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I see how you subtly equated boring packaging with being shoddy or bad. The reality is that you can have perfectly good, reliable, strong packaging for cheap, it just isn't necessarily beautiful to look at, but maybe some pink shaped foam that gives 3 inches of crush protection all round and fits inside a double box.

You want the packaging to be part of the aesthetic experience, rather than purely functional. OK, so you like Apple's packaging, but 'best in the world'? Japanese people have been doing that sort of thing for centuries.

>I see how you subtly equated boring packaging with being shoddy or bad.

I saw it, too, but it was his opinion to make. Nothing wrong with it, subtle or otherwise.

Also, standard foam is terrible for the environment, something the article doesn't bother to mention, while implying the standard packaging with foam is fine (while mentioning environmental friendliness should be a goal).

Apple used to have the best packaging in the world, but lately it's been my opinion that they've lost sight of making the packaging functionally nice and are simply focusing on making it nice looking. Case in point, the incident last year where the guy first in line at the Apple store for his iPhone on release day struggled with opening the box and ended up launching his new phone onto the sidewalk in front of a news crew. Incidentally, I watched a friend do exactly the same thing the very next day. And recently, a friend and I both bought some particular apple accessory and separately commented on how difficult it was to figure out how to get it out of the box.

You may be right. I think there are other handling flaws in the iPhone 6 as well - enough so that it's the first iPhone I've had since my first one (iPhone 2) that I've liked less than its predecessor.

I blame losing Steve Jobs and his ridiculous sensitivity to such details.

Agree++ The iPhone 6 Packaging was terrible. Way too easy to drop the phone since it was in a really shallow groove right at the top.

Motorola used a similar packaging for the Moto X. Ironically, the cheaper Moto G packaging uses simple deeper cardboard folds and thus is a lot more 'secure'. See: http://imgur.com/XTNbTr7

  "Being rich demands fine motor skills."
    -- a high end smartphone owner

Or if motor skills are lacking, future iCracked customer, Disclosure: I work for iCracked (YCW12).

Thank you! It is amazing how many people confuse good packaging with pretty packaging.

I don't know if this is the sidewalk incident you had in mind, but here's one I found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bPwfLe13Uo

One of the article's points is that elaborate packaging is an embarrassing display of consumerism. I guess camping in front of a store to be the first, and being interviewed opening the box is kind of sad in that way too.

I think they've sadly lost some sight in many areas. Perhaps I'm a bit nostalgic, but I miss their simple and beautiful designs from the OS X Tiger era. Their current function follows form ethos is horribly broken. Flat design is just a proof of this. Packaging might be another.

There are a lot of assumptions behind the idea that if you see "bad packaging," which you don't define, then it implies the company doesn't care about the rest of the package.

The author's example of "standard packaging" is not bad packaging, as it does its job well. It protects the product, the reason for the purchase, and it isn't difficult for the user to unpack. It might arguably be more environmentally friendly in its use of corrugated cardboard, and I have no idea about the foam. But it is likely less wasteful on this measure than Apple's packaging when you consider the entire process required.

When you tack on the "customer experience" aspect of this packaging, not caring about creating luxury packaging doesn't mean the company does not think about the user's experience or care about the product itself. In the author's situation, the user is more aware of how wasteful and unnecessary this packaging is, and it doesn't help his experience. It also makes the product unnecessarily expensive.

Apple only has the best packaging in every way if you ignore these negative aspects.

Apple has also used the more standard packaging approach for some of its products, such as laptops, in the recent past, but with white printed cardboard. Does that mean Apple didn't care or pay attention to detail back then?

It sounds odd, but I absolutely love Apple's packaging. It feels rich. I grab one of their products in its box and I immediately expect a quality product simply because of the box.

Even though we're told from an early age to never judge a book by its cover, first impressions are hard to shake. And handling packaging is the first impression, not actually using whatever is inside the package. It's the first time an end-user actually physically interacts with your company.

So I agree with you. If the customer is interacting with it, it's a part of the customer experience and should be at least considered. Not everyone can have Apple's resources, yes. But everyone can do the very best with what they have.

I'm thinking of Chubbies, that short-shorts company for guys who want to be Magnum PI. They are a small(ish) startup, but their packaging does not feel that way. It feels like their company. Looks preppy, feels rugged, and is over-the-top with nationalistic and company pride.

I'd argue that in Apple's case, a company with a (long) history, they could not afford not to focus on packaging while positioning themselves as the kind of brand they wanted to become. Higher stakes and with Google/Android a potentially dangerous competitor (whose strategy only became very evident later, ie. not wanting to compete on hardware as well). Now however, especially due to the profits they're making, they have little incentive to care about anything else but maintaining status.

Why change something not visibly broken?

I disagree that non-luxury packaging automatically means the company doesn't care about the product contained inside. It's a matter of strategy & costs. I'm not familiar with HP packaging, but you should know that ASUS does offer luxury packaging for its gaming range of products for instance, especially laptops.

My opinion is that it's possible to design thoughtful, non-generic packaging without crossing into luxury materials territory. Experience and loads of creativity are required though. At least this is what I understood from the article (taking into account the Pencil example as well), that startups should bet on resourcefulness instead of throwing money in non-priority directions.

Another aspect to consider: I don't have the specific numbers to back this up, but we live in a world where the general trend is towards minimalism and simplifying our lives, which includes getting rid of no longer necessary stuff, such as a product's temporary home (packaging). Considering it has such a short life, it makes little sense to invest a lot of resources into packaging as a startup, unless you're selling electronics, where at least some consumers have a habit of saving the packaging materials to increase resale value of the product when they decide to upgrade.

Refined doesn't necessarily mean expensive. This reminds me of my favorite love-to-hate restaurant, the Crave chain (dunno if they're national or regional). They're the masters of putting expensive-sounding, fancy ingredients into truly bland, pedestrian food. The marketing goal is to make people with no taste think they're eating more upscale than they actually are. Meanwhile, my town is filled with little ethnic restaurants that don't serve bragworthy ingredients, but instead conjure magical flavors through their exquisite attention to detail.

So yeah, a company could package very simply, in an environmentally sound manner, and still make the unwrapping itself a positive aesthetic experience, rather than just an inconvenience on the way to using the product.

Apple could do that as well. They probably will do that, if they start seeing a more positive RoI in simple rather than elaborate packaging. But they'll still do it with the same obvious attention to detail.

So I should have been more clear... it's not non-luxury packaging that makes me distrust a maker. It's careless packaging, or packaging where the attention to detail is clearly focused on reducing cost (or worse, theft) rather than my experience as a consumer.

The packaging has a customer. Who's the customer? The end user, or the accountants?

I'm not sure what you mean by "(Apple) could not afford not to focus on packaging while positioning themselves as the kind of brand they wanted to become"

When do you perceive that Apple decided to become the kind of brand that focused on its packaging? Because I'm going to say I think Apple have ALWAYS had a weird interest in packaging. You go back to the Mac Plus, it shipped in a glossy white box with full four-color printing on the sides showing a happy mac and a huge Apple logo, with all the components beautifully subpackaged up inside. That was not the norm in the 1980s (I've still got, for example, an Atari ST in its original box and it was matte white with blue printing all over, mostly shipping codes and handle with care signage).

This is a company which, remember, had the signatures of every designer of the original mac molded onto the inside surface of the case.

There is an entire segment of videos on youtube dedicated to "unboxing" implying great packaging is not "really" important I think would be disingenuous. That's not to say that you need to get to Apple level packaging (I think, the point of the article) and spend $15/box, however thought and user experience need to be taken into consideration. Heck, one of the companies in this YC batch is trying to solve exactly that problem (Pakible)

You summed up much better what I was trying to say in so many words. Resourcefulness and creativity can be used to ensure a great unpackaging experience, while still being sensible about costs.

This is the cart-horse mentality that I see so many startups get wrong. They see services like Pakible and think "oh man, I should build a smartwatch, that packaging is gonna sell itself", or they watch a video at the Apple WWDC and think "I can def do that Jony Ive white background video so easily for my new smartwatch". Then they fail miserably, because their product itself doesn't work.

PS - Did you read the whole article? They're agreeing with you.

I wouldn't call it the best packaging in the world across all metrics. It might be the sexiest.

I find it more satisfying when you free a cleverly suspended gadget from an anti-static bag suspended in a molded/origami fiberboard nest. Easily disposed of, light, unobtrusive, recyclable (and possible for mere mortals to re-assemble if RMA is ever required, heaven forbid)

Of course Apple devices never need to be sent returned so maybe that isn't a concern.

I bought a tablet from Asus and the packaging was quite nice.