Focus Obsessively

 "Inside Apple" Chapter 3 - Focus Obsessively

When you were a child you always liked when someone gifted your favourite toy in a gift wrap, you enjoyed the unwrapping process that would rejuvenate your curiosity, excitement and expectation.

Imagine a company where a packaging designer is holed up in a room performing the most mundane tasks of - opening boxes

Evoking a feeling
Apple has a room on their Cupertino campus dedicated to product packaging, and in that room is a team whose job is opening and closing prototype boxes, day in, day out. Not packing or unpacking anything. Just opening and closing empty boxes. Design is the most tangible way to see Apple’s focus on detail. Apple products are born in highly secured lab accessible only to tiny number of employees. Its master is the designer Jonathan Ive.

While packaging may seem secondary to most consumer electronics companies, Apple takes package design very seriously. From the way Apple packages its Magic Mouse to the iPhone 5, anyone who has ever opened up an Apple product anytime in the last 15 years or so can attest that Apple's packaging is elegant and reflects a thoughtfulness that most companies don't bother to deal with.

To fully grasp how seriously Apple executives sweat the small stuff:
How a customer opens a box must be one of the last things a typical product designer would consider. Yet for Apple, the inexpensive box merits as much attention as the high-margin electronic device inside. Showing attention to detail at even the smallest level communicates to customers that the manufacturer cares about them. Customers then feel a bond with the company, something that transcends price points, even for famously obsessive Apple.

Simplicity – The ultimate sophistication
The genesis of most Apple products is simply Apple’s desire to make them. A line that Jobs has repeated over and over for decades. “We really do have strong belief that we are building products for ourselves”. Tim Cook says that Apple could put its entire product line on a conference room table. To this day Apple offers essentially only four versions of its iMac: two sizes of screen and two sizes of processor. Simplicity is the DNA of the company, but also in its lean organization structure. “Apple is not set up to do twenty amazing things a year”

Art of Refusal - Focus is not saying yes, It is about saying no to really Great Ideas.
And it comes from saying no to thousand things to make sure they don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. A company always thinks about new markets they could enter, but it's only by saying no that they can concentrate on the things that are really important.

When Steve returned to Apple in the late 1990s, he focused all of Apple’s attention on the iMAC. He often advised other entrepreneurs to “just pick one thing that you can do great.” Under Jobs, it is a quest to make outstanding products, Apple had a maximum of three projects at any time, and never chased revenue for revenue’s sake. There’s a clear lesson for product start-ups – you can create outstanding products only if you are completely focused on the product you are developing