Mine is bigger than yours

People have noticed that apps for the iPhone (and Android phones) are easier to use than the standard PC applications. They are easier to install, easier to run, and they tend to run without crashing.

Why are the two so different? I think that the answer started in marketing.

PCs and cell phones are advertised differently. Personal computers are sold on power; cell phones are sold on convenience.

In 1981, the IBM PC entered a market that already had other computers, and the vast majority of users were men. The IBM PC competed on power: a faster and more capable CPU, more memory, more pixels on the screen, more sales offices, ... you get the idea.

Software for the IBM PC competed on the same basis. Word processors advertised the number of fonts, spreadsheet advertised the number of cells, compilers advertised the number of features. Advertising in the PC age (for hardware and software) was a game of "mine is bigger than yours".

The Apple iPhone, on the other hand, entered a market devoid of direct competition. Yes, there were other cell phones, but the iPhone set a new standard for cell phones. Whereas the IBM PC was perhaps thirty percent better than the Apple II and TRS-80 computers, the iPhone was more than one hundred percent better. It was a new creature.

I'm sure that Apple knew that the market for iPhones would include women as well as men. That may have pushed them to market convenience. Or not; I don't know their motivation. it is a difference that we can analyze for a long time.

The bottom line is that the iPhone was sold on the basis of "easy to use" and "coolness". It was not sold on "bigger and therefore better".

It's relatively easy to deliver "bigger and better". (Not completely easy, as IBM and later Microsoft learned from the need for backwards-compatibility, but possible.) Delivering "coolness" is hard. "Coolness" has a psychological component that is absent from the pure "big hardware" solution.

The coolness aspect is what Microsoft products need. Microsoft has improved Windows, designed game systems, and built cell phones and music players, but all within the mindset of "bigger than the other guy". Even their Visual Studio IDE is bigger and more capable than Eclipse and the other IDEs, but not cooler. It's just bigger.

If Microsoft wants to compete in the new age, they must learn coolness. They must forget "mine is bigger than yours" and make products truly desirable.

Come to think of it, if *you* want to compete, you must learn coolness.