I remember reading once that part of Apple’s success was owed to their shunning of lean principles, that they only ever ship complete, mature products. I would say that couldn’t be further from the truth: the original iPhone was about as minimum-viable as a category-defining hardware product could be.
It did only a few things (web browsing, media playback, email) better than anything else on the market, and left out nearly everything else that wasn’t critical to that core functionality (Exchange support, software ecosystem, copy and paste). If anything, the original iPhone was a demonstration of lean principles applied extraordinarily well: A bare minimum of functionality executed at eye-poppingly maximum quality.
The difference with Apple is that even when they do minimum, they polish that minimum offering very well. I know exactly the kind of stuff the article author is talking about, and most of it undercuts whatever ideas are being tried out.
> I remember reading once that part of Apple’s success was owed to their shunning of lean principles, that they only ever ship complete, mature products.
I think I read that, back when the original Macintosh was being developed, some people from Apple toured a Toyota factory to see how things were done there.
Since Toyota pioneered lean, it sounds more like Apple embraced lean principles than that they shunned them. OTOH, this would have been a number of years before Apple was anything like the success they are today.
EDIT: Also, do lean principles have anything to do with not shipping finished products? I thought lean was all about things like minimizing inventory.
It did only a few things (web browsing, media playback, email) better than anything else on the market, and left out nearly everything else that wasn’t critical to that core functionality (Exchange support, software ecosystem, copy and paste). If anything, the original iPhone was a demonstration of lean principles applied extraordinarily well: A bare minimum of functionality executed at eye-poppingly maximum quality.