The Real Problem with Apple

Over the past many weeks, or probably months, much has been written and spoken about Apple and it’s seeming fall from Wall Street grace. Talk of its dependency on the iPhone; the collapse of the China market (which, BTW, is not exclusively an Apple issue); mistaken focus on ventures outside its core (the car initiative), and the list goes on.  In many cases, folks seem to think it comes down to Apple losing its innovation edge.

Well, I’d like to echo those voices who say Apple has never been all that innovative.  Not from a technology standpoint anyway.  They’ve certainly been highly iterative.  After all, the first iPhone was merely an iPod with cellular capability.  The truly innovative moment for Apple in connection with the iPhone had little to do with hardware, but rather, the proliferation of Apps and the App Store.  But technology rarely innovates radically, and therefore, a tech company in a mature life stage should not count on it to maintain strategic advantage.  Which is what Apple has been doing.

What I’d like to suggest Apple is guilty of is a different type of failure of innovation.  They have failed to innovate “cool”.

One of the hallmarks of Apple, going back to its very founding, was carving out an iconoclastic image.  And one of the defining characteristics of being “cool” is being anti-establishment. In this case, being anti-PC.  So, the very early life-stage DNA of the company had this as its basis.

Now, I’m not suggesting this was a financially successful model, as those of you know who have followed the company (this said, “cool” has always been a durable brand asset for Apple).  Multiple insight failures led the company to fire Steve Jobs, and then, in the late `90’s, hire him back.  And while Steve Jobs was never some sort of tech wizard, he was an amazing product visionary, as well as someone with a keen sense of aesthetic. I’m not sure who came up with the phrase “form vs. function”, but Jobs certainly embraced the concept.

Which brings us to the image above this narrative and the concept of “cool”.  When Jobs returned to Apple, one of his first tasks was to reverse the fortunes of the Mac, whose market share was foundering.  As there wasn’t some huge technological advantage (“function”) Jobs could leverage to regain enthusiasm for the Mac, he turned to the design (“form”) of the device.  He decided he would create a design for a personal computer that was unlike anything in the marketplace at that time.  He focused on the form, the aesthetic, the industrial design...to make it “cool”. So, with him, Apple came up with the teardrop shaped, translucent teal colored, iMac.  And it was cool.  

But he didn’t do it just one time.  As you look from left to right across the photo above, you see he did it three times, in pretty short order, with the Mac.  And we’re not talking about iterative design evolution, but radical form design evolution.  Each time, Apple made you want the latest, coolest thing, and was able to cultivate that sensation because each version of the product was so radically different in form from its predecessor that computer hardware became “fashion”.

Apple is where it is at this moment because it has failed to understand the ethos of “cool”, and how they defined it.  They have completely fallen into the iteration trap, in both form and function, hoping that incremental technical function improvements will save the day.  It won’t.

Steve Jobs brilliance is that he understood the key to Apple’s success was to hit on both the “form AND function” ambitions of customers. Make the products cool, make them dependable, make them easy to use. Do that, you can charge more.  Do that, your competition reacts to you (which means they’re always chasing you).  Do that, you win.  Deliver the wonderful intangible that some of that coolness sheen would rub off on the customer of your products.

Apple needs to radicalize the form factor of the iPhone. And the Mac.  And every one of its products.  Don’t give us an extra camera lens in the phone along with a 15% price hike and expect lines outside your stores.  Remember your own lineage...if you can’t innovate function, innovate form.  The time may be upon Apple to disrupt itself.  And yes, there is huge risk to this.  But really, all I’m advocating is that the company return to what made it successful.

A lesson for companies other than Apple?

 Robert St. Claire, MSSM,

?Partner

Collaborative Strategists LLC

2.4.19