
If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good. - paul
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-your-product-is-great-it-doesnt-need.html
======
mattmaroon
I'm not so sure that's what the focus of the iPad naysayers is. It's more "why
do I want this?". Nobody questioned why everyone would want a tiny, pocketable
device that held every song they would ever want. They questioned whether
Apple's mp3 player would be the one people wanted (and, by the way, the first
iPod was not, it took a few generations). Nobody questioned whether people
would want a smartphone at all, they'd been popular for years, just where in
the market the iPhone would end up.

The iPad's a different animal because it's trying to sell people something
they don't even know they want. It's more akin to the Apple TV than the iPod.
Maybe they want something like this or maybe they don't, but it isn't the
feature set that's worrisome, it's the fact that we all have a smartphone and
a laptop, and do we really need something in between?

Only time will tell.

~~~
gnurant
That is simply not true. Not everyone has a laptop and a smartphone. The ipad
is far more compelling than a smartphone for me, maybe not for you. I can
think of a dozen innowative usas for it. If it lives up to the promise of 10
hrs battery that's amazing in itself.

It ain't what you do it's the way that you do it. I see this as innovation
rater than the last 10 years of immatation.

~~~
DrJokepu
I agree with that. I don't own a notebook, and here's why: as a developer, I
find it very hard to work on a laptop: I need two displays, a proper keyboard,
a proper mouse and a powerful machine. It's question of taste, I suppose. For
my "mobile communcation needs", my Android phone is satisfactory most of the
times. However, for casual browsing / reading, the smartphone is too small /
slow and the desktop computer is too big / uncomfortable. Laptops are way to
big for casual browsing either in my opinion. I believe a tablet would be an
ideal device for me.

I don't know yet if the iPad will be the "one" for me, but right now I'm
pretty much certain that I will purchase a tablet in the next few years.

------
asmosoinio
Good article and the core idea is so spot on that I did not mind it riding the
iPad publicity wave...

This made me chuckle:

"""For markets that have purchasing processes with long lists of feature
requirements, you should probably just crank out as many features as possible
and _not waste time on simplicity or usability_."""

~~~
dabent
That quote pretty much sums up enterprise/government software consulting and
sales. A committee will come up with a grocery list of features that must
work, but don't need to work well. The longer the list, the more the
consultants make, so they gladly help their clients lengthen the list for a
fee.

~~~
wallflower
I've sat in some multiple-day long RFP sessions where there the sales guy
"moderates" items like "14.2.2 Support integration with process engine...ok on
to section 14.3"

It's a scary mentality / even if 14.2.2 is not supported - they might lose the
sale on too many N/A's so the sales guy will gloss over it (with the
assumption, usually right, that the client doesn't really need that). And if
they really do - litigation after the sale

~~~
dabent
Litigation, or often additional consulting fees to add the features.

------
brlewis
Those three well-executed features need to be done in the context of
marketing/sales magic, otherwise the product won't take off. GMail by all
rights should be the dominant email client today, or at least every other
surviving email client should have copied the conversation view from GMail.
FriendFeed should be bigger than Twitter. I'll admit that twitter got the "few
things" part, but I don't think they won based on doing those few things well.

EDIT: More discussion at [http://friendfeed.com/paul/e75a7022/if-your-product-
is-great...](http://friendfeed.com/paul/e75a7022/if-your-product-is-great-it-
doesn-t-need-to-be-good)

~~~
gokhan
FriendFeed is about discussion. It's back and forth. There are lot's of
software/site/thing on the Internet doing this, in many forms.

Twitter is about publishing. It's one way. It's a minified blog without
comments. A mini-blog for everyone is a need, apparently. Only Twitter is
doing it.

~~~
brlewis
Your assumption is that a product takes off because it meets a need. When you
say, "a mini-blog for everyone is a need, apparently" you're reiterating that
assumption, not supporting it.

------
jdietrich
Once again, Google and Apple get it, the rest of us don't. The revolution will
not be televised. If you can solve a major problem I have, I don't care
whether you try and solve all my other problems.

~~~
nollidge
Honest question: what problem does this solve for you?

~~~
colinprince
I can hand around photos, movies, web pages.

This is a common enough use right now with the iPhone I recognize it
immediately.

The fact that the screen is viewable from wide angles is not a coincidence me
thinks.

~~~
webwright
That's not a problem. Paint me the picture of when you REALLY wish you could
hand around photos, movies, and web pages. 95% of the time, methinks, it's
when you are NOT toting around a laptop/tablet (i.e. it's a smartphone
problem).

I can see the market for road warriors who do demos and/or fly a lot, rich
folk who love tech, etc. Other than, "I'd love to have one on my coffee table
from time to time", I don't see a draw for most people that'd cause them to
cough up $600-$1000.

And, for the record, the "it's a computer for non-geeks" argument is pretty
weak, IMO. My parents HATE onscreen touch keyboards and print everything.

------
scythe
s/great/well-designed\ and\ properly-tested/; s/good/feature-complete/; (Am I
getting this right? My perl is rusty.)

It's hard to disagree with this guy. What's the point of a 5 megapixel camera
if it can't focus properly?

------
flogic
Probably the best iPad article so far. I think the iPad's winning features are
misjudged. That it's simple to use is pointless; YouTube clearly illustrates
idiots can use computers and do stuff on the internet. However since it's
"just a large iPhone", it's UI is designed around the fact your finger is far
fatter than a mouse pointer. Also opening and closing laptops is a pain in the
ass.

Where the iPad is risky is that it has enough potential UI bandwidth that you
want to use it like a normal computer but the OS may be too close to the
iPhone model.

~~~
gxs
I've personally always wanted a phone with a 5-6 inch screen. I really, really
wouldn't mind carrying it and would use it all the time.

As it is now, I use my phone's 3inch screen so often, just becaues I'm too
lazy to pull out my laptop. I think previous articles have hit this one home
pretty well - most users simply don't need a computer. I know that when all I
want to do is check email quickly and catch up on reading (blogs, hn, etc.), I
certainly don't.

------
boundlessdreamz
so true. The original GMail launched with no "save" feature for drafts and it
was a major inconvenience but my friends and I still loved it to death.

------
mtoledo
37 signals already hits this same key for a long time in their 'getting real'
book: 'make half a product, not a half ass product'.

~~~
subbu
Actually this advice is pretty difficult to follow IMHO. We tend to give-in to
the demands of clients/users and add complexity without even realizing it. So
it needs continuous hammering.

------
tungstenfurnace
I think 'great is simple' applies to programming too. The reason I learned
BASIC at school was because there were computers lying around which _all_ had
the same BASIC pre-installed on ROM. They switched on in less than a second.

Nowadays, apart from a few web-based 'try it out' pages, learning a language
usually requires installing it and several other packages and getting
everything to work together and with your OS. This is hard, especially for
beginners. In the meantime, you're using your computer for other important
things.

If I could buy a pad with the major languages and text editors pre-installed,
or even just with one language and one editor, I would. It would be separate
from my browsing pad. Which would be separate from my gaming pad. Etc.

Hopefully pads will continue to get thinner and cheaper because they will be a
lot of them lying around the house by 2020.

~~~
bitwize
_Nowadays, apart from a few web-based 'try it out' pages, learning a language
usually requires installing it and several other packages and getting
everything to work together and with your OS._

Counterpoint: Linux and Python.

Which makes the strong intersection between Mac-weenie-ism and Ruby-weenie-ism
all the more idiosyncratic. Python is a much more Apple-y language: it works
right out of the box; and the way you'd expect to do something is usually the
way it is in fact done in Python.

------
10ren
Totally agree. But I think that even in hindsight, it's not always obvious
which of even just 3 qualities was actually crucial for success.

With google search, it was fast, uncluttered, had a patented pagerank
algorithm and didn't sell search placements. Though "the algorithm" was seen
as crucial, I've heard people argue that it wasn't (though it added a PR
factor). I remember comparing it with other searches early on, and it wasn't
that different - but it felt a lot better to use, probably because fast,
clear, honest and cool.

With gmail, it was 1 GB, fast, and used search and tags instead of
hierarchical folders (btw what was new about conversations?) - but how can one
tell what was crucial for its success? Perhaps the 1 GB was the main thing?
(was there evidence showing how crucial each aspect was?)

~~~
xcombinator
"I remember comparing it with other searches early on, and it wasn't that
different"

It wasn't that different? For me it was just radically different:

ALtavista->Advanced search->"car AND red AND 200 AND horsepower"

You had been redirected to a "portal". Ads flashing every second, and the
first two pages filled only with sponsored links. Slow search with non related
pics.

Google "car red 200 horsepower"

Clean and lean, text only, with just the information that you were searching
for in the first page.

~~~
vaksel
[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=f...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-
US%3Aofficial&hs=ZeD&q=car+red+200+horsepower&aq=f&aqi=&oq=)

I'm not seeing any relevant results on the first page

------
barrkel
Gmail's killer features for me upon launch were (1) exclusivity of the address
invites, (2) storage space, and ultimately (3) POP support so I didn't have to
use the web client any more.

I almost never use the GMail web interface.

~~~
barrkel
Interesting that 2 people disagree so vehemently to downvote. My point is that
the "killer features" aren't necessarily the same for different people.

~~~
dpritchett
One important thing to note in this "pick three features" strategy is that you
can't please all of the people all of the time. There will always be people
happy to chime in that they don't like some GMail feature or other but that
doesn't take away from the product's successes.

My dad chooses a generic USB MP3 player over the iPod but that doesn't say
anything bad about the iPod.

~~~
barrkel
Indeed - and I never said I didn't like the GMail web interface, simply that I
don't use it.

------
briancooley
The points about board games and the device being easily shared are nice
observations.

Using the device for board games would save on storage, solve the problem of
missing pieces, and save time setting up, all while maintaining the immediacy
of sitting around the table with a friend or three.

Chess and Risk strike me as particularly well suited to be played on the iPad.

~~~
smiler
You could even have iPad / iPhone combination for where the players required
to keep their 'hand' hidden from the other players.

Eg a HN favourite of Settlers of Catan comes to mind - the game board on the
iPad, and each player has an iPhone with their resource / victory points cards
and they all interface to the iPad to play...

Of course, playing an actual board game with actual cards might be more fun :)

------
Jeema
I agree with the jist of this article. And Apple's strong point IMO has always
been their IJFW technology (it just f __ _ing works), which seems to elude so
many others who cram in 10,000 features and wonder why nobody uses their
product which takes a Ph.D in computer science to decipher (especially open
source projects in many cases_ steps off soapbox _).

The problem is, I actually think Apple is starting to abandon this approach
for a more of a corporate driven 'I want you to lock you into this' model,
which will NOT work.

The whole Flash debacle is the prime example of this IMO: if I want to use a
Flash application on a webpage, and I'm the average user who doesn't even
_know* what Flash is, it better just f __*ing work. Otherwise this product
will be going back to the store, and I as Joe Public average computer-
illiterate internet user will be on to something else. End of story.

------
ananthrk
As usual, a very good article from Paul. BTW, what would be those three key
features of iPad?

~~~
rimantas
1) Instant—in broad sense: instant on, rendering speed, responsiveness to
manipulation.

2) Comfortable—allows more flexibility orientation and holding-wise than
notebooks. IPS screen with 178 viewing angle helps a lot there too.

3) Interface. Combined with 1) it makes to happen the thing that David Carr
noticed: "the gadget disappears"
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysq7mmGaWoU>). When you get impression that
you are directly manipulating web page, photos or e-book with your bare
fingers without much effort why would you think about GHz, number of USB
ports, etc.?

One of my favorite quotes about design is "Good design is invisible".

~~~
loup-vaillant
0) Trusted Computing.

More seriously, their design is so good that even their "Trusted Computing"
scheme is invisible to most people. This is scary.

~~~
rimantas
Most people don't even know what "Trusted Computing" is, leave alone why would
they should be scared by that.

Frankly, I am a bit tired of "open is good, closed is bad" rubberstamping
without putting much effort into thinking why is that and is it always the
case. Reminds me "Four legs good, two legs bad" from the _Animal Farm_.

~~~
loup-vaillant
What _really_ scares me about the iPad is that as a whole, it is the ultimate
consumer's device: you don't produce with the iPad.

You don't produce with the iPad because of DRMs, lock down etc. You don't
produce with the iPad because of the glorification of the "point and grunt"
interface. You don't produce with the iPad because it is more like an
interactive TV or a game console than a general purpose computer.

If the iPad proves sufficient for most common customers and purposes, it could
be successful. Worse, it could set an example. Worse, that new kind of
computers could take over most of the world. A world of very very few
producers, and many many consumers. Precisely what the internet allow us to
avoid, and not very democratic to boot.

This, is my "why". About the iPad, at least.

Anyway, I don't think such a dystopia will occur. Yet I am certain that many
people _want_ it to occur. We have to fight them. I do by not buying the iPad,
and telling whoever wants to hear it that this kind of device convey dangerous
ideas.

~~~
tedunangst
Why would people only interested in consuming pay extra for a "producer"
computer that's harder to use?

Do you also refuse to buy a TV that doesn't include a camera?

~~~
joe_the_user
You can get a netbook more cheaply than an iPad.

Also, how many people will not be producers _in any capacity at all_?

I mean, cut out the student, then cut out the managers and accountants, then
the writers, then the geeks and designers. Cut out anyone who want to write
long emails and even those who want to write long hn replies. I think you're
left with a smaller group than you'd think.

------
swombat
I'd say that in the business product space, this concept still applies.
However, the lack of features becomes a marketing problem to be solved
(hopefully not by adding more features).

~~~
bensummers
Fortunately for Apple, marketing isn't a problem because they're Apple. But
you're right, like many others we've discovered that lack of features is a
marketing problem.

There's no clear answer. Demonstrating that we had something which was clearly
better than the alternative for a specific problem has got us a long way.
People will forgive an awful lot if you can make their day easier.

~~~
swombat
What we've done is outlined in this blog post:
[http://www.woobius.com/scribbles/posts/0017-construction-
col...](http://www.woobius.com/scribbles/posts/0017-construction-
collaboration.html)

Basically, make the tool so easy to adopt that it gets adopted from below, by
people who are actually using it, rather than needing to be imposed from
above. This obviously doesn't apply to all tools and all industries.

------
rajatmehta1
This article is very much in sync with what 37 signals preaches.In fact in
their book also they suggested this thing, to work on features that are
important and can make the product successful, and to cut the rest. In short
the product is designed for something specific and it does that brilliantly so
it doesnot need any add ons for marketing gimmicks.

------
sailormoon
_one thing I've noticed is that I spend more time browsing the web from my
iPhone than from my laptop_

can't say I agree with that. The iPhone has a great browser - considering -
but a laptop is orders of magnitude superior for my usage. I bet he didn't
type that blog post on his iPhone, for example.

~~~
megamark16
If I add up all of the 5 minute long "killing time while waiting to pick up my
daughter" types of browsing sessions that I do on my phone (a Droid :-) I bet
it would easily add up to the amount of time I spend with my netbook on my
lap.

