Have Simpler Product Lines Lead to Apple's Success?

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
From our front-page news:
Think back to about ten years ago. How many people did you know that owned a Mac? Chances are, despite that they were still well-designed computers, probably not too many. Since then, though, things have changed dramatically. Apple now holds a good percentage of PC sales (mostly on the notebook side), so what exactly caused such a surge for a computer that doesn't even run Windows? Well, according to news site Edible Apple, it all boils down to the company's desire to keep their lines slim, and simple.

There are a few good points made here, my favorite being the fact that Apple doesn't go all retarded with their naming schemes. If you had no idea what a MacBook Air was, you could probably take a guess that it was a lightweight machine, and then there's the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Again, those are pretty easy to differentiate based on their names alone. Compare that to something like a Dell notebook. It's difficult to tell right off what the difference between an Inspiron 1420 and Inspiron 1525 is. Plus, it just doesn't read as well.

That's of course not to say that the simplified approach is for everyone, and certainly, it's probably of little interest to most readers of our website. But, it's still a good point to consider. The majority of consumers are not tech-geeks, so how exactly are they supposed to differentiate various notebook models? Steve Jobs likes to keep things simple, and it sure looks like that practice played a significant role in Apple's most recent success.

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When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he himself found Apple’s product lineup to be convoluted and ultimately too confusing. He even quipped that if he couldn’t figure out the difference between a multitude of hardware models, how could Apple expect consumers to do so? Naturally, one of his first orders of business was putting the squeeze on Apple’s product lineup and focusing instead on only a few products that were to be marketed at either consumers or professionals.


Source: Edible Apple
 

Merlin

The Tech Wizard
From what I see, most Mac computer users ( any Mac ) know how to use their programs well, but know very little how a computer works. That's when I have to baby sit them and train how to set up networks, although Mac networks are mostly automatic. It's like owning a Porsche and not knowing that they can change a flat tire, themselves.
Apple has to keep it simple for that reason....LOL...( I can hear the flac coming now )
This is only an observation and my opinion

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Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
Yeah, I can agree with that. There's been a population explosion of Macs on campus (same with Dells)... for roughly every 13 laptops I see, 5 are Dells, 4 are Macs, 2 are netbooks, 1 is an HP/Toshiba, and 1 is an older junk Gateway from the previous years UTSA had a special deal with Gateway.

These are college kids... but most still only use the iMac computers when they are running late for class and can't wait for a Dell to free up, and look confused as heck when trying to work them to print something out.
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Merlin, I think your theory is true... many Mac users don't know much about how the computer works or how to take full advantage of it. To be fair though, it's the same on the PC side of things. I know people who own laptops and ONLY use it to surf the web, because that's all they know how to do. I am not sure what it is, but when it comes to computers, people seem to be lazy about learning more about them.
 

spenstar

Obliviot
You are right, to be frank I'm mac user since from last one year, I use only web in that I don't know much how to use programs well. I feel very sad about the usage of the product.
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
You are right, to be frank I'm mac user since from last one year, I use only web in that I don't know much how to use programs well. I feel very sad about the usage of the product.

Time to suck it up and learn more about the computer, then! It depeneds on what you want to do though. If all you want to do is surf the web, then there's nothing wrong with that. You might want to look into using it for other things though, like gaming perhaps.
 
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