovation in the Industry is Further Than Ever Behind Apple.

When Apple launched the iPhone nearly two years ago at Macworld Expo
in San Francisco, Industry insiders and competitors were quick to
decry the signature feature of Apple's new phone, the use of a
touchscreen. Until then most touch screen devices had been
unresponsive and clumsy. With the iPhone Apple showed that this did
not have to be the case. Fast forward to today, the iPhone has been a
huge success and every major cellphone manufacturer is rushing to add
touch screens to their cellphones. An element of fear has gripped the
massive cellphone industry, that the company they had all ridiculed 18
moths earlier was quickly becoming a behemoth, and they need to
counter the Apple juggernaut by taking on the iPhone head on.
Unfortunately the rushed responses show that the Industry clearly
doesn't even understand why the iPhone has been such a success.

Case in point, the new Nokia Touch Screen 5800 XpressMusic Phone. What
Nokia have basically done is shoehorn a touchscreen onto their
existing symbian mobile platform in the hopes of gaining some momentum
against Apple. Clearly in Nokia's, as well as most other manufacturers
eyes, what has made the iPhone successful is that it has a touch
screen, so If they add a touch screen to their own phones and cram in
a bunch of other features, then they'll be even more successful,
right? But matching features hasn't exactly worked for all the iPod
competitors out there, and now here's a whole new branch of the
electronics industry lining up to make the same fundamental mistake.
They are spending billions of dollars / euros / yen to make devices
that may appear to compete very well with Apple on paper, but when it
comes to the real world they fail miserably. What makes the iPhone so
appealing to people is not it's feature list, or even it's design.
It's the whole package, the synthesis of form and function and that's
something that, in the twenty first century very few companies outside
Apple seem to comprehend.

I think for a large portion of the electronics industry, product
development is broken into three areas. Hardware Design, Engineering
and Software, and priority is usually in that order. For the vast
majority of companies these are separate discreet disciplines. For
most the term "Design" refers to the physical look of the device. For
Apple, however, the term "Design" is all encompassing. It is, as Steve
is fond of saying, in their DNA. It permeates all disciplines of
bringing a product to market, from hardware design to the engineering
of the electronics to the software that runs on it. For Apple Design
is not just the look, but the feel, the emotion of a product, the way
it works and its ease of use. Every aspect is carefully thought out,
not just in isolation but how it will interact with other aspects of
the product. The hardware design compliments the software and visa
versa, and all are given equal priority. In the end it is (most of the
time) the perfect blend of form and function (occasional bugs aside).
And unfortunately (for the industry), no one else seems to get that
concept.

In fact most other companies deride Apple for focussing too much on
the design of their products. They are stuck in the twentieth century
view that products are sold based on their spec sheet. That's simply
not the case any more. The success of the iPod has shown the world
that an electronics device doesn't have to be a collection of
disparate functions and features. I think many competitors fail to
realize this because they think Apple's success is down to dumb luck,
because Apple doesn't play by the accepted rules of the industry, and
therefore couldn't possibly be successful.

Out in the real world however, people now realize that form and
function go hand in hand, that form can be function and function can
be defined by form. For Apple this has led to unprecedented success
that continues to confound experts and competitors alike. For everyone
else it's become a constant struggle to stay relevant with their old
world views of how the electronics industry should work.