Someone is Coming to Eat You | Hacker News Reader

Someone is Coming to Eat You

randsinrepose.com

84 pointsfilament17 comments

...Steve Jobs got on stage, gave the usual state of the business update, and then he did something I’d never seen before. He killed a wildly successful product...

... and replaced it with a wildly similar product.

Here's the first generation iPod Mini:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Green_ipodmini_1stgen.jpg

Here's the first generation iPod Nano:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1G_Nano_iPod.svg

What was risky or visionary about the product change?

The iPod Mini was selling well, there was no obvious need to change to a new product and kill the old one.

I think the general counterargument is: killing off a product line simply to replace it with a relatively iterative model (that could have easily been iPod Mini 2) is less a visionary move and more an attempt to double down by getting iPod Mini owners to quickly replace their mp3 players.

(Not saying I agree with that particular argument, but it exists.)

Their engineering team produced a much smaller version and their competitors had products very similar to the mini. So there was a very good reason to release the superior product -- why hold back?

What was great about the mini -> nano transition is that they did actually kill the mini. Too many companies would have hedged their bets and kept it around, which I think would have been a mistake.

Well, the move away from spinning rust to flash seems like a pretty big deal. Also B&W to color was the kind of upgrade television milked for a generation.

Everything that you mentioned, and also: the relentless miniaturization. That took a lot of engineering.

It's emphasized in the video linked to in the OP, but it disappears in the images linked in the response above, which are not proportional. Here's a side-by-side comparison:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/IPod_5G-4...

About iPod miniaturization, see also the iPod-in-water story:

http://todayilearned.co.uk/2011/10/09/jobs-dropped-the-first...

All these years later, and with the new MBP, they're still pushing system miniaturization, flash memory, and high-res color displays. It's a straight line in some respects.

It definitely seemed like an arbitrary example; a better one would have been the move to the "fat" Nanos (which was a bold design shift, and not particularly well received), or the shift of the Nano brand into primarily the exercise+watch niches (including the removal of video, the signature feature of the previous iteration), or the redefinition of the iPod from music player to generalized pocket computer.

But the overall point stands; many other companies would have kept selling the successful iteration with only minor changes for as long as they could, and only made a bold shift when sales dropped or competition started nipping their heels.

Those pictures do not properly reflect the dramatic difference in design. And I suspect you picked those deliberately.

But more importantly, the next generation of Nano's looked a lot more like the original mini, including the metal and the colors.

So this "bold move" seems like a mistake Apple quickly corrected.

Here's what's risky about it, the iPod Mini was genuinely very much adored throughout the lands. Apple figured they could change up the market and land a new product, but they had no guarantees that the people who loved the Mini would love the Nano. They effectively gambled a big chunk of revenue on proving to the industry that the Mini was were the puck was, and the Nano was where the puck would be.

Now, it's less risky for Apple as at the time anything iPod was likely to draw in sales, but for the majority of companies would they take a risk of killing an entire product line to make room for something they didn't know would be as well received? I'd wager no, the majority would sell side-by-side and cause consumers to weigh up the relative benefits of both. You'll get sales, but your line won't be as strong. Apple saw that the market responded to the Mini with a dozen 'Mini-alikes' and decided to go all in with the Nano, banking on the competitive advantage it'd give them.

No offense, but this post illustrates why Steve Jobs was a "product guy" and you aren't.

I give him credit for understanding the paradox of choice. If there were too many versions of the iPod, people may have been more reluctant to purchase them, which echoes the famous Sheena Iyengar study that if people in a store are given more jams to sample they are less likely to buy them. http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/articles/Choice_is_Demotivati...

That was very inspirational. Just when you start to feel the lull of success -- that's when you need to kick it up another notch. It is definitely a buzz kill hearing all of that, but this is exactly how it is. Complacency kills your company.

>The reason you’ll see new iPhone hardware in the fall and yet another iPad come spring is because Steve Jobs knew that he didn’t just need to out-design his competition, he needed to out-execute them.

There was a scene dedicated to the moment Steve Jobs learned this lesson in the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley (my preferred way of remembering Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Steve Ballmer). I don't know if things actually happened that way, but Bill made it pretty clear when Steve said "we're better than you" that "that doesn't matter."

On the other hand, there are products that have a lot of inertia built into them based on the success of their ecosystems. For example, regardless of whether you believe tile based interfaces in Windows 8 / Windows Phone are interesting / useful, they are different. Apple simply can't go there (quickly) without having to move the entire ecosystem of apps along with it. It's effectively a once in a generation change, much like the OS9 to OSX transition.

This applies for less competitive markets even more. Usually someone builds something and then sits back because no one is building something better (maybe due to a barrier to entry), and they have a monopoly. Especially when techies like us sit on a market where our skills are much needed yet oft utilized.

Now the impulse to not do anything is even larger than the ipod case.

Until someone else does better, and they don't see it coming, and then they're toast. Incidentally, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, so I'll update you when it happens! :)

So... whether employed or founder, the hamster wheel never stops spinning sigh

"Steve Jobs knew that he didn’t just need to out-design his competition, he needed to out-execute them."

I'd add, Apple doesn't just need to out-design their competition, they also need to out-design themselves.

Tl;Dr Process innovation is just as important as product innovation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com