Apple messed up one thing about the iPad, which made me never use mine and eventually give it away. Basically, my iPad would die in a couple days if left unplugged. Because I only want to use it about once a week, that means I have to leave it plugged in all the time. Of course I or someone else inevitably wants to plug something else into that charger, so the iPad gets unplugged and forgotten about. Then, in a week when I actually want to use it, it's dead, and I use something else. The result was, I literally never used it.
I think in theory general case I’d rather be able to find it easily than have more charge when it’s located. You can generally use one while plugged in.
Anyway, the root of their issue is other people unplugging it, which is a bigger issue than just the iPad. Still if you turn it off before pugging it in the iPad would have ~full charge if someone unplugged it. They hold charge for months on store shelves.
Or a power button that actually removes power from the device rather than just turning the display off. The "actually shutdown long press + UI" process has --just-- enough friction to make me forget to do it or not bother with it.
all of my phones hold a charge for 2-3 weeks in aeroplane mode with no installed apps. Even my 6yo phone with 6yo battery does. A tablet has a much bigger battery but not a proportionally bigger power drain when the screen is off, you might hope for months in aeroplane mode with no installed apps.
I'm fairly sure my old ipad did, maybe the ipad air 2. My current ipad pro doesn't seem to work this way. I could be mistaken, perhaps I used or charged it more.
Of course it is possible. From fundamentals alone, it has space for a huge battery. Heck, many cheap laptops can sleep longer than a week and still has some power left.
Read something similar the other day about the original Walkman.
The engineers wanted to add recording function, thinking it would help with sales and to only cost a negligible amount to add.
Someone cleverer said no, because if you add that feature now people will be confused what it is for. If they don’t want to record audio, they’ll think the product isn’t for them.
People generally classify the opportunity cost as zero, and if you want to say no to the reasonably good ideas, others will put pressure on you to just do it.
This writeup looks at a successful product with a small number of features that was thereby distinguished from a field of unsuccessful products with a large number of features. Accounting for many products, considering both successes and failures (i.e. using a wide selection of data), it argues that the distinguishing factor of less features was related to the device’s popularity.
In the canonical example of survivor bias, the only bombers being examined (for their characteristics) in the original flawed analysis were the ones that made it back; the planes that were shot down (and their characteristics) were not being considered — an error.
Sure, but how many failed consumer products can you name that solved a problem a large number of consumers actually had way better than anything that came before?
I should probably qualify that by saying that a product that looks to be amazing but costs way too much, is impossible to get because of manufacturing issues, or requires a third-party ecosystem that doesn't exist does not actually solve the consumer problem.
Maybe, but you can't count how many times I see it happen in reverse too. Without saying it directly, a person reveals that they believe there is nothing left to invent or that whatever is currently best established can never ever be replicated or (gasp) beaten.
I've had so much fun writing small apps in pure JS and HTML witj Gemini (no harness or agent, just the free web chat) because it's forced me to keep my index.html below 1000 lines. I love the forced constraints. It's liberating. My day job is wrangling production-level codebases of a monolith service, so my tiny web apps let me live out the fantasy of cutting features instead of adding them.
In any case, the landing page needs to be perfect. Anything less and you have 0 chance.
The most important innovation is in sales and marketing.
If you don't have brand recognition, your landing page has to make up for that. Making up the difference seems to be getting more difficult with each passing year. People are extremely cautious and getting increasingly so.
The average B2B user nowadays is literally triggered by anything remotely unfamiliar.
> For markets that have purchasing processes with long lists of feature requirements, you should probably just crank out as many features as possible and not waste time on simplicity or usability.
While on they are constantly listening for a “find my” signal so it’s easy to locate. For the overwhelming majority of people it’s a good tradeoff.
Anyway, the root of their issue is other people unplugging it, which is a bigger issue than just the iPad. Still if you turn it off before pugging it in the iPad would have ~full charge if someone unplugged it. They hold charge for months on store shelves.
Why didn't you try powering it off when done?
Something wrong with your iPad then. All three of mine would easily hold a charge for more than 2 days even when turned on but unused (so asleep).
The engineers wanted to add recording function, thinking it would help with sales and to only cost a negligible amount to add.
Someone cleverer said no, because if you add that feature now people will be confused what it is for. If they don’t want to record audio, they’ll think the product isn’t for them.
The guy who created Gmail is now 49 years old.
Why does that blow me away?
Secondly, where else does this apply beyond hardware, beyond the world of tech even?
In the canonical example of survivor bias, the only bombers being examined (for their characteristics) in the original flawed analysis were the ones that made it back; the planes that were shot down (and their characteristics) were not being considered — an error.
I should probably qualify that by saying that a product that looks to be amazing but costs way too much, is impossible to get because of manufacturing issues, or requires a third-party ecosystem that doesn't exist does not actually solve the consumer problem.
It was written pre-iPhone, when phones had seriously limited screen real estate.
He talks about how important it is to “weight” features, and order them by importance.
I am wrestling with this exact type of issue, right now, with a screen of my app.
[0] https://jenson.org/The-Simplicity-Shift.pdf (a PDF of the entire book. It’s a short read)
The most important innovation is in sales and marketing.
If you don't have brand recognition, your landing page has to make up for that. Making up the difference seems to be getting more difficult with each passing year. People are extremely cautious and getting increasingly so.
The average B2B user nowadays is literally triggered by anything remotely unfamiliar.
This was great snark.