Has Apple Lost Steve Jobs' Vision of Simplicity? | Ken Segall | Big Think

Has Apple Lost Steve Jobs' Vision of Simplicity?

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One thing Apple has mastered is the art of simplicity. Few would know how the company achieved this better than Ken Segall, a creative director at Apple for twelve years who was personally responsible for introducing the lowercase-i into Apple's product line: iMac, iPod, iPad, etc. Simplicity permeates all aspects of Apple, perhaps most crucially — for the bottom line, at least — the buyer's shopping experience.

Shopping for a PC can involve going over hundreds of different models while the customer must compare each one to what they want, what they could want, and what all the differences mean for their future use. Choice is a good thing, and having a computer that fits perfectly to your needs is fantastic, but too many choices can give a person what is known as "decision paralysis."

This is where Apple comes in. The iPod had just four different versions, from the Shuffle to the iPod Video. Giving people four choices catered to their needs and made decision making a lot easier in the long run. As a result, people feel that Apple understands them, understands what they want and need. Those wants and needs are shown in these few products, and as people feel more understood by a company, they become loyal to that company.

Ken Segall's newest book is Think Simple: How Smart Leaders Defeat Complexity.

To be sure, Apple is not a perfect company. Indeed it has already had its problems since Steve Jobs passed. Apple Music, for example, has been excoriated by technology critics and annoyed the public with its confusing interface. At heart, however, Apple is still about simplicity, keeping a simple number of products for their customers to enjoy.

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KEN SEGALL:

Ken Segall is the author of the New York Times bestseller Insanely Simple. Working with Steve Jobs as his ad agency's creative director for twelve years spanning NeXT and Apple, he led the team behind Apple's legendary Think different campaign, and set Apple down the i-way by naming the iMac. Segall has also served as agency global creative director for IBM, Intel, Dell, and BMW. He is an international speaker on the power of simplicity, and frequently appears on cable and Internet news for his marketing insights.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Ken Segall: If you look at the products and services that exist in this world, sometimes it is truly staggering the number of choices that people are given. There is this feeling, again, amongst people that I've spoke to who are known champions of simplicity that too much choice can actually stifle a customer's enthusiasm or stall the selling process because you're just giving them too much to think about. So I just do my own casual research and because I'm a techie kind of a guy I look at Dell's website versus HP's and then Apples and it is quite extraordinary. If you look at Dell's website I think these numbers are slightly wrong but I'm pretty sure I'm right, 26 distinct models of laptops, this was a couple months ago when I last looked, HP has 41 I believe it is an Apple has three. And what's extraordinary is if you look at the PC category share of market Apple never gets more than like ten percent, but because they do these fewer things better their share of the profit in the category is actually more than HP and Dell combined.

So that lack of choice isn't really hurting Apple at all. You might even say it's helping them. You don't want to dumb things down and you don't want to get people to feel like they don't have enough choice, but you want to give them the right choices as opposed to infinite choices. You want to make it easier for them; simpler. So I think Apple has done a terrific job of that and there are other companies in the world that treat their customers in that way where it's actually a way of giving a customer more respect and demonstrating that you understand what drives them. Because you're not saying we don't know what you want so here's 40 things to choose from, we're saying we get that you have this particular need and this is a great solution for you. And that proves to customers that you share their values. And when a person feels that a company shares their values they tend to give them their business and that makes them more loyal customers.

There's been a lot of concern out...

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