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Apple’s Size Budget
                            

[this is unfinished]

People are often upset when Apple removes a feature, whether it be a CD drive, an ethernet port or a headphone jack.

The argument is always: “Feature X isn’t very big, they could easily have left it in.”

But to think this is to completely misunderstand how Apple develops products.


Here’s an analogy:

I have spent some effort trying to minimize my wallet so that I could carry it comfortably in a front pocket.

To do this I had to be ruthless (in a minor way) about what I was going to carry. Everything in my wallet is used regularly or would cause a major problem if I needed it and didn’t have it.

I get coffee from a very nice shop that has a repeat-customer card. If I buy 25 bags of expensive coffee, I get the 26th free.

I could easily jam the customer card in my wallet but I don’t, because I want a minimal wallet.

I don’t, because the kind of thinking that would let me keep the coffee card would prevent me from having a small wallet.


Imagine a Formula One team that spends millions of dollars shaving every gram off of their car and making it as aerodynamic as possible, then saying “could you just add a hood ornament?”

Of course they could, it would be easy.


The thing that amuses me is that the things people want to keep are the low hanging fruit.

If you wanted to make an iPhone 6S a couple of milligrams, the easiest thing to do would be to remove the headphone jack and use the space for the battery.


Another way to look at it is: Apple spends 500 million dollars to develop a new iPhone. 

This is unfinished.


Imagine someone who struggles to lose weight.

They lose 50 pounds by being completely rigorous, then you hand them a big fat slice of chocolate cake.

Of course they could eat it, but that would go directly against everything that permitted them to lose the weight

©Andrew Swift · top · more · contact