Innovate on Experience, Not Features

A lot of hubbub has been circulating around the recently announced iPhone 6 and its feature set.  Firstly, most analysts point out how its not so innovative.  Second, seeing as there were 4 million pre-orders, at a measly $240 profit per phone (40% margin on a $600 unsubsidized price), that stands to net Apple a cool $1 billion in profit....on predorders.  It literally has not shipped yet but already made a billion dollars.

Here's where I think things get interesting: there's chatter about how there's nothing really all that new about what the iPhone 6 does: it has all of the features that Samsung phones do from two years ago.  And it's absolutely true: NFC has existed for 10+ years, so there's nothing new here.  Call it the Android fanboy in me that sees that on paper, it's a hilarious 1:1 match for a Samsung Galaxy Note...from 2012.

However, the innovation is not in features, it's not in specs.  Apple innovates on user experiences.  Did no one learn anything about Mac specs always being slightly behind PCs?  It wasn't about how many gigahertz the processor was clocked at, or how much RAM it sported, it was "how pleasant is this thing to use?", "how much of my time does it take to maintain?", or "what apps all come for free?"

I think the same applies to the iPhone 6:  it's not about how Android phones had NFC years ago -- they did, as did many other implementations a decade ago -- but rather the user experience sucked because no merchants really invested in accepting it.  How useful is an NFC feature if no store takes it?  Apple's innovation here is getting merchants to lean in and finally do it -- because if their competitor "works with Apple" to adopt NFC and they don't, they look terrible.  Simply by making NFC relevant again, Apple uses their bodyweight and momentum to get others to play ball....innovation without even a drop of technology.

The same goes for the other numerous "copycat" features: larger screen, messaging, apps, photos: they didn't invent this stuff, each feature has already been done, sometimes better, by another competitor.  However, the innovation isn't on the feature: it's on the software experience, and that's what competitors miss.  Messaging is simple and no where near the awfulness that is Hangouts.  Photos are easily taken and easily sync'ed (modulo being hacked) rather than depending on Google+, that you may not want.  I already mentioned NFC.  No bloatware added by the OEM.  And so on and so forth.  The features aren't new, a non-shitty software user experience is.  And that is something that competitors haven't understood for 20 years, even longer than NFC has existed.  (Affectionately known as "it just works")

I won't be buying an iPhone 6 myself -- it costs more for a phone than a laptop for crying out loud, and I live in the Google ecosystem.  But I will attest that Apple is pushing the user experience innovation forward.