R and D
It hit me this morning, while I was thinking about it, apropos of nothing. (Almost nothing, anyway. My shampoo.)
The thing that has made Apple a success, relative to so many other companies in the tech industry, is their willingness to spend money on R&D, even for things that don’t have any clear payout on their investment. For instance, Expose and Time Machine were clearly big money sinks; or think of the creative dual-function headphones for the iPhone.
Without the innovation of the company tech-industry analysts love to hate, instead of USB and FireWire we’d probably be stuck with some kind of jerry-rigged hot-swappable serial port or something. Going to all-USB on the iMac is what killed serial. (I say that, but I can’t believe many desktop Windows users still use parallel ports for their printers. Come on, people. What year is it?)
It’s those little things that make Apple products more desirable than, say, Windows or the Dell Jukebox. They may not make Apple money in and of themselves, but when people buy their products because of them, they make it worthwhile.
In that sense, Apple is like the Proctor & Gamble of the tech world. I love P&G products because they move the industry along, even when I myself buy a competing product. Who knows where laundry detergent would be without the constant prodding from Tide, or toothpaste and Crest. My bathroom is full of P&G products (except toothpaste) and they’re always improving on them.
That’s what makes companies successful. And today, when most companies are spending less on R&D than ever, it makes some companies stand apart.