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“But the desire to ship quickly was counterbalanced by a demanding, comprehensive perfectionism. Most commercial projects are driven by commercial values, where the goal is to maximize profits by outperforming your competition.

In contrast, the Macintosh was driven more by artistic values, oblivious to competition, where the goal was to be transcend

But it’s so easy to get caught up in the echo chamber of the self-congratulatory technology community. Product design has, in some circles, become synonymous with the glossy, the beautiful, and the stylish.

Dominating a new category is not necessarily about being the first to market a product. It is about being the first company to have your definition of a problem and, therefore, the solution, tip at scale. For example, Apple did not create the mobile phone category (that accomplishment goes to Motorola). But Apple did redesign the category with a fr

Back when they were successful, Nokia dominated the market position for robust, cheap, everyman phones. They didn’t realise this was their position, of course, because it was so frigging huge that it appeared to them that they simply dominated the phone market in general. What put things into relief, however, was the emergence of the iPhone – a pro

Even so, popularity doesn’t equal excellence. A better justification is that people can type on a smartphone QWERTY keyboard without thinking about it. The keyboard can melt away, it can recede, and when it does, it leaves a space for what people really care about. A properly judged mixture of taste and empathy is the secret formula for making prod