I love this post so much. Also it's got great advice... I think being more bacon than bread is how RescueTime keeps getting vocal fans.

The New Apple Advantage

Friday, 9 September 2011

Peter Bright wrote a good piece earlier this week at Ars Technica, documenting his attempt to buy a MacBook Air-like Windows laptop (he doesn’t want an Air running Windows using Boot Camp because he doesn’t like Apple’s U.K. keyboard) and finds the experience confusing (too many models to choose from) and expensive (comparatively-equipped machines from Dell, HP, and Lenovo cost considerably more than an equivalent MacBook Air.

E.g., here’s Bright on shopping from Dell:

It’s even worse if I just browse without searching. The options I get are just… meaningless. Yes, I want “Everyday Computing,” so I want an Inspiron. But hang on, I also want “Design & Performance,” so I want an XPS. Wait a second, I want “Thin & Powerful,” too. So maybe I want a Z Series? But the only line that apparently matches my broad search criteria — lightweight, 11-14" — I wouldn’t even consider because I don’t want a “gaming” laptop, and so I’m never going to click Alienware!

From HP:

The same odd labels cover everything — I know I don’t want “Mini/Netbook,” but I want both “Everyday Computing” (that term again) and “High performance” (because I don’t want it to be slow, do I?). And who knows what “Envy” means? When I tick my screen size and weight boxes, I get back a crop of lousy netbooks that are almost the complete opposite of what I want.

And Lenovo:

It starts off with the same stupid classifications that must make sense to some guy in marketing — “Powered for productivity” and “Optimized for entertainment” and “No-nonsense features built for versatility”.

Here’s what I wrote back in July, linking to Cory Doctorow’s review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab Some-Size-or-Another:

Cory Doctorow calls the new Samsung Galaxy Tab “meh”:

Ever since the iPad shipped, I’ve been waiting impatiently for a comparable Android device to emerge — something of like shape, size and capacity, but from a more open ecosystem than the one Apple offers.

I love these sort of reviews. I want an Apple-quality product without the Apple, and I’m sure I’ll get one soon.

And don’t forget the Apple-like prices, which is where Bright’s laptop hunt faltered. But so why the dearth of Apple-caliber products from companies other than Apple?

Bright’s analysis regarding why the top PC makers seemingly — if not outright admittedly — can’t compete with the MacBook Air strikes me as pretty good:

The problem is that the PC industry, particularly the large OEMs, just aren’t set up to produce this kind of machine. The PC industry is built around an idea of almost infinite variation: different Wi-Fi adaptors, different Ethernet chipsets, different GPUs, different USB3 controllers. This variety is then reflected in the systems available from manufacturers — and more importantly, it’s reflected in the way the systems are actually built.

Design is largely about making choices. The PC hardware market has historically focused on three factors: low prices, tech specs, and configurability. Configurability is another way of saying that you, the buyer, get a bigger say in the design of your computer. (Bright points out, for example, that Lenovo gives you the option of choosing which Wi-Fi adaptor goes into your laptop.) Apple offers far fewer configurations. Thus MacBooks are, to most minds, subjectively better-designed — but objectively, they’re more designed. Apple makes more of the choices than do PC makers.

This isn’t new. And traditionally, the benefit from Apple’s lesser degree of configurability has been the “it just works” factor — better integration of software and hardware. That with support for fewer components, like, say video cards, the Mac OS needs fewer drivers, and the drivers it does have are less likely to result in unusual conflicts.

But now that Apple’s products are more popular, we’re beginning to see another benefit to Apple’s lesser degree of configurability: greater scalability. Apple needs larger quantities of fewer different components to manufacture the same number of computers as other companies. It’s not just the economies of scale that all companies get when they sell 3 or 4 million laptops in a quarter — it’s greater, because Apple’s 3 or 4 million laptops sold share a larger number of the exact same components.

This advantage is more pronounced with iOS devices. In four years, Apple has gone from not being in the phone business to reaping a majority of the handset industry’s worldwide profits. Yet they make only two phones — the iPhone 4 and 3GS.

Likewise with the iPad. Your only choices:

• White or black
• GSM, CDMA, Wi-Fi-only
• 16/32/64 GB of storage

The iPad is the best-selling portable computer in the world and those are the only configurable options. One CPU, one display, one amount of RAM.

The new MacBook Airs are iPad-like. I’ve called my 11-inch Air an “iPad Pro”, and the more I use it, the more that feels true.¹ Apple is selling more MacBooks than ever before, but their range of models is shrinking, not expanding. As SSD prices fall, I expect Apple to drop the “Air” and “Pro” distinctions and simply offer four Air-like MacBooks: 11, 13, 15, and 17 inches.

So let’s be lazy for a second here, and attribute all of Apple’s success over the past 15 years to two men: Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. We’ll give Jobs the credit for the adjectives beautiful, elegant, innovative, and fun. We’ll give Cook the credit for the adjectives affordable, reliable, available, and profitable. Jobs designs them, Cook makes them and sells them.

It’s the Jobs side of the equation that Apple’s rivals — phone, tablet, laptop, whatever — are able to copy. Thus the patents and the lawsuits. Design is copyable. But the Cook side of things — Apple’s economy of scale advantage — cannot be copied by any company with a complex product lineup. How could Dell, for example, possibly copy Apple’s operations when they currently classify “Design & Performance” and “Thin & Powerful” as separate laptop categories?

This realization sort of snuck up on me. I’ve always been interested in Apple’s products because of their superior design; the business side of the company was never of as much interest. But at this point, it seems clear to me that however superior Apple’s design is, it’s their business and operations strength — the Cook side of the equation — that is furthest ahead of their competition, and the more sustainable advantage. It cannot be copied without going through the same sort of decade-long process that Apple went through.

1. Which is not to say we won’t get a real iPad “pro” next year when the iPad expands into a family of two or even three devices, good/better- or good/better/best-style. ↩

Previous:

Compromise

Great article. I heart my 13" MacBook Air. It's by far the best computer I've ever own. It's such a joy to use that I love doing work on it.

Apple's combination of minimalist beauty and production optimization is a great guide for any business. Make opinionated product choices, do fewer things and do them better than the other guys, and then scale them up to reduce costs and enhance profit.

Over the past year Groupon has effectively pursued a hyper-revenue growth, profits be damned, spend $10 to make $5 business strategy. They have an army of employees cold calling every business in the country trying to drum up business. From what I've heard their merchant experience isn't exactly spectacular given that they take 50% of the profits, and almost all of the customers produced by a deal don't come back. And that's just a tip of the iceberg.

Ha! This is cool to see since I've basically been guessing as much for a long time now.

“There are some people who just get what they want in the world. If you want to start a startup you have to be one of those people. You can’t be passive and wishy-washy,” Graham says.

Rose followed up with a key question: how can you tell which people have that kind of determination in ten minutes (which is how long YC interviews are)?

Graham says that it’s hard to tell. “We can be fooled about determination — you can usually tell how smart people are in ten minutes. But people can put on an act for determination for ten minutes.” The YC partners also look for mental flexibility — they’ll ask a company to rotate their idea 90 degrees to see how they respond. “Some people will say yeah, that would work. Others will say, ‘Oh no, actually we wanted to do the other thing.’”

Another key factor: Naughtiness. “Startups often have to do slightly devious things,” Graham says. “You can tell if people have a gleam in their eye. You don’t want people who would be obedient employees… we’re not looking for people who did what they were told in life.”

I love this article.

As a fan of a lot of the messages in the movie about making something big, this is fun to see. And it's very true. Although for me, there is admittedly a tiny seed of motivation that comes from proving someone wrong. It's definitely never the primary motivator or even that significant, but it helps push me over the line in a lot of situations.

There's also some great discussion going on here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840043

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Productivity

RescueTime, the deliciously detailed and informative Internet productivity meter, now for Chrome

by Sebastian Anthony (RSS feed) Apr 20th 2010 at 1:30PM

I only just covered this bad boy in last week's Firefox Friday -- and now there's a Chrome version! RescueTime advertises itself as a 'Productivity Meter' but really it's just a cool way of seeing how you spend your time on the Internet.

All you have to do is install the extension and it'll do the rest. At any time you can click the menu button to see a quick breakdown of how distracted you are as well as how productive you are compared to other RescueTime users. If you visit sites like Facebook or Flickr, your distractedness rises; stick to work-related stuff and you're 'safe'. Talking of 'safe', no login is required to use this extension -- you are anonymous (for all intents and purposes)!

The proof is in the pudding, though: after a few hours or days, check out 'Detailed Stats'. Prepare to be shocked, awed, amazed and disgusted by the damning but beautiful graphs. The amount of data that the RescueTime team and its users have collated, and thus the accuracy of the reports, is quite stunning.

(Incidentally, if you're a manager of some kind, there's a 'pro' version which you could no doubt use to improve the efficiency of your team...)

Rescue Time: Chrome Extension / Firefox add-on

Tags: add-on, chrome, extension, firefox, graphs, management, productivity, productivity meter, ProductivityMeter, rescuetime, time

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I love these write-ups! :)

Filed under: Internet, Mozilla, Browsers

Firefox Friday Five: news, add-ons and updates

by Sebastian Anthony (RSS feed) Apr 16th 2010 at 2:00PM

Yet another week has strolled by. If you're in Mozilla's age-old stronghold of Europe, you're probably enjoying some delicious bright sunshine right now -- and if you're lucky there'll be some great sunsets caused by the erupting volcanoes in Iceland! Americans, I guess you might've had your flights to Europe cancelled -- but other than that, I trust your Spring is coming along nicely?

Mozilla has been active this week! The fruition of its unabated development has come to fruition with a few important releases this week -- but I've also got some neat add-ons to show you too. Here we go:

1. Firefox 3.7 alpha 4 (Gecko 1.9.3a4) released; faster, improved shutdown time

Other than a slew of rendering fixes/changes, Windows users won't see much of a change in the new alpha. Firefox on Mac OS X now supports an out-of-process Adobe Flash, however! There's also mention of a 'Core Animation rendering model' for Mac OS X plugins, apparently speeding things up.

In non-Gecko-related updates, a simple change to the way bookmarks and history are handled has resulted in a 97% increase in shutdown time! A faster browser remains the primary focus of Mozilla and the Firefox team, and it sure looks like 3.7, when it reaches release later this year, will be seriously fast.

2. Jetpack SDK 0.2 released: developers rejoice -- enthusiasts, why don't you write your first add-on?

You may have noticed that Lee and I are getting steadily more interested in add-ons and extensions. Every week Download Squad brings you the latest and greatest Chrome and Firefox mods -- but... how about writing one yourself? Believe it or not, writing an add-on is really easy -- I wrote my first one earlier this week! So how about it? Jetpack is the wave of the future, and while it might not polished enough for the eager end-user, you can definitely wade in and give it a go.

You need to install Python and the Jetpack SDK, but once that's done it's clean sailing! Just follow the guide -- and if you want to go further, check out the Jetpack SDK documentation.

3. 100 add-ons for home-schooling your children more effectively

This compilation, pointed out by the Firefox Extension Guru, is a real goldmine of excellent add-ons. Whether you're looking for a graphing calculator toolbar to help with math and science, or easy-access translation add-ons, this collection has just about everything you could ever want for teaching kids at home.

There's also a great section for Parental Controls and Computer Security with a lot of add-ons that we've previously covered on Download Squad!

4. Mozilla opens its doors for Labs Night; also reaches out for more collaboration with students, schools and universities

Open source, and by extension Mozilla and Firefox, has always been about collaboration. By sharing ideas and working together to create a better tool, the world as a whole gains. Mozilla, never one to shy away from engaging the community, has two great schemes in operation: first, Labs Nights, which is a bit like Google's Campfire One meets... only... foxier. If you're in the Mountain View region, why not go along and listen to some in-depth presentations of up-and-coming Mozilla projects?

On the next point -- student collaboration -- Firefox has always been an active exponent of 'laboratory' work in universities around the world. You've surely heard of Mozilla Labs' Design Challenges -- well, a lot of those are undertaken by universities all around the world. They want to step it up though, get more schools and colleges involved, increase the scope -- so, if you're a teacher, or a student, get in touch with Mozilla.

5. Finally, a way to measure just how productive you are on the Web: RescueTime, a Firefox Productivity Meter

Yes... we all do it. You write a sentence... and then you switch tabs. Sometimes it's just a few words before you reach for the mouse (or Wiimote). We know we shouldn't do it, but it's simply a sad fact of life: the Internet is without doubt the greatest procrastination device ever invented. If only there was something we could do about it...!!!

Of course there's something we can do about it! This is the Internet! The cause AND solution of all our problems! Now, I'm not going to highlight some kind of draconian add-on that stops you wasting time, but there IS a really neat, statistic-heavy add-on called RescueTime that might convince you -- via shock and awe -- to do more work.

Basically, via some kind of heuristic analysis of the browsing habits of a 'worldwide user base', RescueTime assigns a 'productivity score' to tens of millions of websites. When you Ctrl-Tab and spend time on a 'bad' site such as Facebook, the add-on records this as 'distracted browsing'. You can even see in real time if you're more or less distracted than other users of the add-on.

The best thing though -- other than its awesome, anonymous, no-login-required nature -- is the detailed, graphed analysis of your time-wasting. You've been warned: it's pretty scary.

Tags: add-ons, alpha, faster, firefox friday five, FirefoxFridayFive, gecko, productivity meter, ProductivityMeter, rescuetime, speed, time management, TimeManagement

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Here's what I've been working on for the past few weeks. If you're not a RescueTime user and you just want to see how much time you waste in Firefox, try it out! No account needed, so it's private. A Chrome version is coming next. (Note: If you already use RescueTime this won't do anything so as to avoid conflicts).