Read something similar the other day about the original Walkman.
The engineers wanted to add recording function, thinking it would help with sales and to only cost a negligible amount to add.
Someone cleverer said no, because if you add that feature now people will be confused what it is for. If they don’t want to record audio, they’ll think the product isn’t for them.
I have been thinking deeply about this problem. I bought a great, silent fan from Rowenta, with beautiful housing and does what it says on the tin with no fancy accessories. 3 speed + 1 very silent mode for sleep. Hey, it’s a European product, not some Chinese knockoff.
At some point during design, one person must have said “you know, why not add a brilliant white light that turns on in silent mode? Wouldn’t that be cool?” and there was no one powerful or smart enough to stop their hubris.
Every hot summer night, I turn off my bedside lamp, and scream internally when I notice I forgot to put a dark piece of cloth to obscure the blinding white light on the fan. In these nights, I dream of sending an email to Rowenta’s customer team, and asking them to present me the head of the person responsible for this.
I am reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance lately and how technologists have made the world ugly by forgetting to keep in touch with Quality and Beauty, and this is painful reminder of it.
Apple messed up one thing about the iPad, which made me never use mine and eventually give it away. Basically, my iPad would die in a couple days if left unplugged. Because I only want to use it about once a week, that means I have to leave it plugged in all the time. Of course I or someone else inevitably wants to plug something else into that charger, so the iPad gets unplugged and forgotten about. Then, in a week when I actually want to use it, it's dead, and I use something else. The result was, I literally never used it.
I'm fairly sure my old ipad did, maybe the ipad air 2. My current ipad pro doesn't seem to work this way. I could be mistaken, perhaps I used or charged it more.
Of course it is possible. From fundamentals alone, it has space for a huge battery. Heck, many cheap laptops can sleep longer than a week and still has some power left.
all of my phones hold a charge for 2-3 weeks in aeroplane mode with no installed apps. Even my 6yo phone with 6yo battery does. A tablet has a much bigger battery but not a proportionally bigger power drain when the screen is off, you might hope for months in aeroplane mode with no installed apps.
I think in theory general case I’d rather be able to find it easily than have more charge when it’s located. You can generally use one while plugged in.
Anyway, the root of their issue is other people unplugging it, which is a bigger issue than just the iPad. Still if you turn it off before pugging it in the iPad would have ~full charge if someone unplugged it. They hold charge for months on store shelves.
Or a power button that actually removes power from the device rather than just turning the display off. The "actually shutdown long press + UI" process has --just-- enough friction to make me forget to do it or not bother with it.
People generally classify the opportunity cost as zero, and if you want to say no to the reasonably good ideas, others will put pressure on you to just do it.
Maybe, but you can't count how many times I see it happen in reverse too. Without saying it directly, a person reveals that they believe there is nothing left to invent or that whatever is currently best established can never ever be replicated or (gasp) beaten.
Sure, but how many failed consumer products can you name that solved a problem a large number of consumers actually had way better than anything that came before?
I should probably qualify that by saying that a product that looks to be amazing but costs way too much, is impossible to get because of manufacturing issues, or requires a third-party ecosystem that doesn't exist does not actually solve the consumer problem.
This writeup looks at a successful product with a small number of features that was thereby distinguished from a field of unsuccessful products with a large number of features. Accounting for many products, considering both successes and failures (i.e. using a wide selection of data), it argues that the distinguishing factor of less features was related to the device’s popularity.
In the canonical example of survivor bias, the only bombers being examined (for their characteristics) in the original flawed analysis were the ones that made it back; the planes that were shot down (and their characteristics) were not being considered — an error.
I've had so much fun writing small apps in pure JS and HTML witj Gemini (no harness or agent, just the free web chat) because it's forced me to keep my index.html below 1000 lines. I love the forced constraints. It's liberating. My day job is wrangling production-level codebases of a monolith service, so my tiny web apps let me live out the fantasy of cutting features instead of adding them.
> 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.
In any case, the landing page needs to be perfect. Anything less and you have 0 chance.
The most important innovation is in sales and marketing.
If you don't have brand recognition, your landing page has to make up for that. Making up the difference seems to be getting more difficult with each passing year. People are extremely cautious and getting increasingly so.
The average B2B user nowadays is literally triggered by anything remotely unfamiliar.
I've never been enticed by a landing page (yes, datapoint of one). It's either recommendation from source I trust (which has included reddit) and some demo/review available somewhere. Never the landing page as they usually took too much scrolling to get to the point.[0].
Better host a quick video demo/video add instead of drowning the user in copywriting.
Read something similar the other day about the original Walkman.
The engineers wanted to add recording function, thinking it would help with sales and to only cost a negligible amount to add.
Someone cleverer said no, because if you add that feature now people will be confused what it is for. If they don’t want to record audio, they’ll think the product isn’t for them.
I have been thinking deeply about this problem. I bought a great, silent fan from Rowenta, with beautiful housing and does what it says on the tin with no fancy accessories. 3 speed + 1 very silent mode for sleep. Hey, it’s a European product, not some Chinese knockoff.
At some point during design, one person must have said “you know, why not add a brilliant white light that turns on in silent mode? Wouldn’t that be cool?” and there was no one powerful or smart enough to stop their hubris.
Every hot summer night, I turn off my bedside lamp, and scream internally when I notice I forgot to put a dark piece of cloth to obscure the blinding white light on the fan. In these nights, I dream of sending an email to Rowenta’s customer team, and asking them to present me the head of the person responsible for this.
I am reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance lately and how technologists have made the world ugly by forgetting to keep in touch with Quality and Beauty, and this is painful reminder of it.
Apple messed up one thing about the iPad, which made me never use mine and eventually give it away. Basically, my iPad would die in a couple days if left unplugged. Because I only want to use it about once a week, that means I have to leave it plugged in all the time. Of course I or someone else inevitably wants to plug something else into that charger, so the iPad gets unplugged and forgotten about. Then, in a week when I actually want to use it, it's dead, and I use something else. The result was, I literally never used it.
Is it even possible for tablets to hold a charge so long and provide near instant wake?
Why didn't you try powering it off when done?
I'm fairly sure my old ipad did, maybe the ipad air 2. My current ipad pro doesn't seem to work this way. I could be mistaken, perhaps I used or charged it more.
Of course it is possible. From fundamentals alone, it has space for a huge battery. Heck, many cheap laptops can sleep longer than a week and still has some power left.
all of my phones hold a charge for 2-3 weeks in aeroplane mode with no installed apps. Even my 6yo phone with 6yo battery does. A tablet has a much bigger battery but not a proportionally bigger power drain when the screen is off, you might hope for months in aeroplane mode with no installed apps.
They boot reasonably quickly, just turn it off.
While on they are constantly listening for a “find my” signal so it’s easy to locate. For the overwhelming majority of people it’s a good tradeoff.
Not a solution. Something like “shutdown after n hours of inactivity” would fix it though.
I think in theory general case I’d rather be able to find it easily than have more charge when it’s located. You can generally use one while plugged in.
Anyway, the root of their issue is other people unplugging it, which is a bigger issue than just the iPad. Still if you turn it off before pugging it in the iPad would have ~full charge if someone unplugged it. They hold charge for months on store shelves.
Or a power button that actually removes power from the device rather than just turning the display off. The "actually shutdown long press + UI" process has --just-- enough friction to make me forget to do it or not bother with it.
every e reader I have owned does this.
Latest iPhones have Find My when they are turned off, do iPads?
> my iPad would die in a couple days if left unplugged.
Something wrong with your iPad then. All three of mine would easily hold a charge for more than 2 days even when turned on but unused (so asleep).
Mine loses maybe 20% over 2 weeks if unused.
Same
Turn on Battery Save mode, it’ll last a month.
The hardest part of product management is saying no to reasonably good ideas. Bad ideas are pretty easy.
People generally classify the opportunity cost as zero, and if you want to say no to the reasonably good ideas, others will put pressure on you to just do it.
Survival bias powers these "insights", 100% of the time.
Maybe, but you can't count how many times I see it happen in reverse too. Without saying it directly, a person reveals that they believe there is nothing left to invent or that whatever is currently best established can never ever be replicated or (gasp) beaten.
Sure, but how many failed consumer products can you name that solved a problem a large number of consumers actually had way better than anything that came before?
I should probably qualify that by saying that a product that looks to be amazing but costs way too much, is impossible to get because of manufacturing issues, or requires a third-party ecosystem that doesn't exist does not actually solve the consumer problem.
This writeup looks at a successful product with a small number of features that was thereby distinguished from a field of unsuccessful products with a large number of features. Accounting for many products, considering both successes and failures (i.e. using a wide selection of data), it argues that the distinguishing factor of less features was related to the device’s popularity.
In the canonical example of survivor bias, the only bombers being examined (for their characteristics) in the original flawed analysis were the ones that made it back; the planes that were shot down (and their characteristics) were not being considered — an error.
So firstly:
The guy who created Gmail is now 49 years old.
Why does that blow me away?
Secondly, where else does this apply beyond hardware, beyond the world of tech even?
You're blown away at how old he is, or how young he is?
I've had so much fun writing small apps in pure JS and HTML witj Gemini (no harness or agent, just the free web chat) because it's forced me to keep my index.html below 1000 lines. I love the forced constraints. It's liberating. My day job is wrangling production-level codebases of a monolith service, so my tiny web apps let me live out the fantasy of cutting features instead of adding them.
One of the most important [to me] books, was The Simplicity Shift[0], by Scott Jenson.
It was written pre-iPhone, when phones had seriously limited screen real estate.
He talks about how important it is to “weight” features, and order them by importance.
I am wrestling with this exact type of issue, right now, with a screen of my app.
[0] https://jenson.org/The-Simplicity-Shift.pdf (a PDF of the entire book. It’s a short read)
If the barrier to adding that new feature is removed, what happens?
If the cost is reduced — and becomes closer to zero — there's probably more chance the feature will be added ..
.. in which case, the product is less likely to be great.
--
So perhaps, the key superpower in the age of LLM developed software is the ability to say no.
I think we're about to be overwhelmed with good software that isn't great.
> 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.
This was great snark.
ERP and corporate procurement in a nutshell.
That isn't snark — it's reality.
Fewer features = smaller frame, easier to satisfy, better customer targeting.
In any case, the landing page needs to be perfect. Anything less and you have 0 chance.
The most important innovation is in sales and marketing.
If you don't have brand recognition, your landing page has to make up for that. Making up the difference seems to be getting more difficult with each passing year. People are extremely cautious and getting increasingly so.
The average B2B user nowadays is literally triggered by anything remotely unfamiliar.
I've never been enticed by a landing page (yes, datapoint of one). It's either recommendation from source I trust (which has included reddit) and some demo/review available somewhere. Never the landing page as they usually took too much scrolling to get to the point.[0].
Better host a quick video demo/video add instead of drowning the user in copywriting.
[0]: Compare https://nova.app/ and https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html. Everything bellow the six highlights in the former case should be its own page.
If you don't have any connections to vouch for you/your product, you need a perfect landing page to get those first few users who will then recommend.