Stasys over at UnwiredView tweeted a link to this MacWorld post by John Gruber, the chap behind Daring Fireball.
It’s a really useful look at how Apple operates that a lot of companies in the industry would do well to examine closely. Apple, as John points out, rarely ever bring out a new product at all. Instead, they iterate.
Iterate, iterate, iterate!
Can you imagine a nice, smart, considered iteration of the original Nokia N95? The 8GB version was a good iteration… and then, of course, the line stopped. Despite the N95 being one of Nokia’s highest selling top-priced smartphones.
Ah dear.
Anyway, have a read of John’s post and see what you think.
Nice find, Stasys!
The N85/86 could be seen as the second full iteration of the N95.
Imagine how many they'd have sold if they'd called it the “N95 Nano” 😉
As an aside, Nokia really seem to have dropped the ball when it comes to software engineering. Releasing buggy devices (such as the original N95), which are only truly useable after a firmware update just isn't sustainable.
Apple generally seem to deliver products with more limited functionality, but what functionality there is actually *works*. Hence they're regarded (and rightly so) as quality products.
In some ways I think the ability to deliver firmware updates to phones in the field is as much of a curse as a blessing. It allows product to be sold that really aren't ready to be released, on the basis that they can be fixed later.
Oh, and don't get me started on to the subject of operator specific firmware for Nokia phones. Surely they're capable of delivering a method of allowing operator customisation that allows the underlying firware to be updated in a more generic fashion. Or they could just go down the Apple route and deliver all their phones with a standard firmware.
Not too far away from how Japanese electronic manufacturing became successful. Slowly build from a base model, add a new feature and modify your production quality. You see it now more in the South Korean electronics now where (yes they copy a lot from the west) they continuously release new and better models but sadly suffer from not investing where it matters in the software. That takes a lot of work and effort which cannot be masked by the hardware no matter how wonderful it seems.
BTW, do a search on Apple failures and you can see a lot of the ideas in todays output.