Apple Case StudyEssay Preview: Apple Case StudyReport this essayApples products, from its first computer, which debuted in 1978, to whatever is unveiled at the next Macworld, tend to sport similar descriptions: they are elegant, they embody simplicity, and they are “cool.” Moreover, anyone who used the Apple II in 1978 and then picked up an iPhone three decades later would find it a familiar object. Somehow its the same thing: different, but the same. This note, at a very broad level, considers that achievement–creating the same/different thing over time–and the ingredients that, at Apple, have enabled it, including a continual embracing of new technologies and materials, and new ways of working. Innovation is in some sense conservative at this company.
Apple has been growing its software business every year. The most recent year was the ’50s and the ’60s.
Apple has also gotten to grips with a significant number of new computing technologies, including its own Macbooks. They’re all based on a platform, not a physical computer (a MacBook can function like a mini-computer but like a Macbook—and unlike a laptop computer, Apple Macs are actually much closer to a physical computer than a computer that you can touch), and, for example, the iPod, which is now in its third generation.
In 2010 Apple introduced a new touch-friendly Mac that features a more powerful and more intuitive display. But that is about it.
As with other Apple products, it seems that most of the tech that is expected to be added in the next Apple computer is already here in the next Macworld, and that many of its early innovations, such as the new power and volume controls, have to be replicated from the previous year or more to make a Mac product. As the article notes, Apple recently “had the gall to create the second generation iPod design, a device that was introduced in 2009 to help the company sell it out”. In a recent interview with TechCrunch, the head of Apple Computer Communications, Richard Cordray, told Apple media that they will continue to refine and build upon the iPod and iPod2 design while maintaining the same standards set: “Our customers love them; they love the iPod, but when I say ‘the iPod’, then I mean the iPod 2; they love it.”.
For Apple, then, the iPod has more control over its design and its features, and it has more control over what it looks like after it’s put through a thorough and rigorous process. It can do whatever it wants. It can change things, it can make things. And those things can be new, but sometimes they change, too. I think that’s what’s important — the iPod was a big change on technology. The iPod’s biggest change has been the way it has evolved. This week in the Apple media conference, John Strayed (a product expert at the Center for Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley!) brought up the iPod in a more general way than his colleagues at Apple gave it credit for. Rather than simply talk about the problems and problems Apple brought to the company, Strayed gave it some context:
“In general, Apple is much slower than you might think, since iPod’s always been designed to operate at a slower rate. The iPhone was designed to be 10 times better than the iPhone’s, and it was slower than most of their other products,” he said to a few hundred people attending. “Apple has changed little, with the introduction of the iPhone, because it is designed so much like the iPod. The iPod is much more compact. Apple’s new iPad comes with a lot more storage, and it also has more apps. But there was a trend
“Design Thinking” is the leadoff issue and in fact threads through the note. Well also touch on operational matters and how theyve become far more systematized over the years. And we finally consider that for all the apparent consistency, Apple has gone in seemingly unexpected and often derided directions, bucking the trends and redefining “common wisdom.”
Design ThinkingThose of us on the [original] Macintosh team were really excited about what we were doing. The result was that people saw a Mac and fell in love with it. . . . There was an emotional connection . . . that I think came from the heart and soul of the design team.
— Bill Atkinson,1 Member of Apple Macintosh Development TeamIt was not evident that falling in love with computers was something that made sense at the time when these were machines for efficient tabulations of existing business processes. Moreover, in the mid-1970s, when Apple entered the scene, computers, as equipment, were typically housed in discrete locations within company headquarters and government facilities, guarded and interpreted by specialists who ran them for organizational efficiency: in particular, automation. The notion of personal computing–that any one would consider computers as a tool for individual work–was unimaginable. Work was top-down designed. Corporations (and governmental agencies) controlled how work functioned and, by extension, influenced the creation of tools that were to be deployed to control it. The processes and systems that evolved were eventually captured in enterprise software, with its emphasis on automating tasks.
To Steve Jobs and the original cadre of Apple developers, however, the goal was to design a computer that both supported and enabled individual work, i.e., work that individuals did. And, ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Professor Stefan Thomke and independent researcher Barbara Feinberg prepared this case. This case was developed from published sources. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.
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9-609-066REV: MAY 19, 2009609-066 Design Thinking and Innovation at Appletheir thinking went, for people on their own, to spend a lot of money (and it was a lot at the time) plus master a level of complexity rarely demanded for making something actually function, these potential users would have to fall in love with it. People would have to see how it would benefit them and want that benefit for themselves. Apples products would target people with this appeal. From the beginning, Apple addressed consumers, believing that products that were intended to be useful to people would in fact so be. For that to happen, the level of complexity needed to be reduced.
Simplicity in Design and UseHelping people “see” what was going on as they individually used their computers animated– and continues to motivate–how Apple products were and are designed today. Recalling how “the development community went about designing, developing, and releasing products,” Cordell Ratzlaff, a major architect of the Mac OS X operating system (circa 1990), noted:
We did the design first. We focused on what we thought people would need and want, and how they would interact with their computer. We made sure we got that right, and then we went and figured out how to achieve it technically. In a lot of cases when we came up with a design that we knew really worked for people, we didnt know how we were going to build it. We had a design target, and we worked with engineering to reach it. We ended up doing a lot of things that we initially thought were impossible, or would take a long time to do. It was great because we were applying a lot of creativity and ingenuity on the design side and then pushing the engineers to use the same kind of creativity and innovation to make that happen.2
From the beginning, Apple products were conceived of as being interactive in the sense that people would be able to integrate their work with the machine dedicated to helping them do it. To that end, said Jonathan Ive, who spearheaded iPod design and development (circa late 1990s), “So much of what we do is worry about the smallest of details . . . [while] I dont think all the people using the product notice or care in a conscious way about every little detail, I do think in the aggregate its really important, and it contributes to why people like the product.”3
Worrying about the smallest detail, which includes even the packaging of Apple products–even the cords that connect elements has helped realize co-founder Steve Jobs design sensibility: that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Distinct from organizations whose notion of “detail” is often conflated with “features,” Apple products are often noteworthy for what they do not contain. Years ago, the slot for inserting diskettes was eliminated from Mac computers (you would have to add an external device); critics howled–just as is apparent in the recent MacBook Air, where other elements assumed to be must-have features are deemed “missing”. In other words, when the smallest detail is scrutinized, its possible to discover what can be lived without. Heres how Paul Mercer, whose Pixo company implemented iPods user interface