Applying Apple's Framework for Avoiding Mediocrity

Anecdotally, I worked at Apple, as a software engineer, and I've never heard of this, or anything like it. I would characterize the actual attitude more as - we have to say no to a lot of good ideas, so that we can go 110% on the great ones.

This seems like a useful model for this company. Actually, I really like it. In my work there is often a huge gap between "minimum requirements" and "

But it doesn't really match my observations for Apple. Safari? One of the best for privacy features and energy usage. iCloud? They stumbled a lot on this but iCloud for photos is arguably the best. iCloud for backups and synching devices is the best. It's a breeze to setup a new phone or laptop. Literally just login. iCloud for collaboration works well but nobody uses it because it's not the de facto standard. There is obviously a ton of people working on these things and I can't imagine internally they are targeting bare minimum for these.

I would argue that there is only 2 categories at Apple: "won't do", and "better than the best". Of course, that doesn't mean "better than the best" is always or even often achieved. And Mac Pro seems to aim too high, such that is amazing by some metric (but not others) each generation, and then out of date for a decade as it's essentially a high tooling-cost, low volume product.

And, vertical integration and integration of services with their devices is kind of orthogonal to these types of categories and more important to explain Apple. Apple notes app is not the best, and iCloud may not be the best. But having notes on all of my devices is the best. And they don't even advertise this feature, it's more of a retention strategy.

The article specifically says it isn’t associated with Apple - the title is just clickbait nonsense.

A quick look at the Bragi Dash Kickstarter shows it was started in February 2014 and had raised nearly $3.4MM by March 31, 2014. It looks like it finally shipped in early 2016 (original promise late 2014).

I think you are misinterpreting the article. Whether you are Apple or not, you have to prioritize.

If you are doing 2 features, and cannot both well enough, then it's better to do one (important) extremely well and one (less important) just to get by, than do two mediocre features. In the former case, you will get at least some happy users who will talk about you and hopefully get you more sales. In the latter case, nobody would vouch for you and mediocrity will drive you into oblivion.

Thank You for the much needed Sanity Check !