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Comment by thwest | Hacker News Reader

No technical reason, but all of the praise and success of Apple's lack of options certainly makes the case for business reasons.

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That's nonsense. Apple is not praised because of the lack of option!

it's praised by some despite the lack of option!

it's a price they paid to have somethings, because you can't have it all. it's not the feature per se.

Lack of options is 'elegant' and 'just works' and 'for people who aren't nerds'.

No, lack of options is the consequence of "just works in 95% of the cases, the others you are royally screwed"

See rob pike's "thank you Apple" for source on my opinion about the 5% since i never bought from Apple. (i don't give money to companies that profit from format lockin etc)

No, Apple is praised because of the lack of option! Trust me.

Why would I "trust you" when you have made no substantiative argument and are

I use the Mac not because "it has no options", but because there are no other options on other platforms that are better for my needs.

They are prized for their simplicity.

Show me simplicity which doesn't also mean a lack of options...

In N Out. The secret menu has combinatorics upon itself of options possible. All from the simple ingredients of a Hamburger.

Simple != restrictive options.

That's kind of like saying "I can adjust the volume knob and the panning knob independently. The combinations are limitless!"

Even including the "secret menu" (extra sauce? no bun? extra patty?), the options are resetrictive. You're not going to end up with chicken nuggets or a salad or beef wellington.

And that's okay. They have a restrictive menu, and they're very good at what they choose to focus on. I'd wager that no other popular restaurant chain is more like Apple in that regard.

I don't say you have to like Apple because of the lack of options, but for many, the lack of options is a feature.

The last thing I want is an iPhone - Android flame war, but something I don't like about Android, is that I constantly have to be searching for the ideal well... everything, since basically everything is changeable, I've gone through 4 music players, and have been disappointed several times, I did found a great one eventually, but in this case, I (and I said I god damn it) would rather have it Apple's way even if it's not perfect, it works if you do it their way.

So i take it that you use Apple maps solely and never looked at Google maps or the several fee offline turn by turn ones?

Also I'm pretty sure the default,music,player in Android is similar to the default one in ios... But i don't even have mp3s in my phone so i may be wrong on some exotic feature...

I don't know why you got defensive, I'm far from saying apple is perfect, no system is, you just need to know what YOU want, I'm all for variety.

In this case it sounds like it's the quality of Apple's default music player that you appreciate.

Imagine if their default music player was disappointing, and you couldn't change it... the lack of options would be a detriment, not a feature.

People don't like that Apple doesn't let you change things, they like that you don't need to because the default setting is good enough.

But you could go one step further, and ask "Why is their default considered so good by a broad audience?"

This could be attributed to how they identify (what they consider) the most important options, focus entirely on those, and implement them well.

The complexity of a system can go up exponentially with the number of features. If development resources were infinite, this wouldn't be a problem. But it is finite, and more complexity can lead to more bugs, more confusing interfaces, less maintainable code, and a host of other pitfalls.

In that case, if a lack of options is allowing Apple to a product that's better overall for most of its users, that's a definite feature.

I did found a great one eventually, but in this case, I (and I said I god damn it) would rather have it Apple's way even if it's not perfect, it works if you do it their way.

It would work, but not be perfect, if you just did it the way of any of those other apps you tried.

In this context, apple forced open pandora's box. There's no going back now. Businesses can present no choice, and only a minority of people (not enough to affect business) end up caring.

I can say without a doubt I prefer buying a laptop from Apple to anyone else I've tried due solely to the lack of options.

Over the last couple of years I've tried a few times at different vendors to find a different laptop, and every time I've given up because of all the options.

My problem is that when I'm presented with so many options, I spend hours trying to optimize them, and being unable, I give up.

I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More... has something to say about this.

Lack of options regarding hardware and lack of options regarding media files are different kettles of fish.

Apple has also made the decision to forego the Bandcamp/Beatport feature of multiple media download types, making everything AAC for simplicity. A fisherman using the same strategy for different kettles of fish, so to speak. And it seems to have worked out pretty well for them so far.

Netflix offers a number of other options when viewing movies - languages, closed-captions, etc. Seems like this is another reasonable one to give consumers. Their DVD delivery service gave you a choice between pan-and-scan and letterboxed IIRC.

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