![]() ![]() What is it about Apple that some people just really hate? Maybe it would be a patent for a rectangle with rounded corners. Austin Powers learns the internet on an Apple. Apple users are like – the people you see in movies using computers. To be fair, I do know a couple of people who are highly technical who own Apple stuff, but these guys are exceptions. Apple is mainly about technology for people who hate technology. The way Siri is portrayed in ads is I think a little pathetic. I use Vlingo, an Android based voice interface that doesn’t do the useless gimmicky conversational tricks that Siri does, but it activates commands, apps, searches, reads and writes text messages and emails, and other useful stuff. I might make fun of it, but it’s not all bad. I don’t think the intention was to help pathetic loners find tomato soup on rainy days, but just to dumb down the search interface. You might be tempted to confuse Siri with “power”, because it was developed into an early consumer-level AI system. Which in the end, is also something you could probably say about SolidWorks. ![]() It’s as if Apple wants to create a “worry free” product that does about 80% of what is available. “Power” and “capability” are not words that I associate with Apple products. So that you are buying sturdy stuff, but stuff that isn’t really cutting edge. The main thrust of Apple products seems to be good quality hardware, but “dumb it down, market it back up” so it doesn’t do much, but you make it look magical. Is it the software? Software that’s locked down and limited isn’t appealing to everyone. Is it the industrial design? I find Apple designs to be actually rather boring, inhuman, sparse, and cold. But the CAD market has “matured” in a way – there are few companies that just sell CAD any more, and to some extent, they sell less and less directly or solely to engineers, so appealing to engineers seems to make less marketing sense than it used to.įor Apple, the transition from being an odd-ball laughingstock to defining tech-as-fashion is one that’s hard to quantify in some sort of formula. Engineers want to buy from engineers, we distrust MBAs, salesmen and marketing types. “By engineers For engineers” was more than just a motto. Part of what made SolidWorks so attractive was that Hirschtick was an engineer. Early SolidWorks would occasionally admit a mistake. The product has always been fairly priced for what it did. Those are the most positive aspects that SolidWorks and Apple seemed to share, but the original SolidWorks had other positive traits that Apple didn’t have: They really did at one point listen to their customers. They had cult-like loyalty, a CEO that customers could relate to, and an 80/20 product that was somewhat dumbed down in favor of usability, and that product could replace more complex stuff in some situations. The original SolidWorks - lets just define that as the SolidWorks under Hirschtick - was in some respects already more Apple-like than most companies. Apple’s success has been legendary, whether deserved or not. You can’t really blame a company for wanting to do that. As a part of the cultural shift we have all noticed at SolidWorks, one of the things I have heard from time to time is that SolidWorks is trying to emulate the success that Apple has had.
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