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Comment by rkudeshi | Hacker News Reader

His 3rd point, regarding color, is to me one of the most compelling reasons Apple maintains such a large market share of portable products over time. No one likes to own the exact same thing everyone else has and so by using color to differentiate, consumers can still feel unique when purchasing mass-produced items.

Has any other company used color in such a way? (the only example that comes to my mind is the original Pokemon games)

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> Has any other company used color in such a way? (the only example that comes to my mind is the original Pokemon games)

Nintendo seems to, I have seen their DS units in a lot of colors. Related to Apple and the iPod, SanDisk offers the Sansa in a range of colors. It can be a challenge though, as Apple showed with the mythical white iPhone 4.

Ah, good one. Completely forgot about Nintendo.

/proud owner of a Game Boy Micro with swappable color faceplates.

(Also just remembered that you could change the faceplate on the Xbox 360, at least before the slim version.)

don't forget the TI84

My kids have standard White Wii, but talk longingly about owning the Red Wii.

The Gamecube was also released in a range of colours. http://www.gamecubeconsole.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/G...

Nintendo has been doing this kind of individualisation-through-colours for a long while in both their hand-helds[1] and consoles[2].

[1] http://www.dijitalfix.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/ga...

[2] http://www.oldskool.tv/images/OLDSKOOL/november/nintendo_64_...

Yeah, all the $30 MP3 players come in a wide range of colors.

The article mentions Kodak in 1927, which is an important year for color in the design of products. 1927 was the year that Catalin plastic was introduced. It was like Bakelite without the sawdust filler, so it could be produced in colors other than black and brown, and could be left translucent or marbled, as well.

This was used to great effect all over the place, but the staggering variety of beautiful radio sets of the 30s to 50s are a particularly good example.

Cars? Pretty much every other consumer product in history? Other than those two, I totally see your point.

And yet in electronics (computers, smartphones) this is still innovation, alas.

Smartphones perhaps, but other mobile phones have had swappable covers forever (e.g. nokia).

"great artists steal"

Dell has offered a range of colours on their notebooks for at least a few years. It's rare but not unheard of. Also the Panasonic Shockwave walkmans and discmans of the 90s. There are 2 off the top of my head.

Coloured plastic gadgets are rare and new? Pardon?

http://images.google.com/images?q=digital+camera+colours

http://www.homedosh.com/wp-content/uploads/bodum-bistro-colo...

http://i628.photobucket.com/albums/uu6/economix/Sony%20Reade...

http://www.equip-u.com/shop/images/products_computers/bstk-B...

http://de-en.sonoro-audio.com/tl_files/images/site/de/cubo_2... - clock radio and iPod dock.

http://images.google.com/images?q=swatch

http://www.avreview.co.uk/news/images/elegante_range_big.jpg - loudspeakers

http://images.teamsugar.com/files/users/1/15111/34_2007/Colo...

http://www.tuccistore.co.uk/mens-1/accessories-11/paul-smith...

http://www.lovingoutdoors.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/...

http://www.techshout.com/images/dell-inspiron-colors.jpg

OK, so you can't get the same ADSL router in a choice of colours that I know of, or the same book with a choice of covers, but choice of colours in stuff is not innovation.

And even many of the examples people are throwing out (aside from clip-ons and add-ons) postdate the original multicolored iMac from 1998.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3

If you look at buying a non-used car, you might get a wide choice of colours in the brochure, but in all honestly, how many garages will sell you the exact colour you want (with the spec you want) there & then? People I know who have tried this, generally wait around two weeks or more from order to delivery, or settle for a slightly different spec.

I don't see how you can easily scale consumer electronics manufacturing to allow for a range of different colours (certainly not in the case of the iPad anyway), one key factor being that I don't think you can predict demand of individual colours reliably enough.

Then you have the issue of handling returns etc. People would get annoyed walking into an Apple store to swap a broken device, only to be told they've run out of that colour/spec combination. They can probably get away with it on the nano due to small product size, low manufacturing cost and limited spec difference (2 base models). If they made the iPad in five colours, you've suddenly upped the variation from 6 models to 30. That's a big leap and a big complication to many otherwise simpler business processes.

My TV comes in one colour, my toaster two, my SLR one, my printer one, heck even mass market clothing/fashion items rarely come in more than a couple of base colours these days. The majority of consumers are not bothered by purchasing something in a generic colour if the product is good enough, companies want to sell to this majority (not the minority of people that refuse to purchase something based on colour) to maximize profit.

The business PC gear has been dull, but some of the consumer gear has had color options.

Dell has had various colors available for their systems for a number of years, and HP was selling designer-labeled minis for a while.

Here's the Dell Color site, for example:

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/dell_color

AlienWare (now at Dell) VoodooPC (now at HP) and other high-end vendors have some pretty wild cases and color schemes.

Within consumer electronics, Nokia were good at letting customers differentiate their phones by allowing interchangeable facias. Didn't Sony also release various colours of Walkmen?

I imagine the ability to mass produce a product in multiple colours was made vastly easier with the introduction plastics.

So I could see Tupperware being a contender for one of the first?

Compact point & shoot digicams typically have a variety of color options (Canon, Fuji, and Sony at least do).

Pentax has been also been pushing this strategy with their low end DSLRs. See http://www.aperturedaily.com/get-bored-with-black-pentax-k-x... for some examples. Although I can't find any data on how successful they've been.

Isn't that what cases and the like are for cell phones?

Incidentally, it's precisely this is why I think Android wins:)

If Apple were so serious about color, they'd let you see all the colors and black/white iPad 2 combinations.

Somehow, I think you'll see exactly that in the retail stores come March 11.

I looked but I can't find a link to this "retail stores". Where is it?

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC947LL/A?mco=MTY3ODQ5OTY

All colors with the two iPads in ridiculously high resolution. Click (twice!) to zoom in all the way.

Thank you. I think I like White iPad + Red Leather.

There you go, you're no longer thinking about whether an iPad is right for you, you're thinking whether a Black iPad with brown cover is more right than a White iPad with Red leather.

"I'd like to schedule a meeting with you, is Wednesday afternoon, or Friday morning better for you?"

;)

Ah, the power of framing and anchoring.

> Has any other company used color in such a way?

Compared to Apple, all the other computer companies look socially inept. It's like the difference between someone who actually understands how people work, and a bunch of Mr. Nerd McDorky.

Ford

"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black."

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