Comments on: Steve Jobs does customer development: No new features

By: Tim Raleigh

Tim Raleigh — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:15:02 +0000

I have always thought that the Newton (failure) was the progenitor of all future hand held apple products including the iPod.
I think the iPod touch must have been heavily influenced by the Newton. Other than the handwriting recognition problems, most people who invested in a Newton loved everything else they could do with it.
The Lisa was the customer development platform for the Macintosh.
The Motorola ROKR was their ability to understand what users would want in the iPhone.
I believe that all of the above were successful in helping Apple discover what customers really valued and wanted.
The first laptop was a hack, but future iterations were not nearly as innovative.

By: Reece

Reece — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:39:15 +0000

Thanks for the shout-out! Happy to be picked on, but one point in my defense – I wasn’t specifically saying “that a camera is a feature ‘that most users won’t touch.’” (I was speaking more generally about the tendency in many products to add too many features).

What I meant is that the product was “finished” as is (for now) and there were other buttons and dials to push and turn that will help figure out where the product will sell the most. In this case, Apple decided that they needed to play with the price and marketing for the iPod touch. They may decide that a camera is an important addition at a later point, but only as it influences their product as a game machine and the “lowest cost way to the app store.”