The hook of the article leaves unanswered the question of why Steve Jobs made a big deal out of the backs of cabinets. The answer is that Steve Jobs knew how to sell luxury items to people who identified themselves with the quality of their work, whether they were accomplished creative professionals or cube-dwelling (now coworking) "knowledge workers" or MBAs who take sommelier classes or aspiring writers grinding on their novels at Starbucks. It was partly about the experience of using an Apple product, but it was just as much, if not more, about vicariously identifying with the standards of craftsmanship. If it was only about the experience, and the craftsmanship was a means to the experience, then the backs of the cabinets would not have mattered. They mattered because the craftsmanship was not just a means but was fetishized for its own sake.
Article is spot about its topic - tradeoffs. The professionalism is in picking the right corners to cut.
Steve's marketing was IMO a whole load of bollocks, like all other marketing. it gets attention now when Apple is a trillion $$$ company, and superficial minds wanting a simple answer attribute it to the most visible thing - Apple's marketing. no one bought Apple products for Apple's marketing or advertising. Its for the weirdos. Same theme as other Apple marketing e.g. the bicycle for the mind metaphor, the 1984 ad, etc.
This article is good and its not about the backs of cabinets.
> no one bought Apple products for Apple's marketing or advertising.
That statement would require quite a source. Of course a lot of people bought Apple products because of the ads, like for any company that is a serious advertiser.
I think the revenue chart is a bit misleading. Apple was very successful with the Apple II and the early Macintosh models (otherwise they would have gone the way of Commodore and Atari), it's just that the market was much smaller in the 1980s - also, I doubt that the graph is inflation adjusted.
Social media and it's amplification of the desperation to show off. Apple products are cool/expensive and I am cool/above average/have buying power/<insert_your_wannabe_reason> to have them while I sip my pumpkin latte at Starbucks. They are also high quality machines but I don't think for everyone that buys them, the motivation is solely the software/hardware stack.
On the first, having the off-center hole helped with thicker plugs. The iPhone had less of these issues as cables were thinner (and more expensive) in general, while micro USB had a flurry of cheap cables in the while that could be much thicker.
Apple never really cared for ports practicality, we've had the same discussion with the finewoven cases that wouldn't allow for regular thickness usb-c cables. Other makers made more of an effort on that front.
The second would be a better point if iPhone's repairability was on par with Samsung's. Granted Samsung also became worse with time, but it was in no small part because of what the market leader could get away with.
That said, I think your general point stabds: Apple cares about the back of the drawer. But not in the way I personally wish they cared.
The first is not really the back of the cabinet, it is more like the design on the front.
The second… more like the back of the cabinet maybe. Although the better style there might also be somewhat functional; the internals are clearly quite different, one could imagine that the nice packaging in the Apple case might be a result of only wanting people to use approved parts.
>The first is not really the back of the cabinet, it is more like the design on the front.
The metaphor seemed to have gone over your head.
>The second… more like the back of the cabinet maybe. Although the better style there might also be somewhat functional; the internals are clearly quite different, one could imagine that the nice packaging in the Apple case might be a result of only wanting people to use approved parts.
This philosophy applies to their entire product line and has essentially been the case since Jobs came back. Hell looking at the first 1984 Mac this philosophy was there.
Tbh from a repair perspective I think I'd prefer Samsung's design where it's obvious what each component is and exposed solder joints that might let you desolder something if needed, compared to Apple's nicer looking bunch of black boxes where you're lucky if there's a label on something to tell you what it hell it even is.
Also TIL Iphones have two separate batteries? Quite unusual.
Cutting the right corners is known as job smarts in the research on expertise, and it's one of the markers of expertise.
Perhaps Steve Jobs wasn't an expert in engineering so he didn't know which corners to cut and therefore avoided cutting any corners out of fear of cutting the wrong one?
It's in the link on the relevant bit [0]. TLDR: his dad built stuff, including as a hobby, and he liked overengineering. He liked he dad very much and also got on board with overengineering.
I’ve always found the term “overengineering” as used to mean “unnecessarily overspecc’d” a little odd. Engineering is all about appropriately selecting and sizing components. Overspeccing something is underengineering it, and usually happens because you don’t have time to accurately size things so you throw the kitchen sink at it.
