That OS… X Factor. No-One Ever Sees Version One
March 9, 2007
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I once saw a movie where a boy’s father was a school teacher. The boy submitted a story that he’d written to his father and was told to re-write it — only shorter. This he did, and the grumpy father returned it with the same comment; by about the fourth time, the father finally said, “Ok, that’s perfect.”
I guess this stuck.
Fast forward to my Kaizen days when I liked to do that Alec Baldwin bit from Glengarry Glen Ross: The one where he’s ranting, “ABC: Always be closing… ALWAYS be closing!” Only my version was ABR: Always Be Refining.
When you go back and look again at a process, procedure or product; there’s invariably something more you can do to finesse it. Kaizen is mostly about finessing stuff that’s already out there — when you’re dealing with something new there comes a point where you need to stop tinkering and release it into the world.
Whenever Microsoft release something that’s completely new — the first version is horrible. Observers say: “Yeah, but you just watch… Version 4 will be the definitive one.”
So, what is it that makes Apple so different from Microsoft, and other companies in this regard?
They produce and examine a product — and then do the whole thing over — and perhaps even a third time… And then they release it into the world.
According to an article in Fortune, before Apple built their first retail store, they built a prototype in a warehouse. After looking at and using the prototype for a while, they tore it down and started again… And then they released it into the world.
This methodology is expensive and labourious, but the end result is the classy, polished, just works factor: that X factor, that Apple has. On the effort required, Steve Jobs had this to say: “It’s not important if the customer knows that. They just feel it. They feel something’s a little different.”
