Why Only Finding Half a Worm in the Apple is Best

I've been writing about politics and current events for the past few posts, so I thought I would turn to another passion of mine: technology.

In particular, I love Apple.

What particularly grabs me about them is their drive for their ideal of perfection.  Witness the year-after-year thinning of the iPhone, for example.  For years I've read Daring Fireball, a technology blog that I think is one of the best.  (It is also stylistically terrific and therefore very much informed how I laid out the design for this blog.)  Its author loves to say that Apple rarely innovates as much as it iterates; in other words, the second and the third iPhone or the third and the fourth iPhone have few differences, but the fifth is radically better than the first.

This is ironic, because most people associate Apple with words like "breakthrough" or "innovative."  Rarely would you hear "slow and steady."  Part of Apple's rationale, though, is that good design takes time, and so they must be careful with what they include in their products.

It is a highly ironic concept: compromise is the only route to perfection.  An old article at Daring Fireball that I reread recently made this point very well.  It noted that Microsoft has attempted to shoehorn as many random features as possible into the new Windows 8, with the result being that users found it bloated and inefficient.

Contrast that with Apple: in 2009, then Apple Vice President Bertrand Serlet announced the next version of the Mac operating system would have no new features.  (Technology website Ars Technica quipped, "Read Bertrand's lips: No New Features!")  Instead, Apple said they would be focusing on refining and refreshing the operating system to make it faster and more usable.  The changes were reflected in tasks like booting up and shutting down which were up to 100% faster.  Had they chosen to add dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of new components to the operating system, it is unlikely the Apple programmers would have been able to successfully refine everything else simultaneously.

All of this therefore begs the question of what to compromise on.  The Daring Fireball article touches on this only in the broadest generalities.  I'd like to go a bit further.  Compromise must occur only after the possibility of doing everything well has been exhausted.  (In fact, in the operating system example, I suspect Apple ended up just doing a version of this by sticking their new features into the subsequent operating system release.  They perhaps needed more time, but Cupertino wasn't planning on giving up on its new technologies.)  Once it is determined that some tradeoffs must be made, they must be made in a way that achieves the goal of the project.  This seems simple and obvious, but defining what that "goal" is can be difficult.  I think Apple has made it clear that perfection of the user experience is their corporate mantra.  Other companies (for instance, one very prominent Korean electronics company with an industry-leading ability to copy others) seem to have no clear goal when they make a product other than that they might sell some phones if they copy-and-paste the iPhone and stamp a Samsung decal on the back.

As one final example, look at iPhone-era Apple.  As this New Yorker piece rightly points out, much of Apple's success has come from understanding where it can ease (read: compromise) its grip on the user experience.  For instance, third party apps (ones not developed by Apple itself) are allowed onto the iPhone via the App Store, but they are screened for quality and safety.  Google, by contrast, set up the Play Store, an oddly-named free-for-all replete with viruses, iPhone app ripoffs, and phony applications.

Compromise shouldn't be a bad word.  It is both necessary and sufficient for good design, something Apple has figured out.  We'll see if their competitors realize it too.