Software before Hardware?

Another award has fallen upon Apple's lap and this time it's "marketeer of the decade", a prize they won once in the last ten years. But why is that? Certainly they know how to keep people hooked on their products. Mac is just about everywhere since the incursion of the brand in the digital music market, a market they knew how to water in order to make it grow as they please. The next step was telephony and they succeeded also when nobody expected them to even come closer to the sales figures some of the big boys in the time were getting like the now extinct Palm and the now renewed, in hopes to get a second wind, Windows Mobile. They simply entered in the mobile entertainment market the same way they entered the computer market. Hardware based around software and not the other way around.

The way Apple thinks, it's better to get the system working, the interface, the usability ready and then and only then get the hardware working around that OS. Hardware is secondary, and it shows. Macs have always lacked the power PCs have. They are next to impossible to update/upgrade but they just work. There's no need for compatibility, look for drivers, the right component, no, none of that exist in Apple's garden, but, is that the way to go?

Certainly that's not the way to go for a PC enthusiast who opens his computer on a daily basis just for the heck of it. The person who knows his hardware certainly wishes to have a better control over what's in his computer. Change it, tweak it, upgrade it, that's a common day in PCs life, but what about the people who's looking for something that just works? That's where apple comes in and thats because they have control over every piece of the puzzle that building a computer is. They control It all, from hardware to software, and that's where they get their strengths.

This very same scheme came into play in the media market with the iPod line. A market they were not favored over big competitors such as Microsoft or Sony. But the computer approach simply worked. By building a device around usability, they managed to beat the competition despite it's obvious shortcomings. iPods were and have always been more expensive that it's counterparts but that seems to hardly matters when you have a device that simply works.

Apple came into the mobile phone market with the same a basic idea. Hardware based around great software, and they succeeded once again. Certainly the iOS has various areas to improve but the usability of the whole creates a device that is not only useful but also easy to the user.

This all seems very obvious and at some point stupid but, in actuality, it's a very deep topic and by no means an easy one to implement or even swallow, otherwise, why not all companies adapt this pattern into their workflow? It seems to work, so why not?



Blue