Product Simplicity Quotes

Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to some independent record label people. My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying, "Does it do [x]?", "Do you plan to add [y]?". Finally Jobs said, "Wait wait - put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes could have. So do we. But we don't want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.

We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise and the software expertise, including iTunes. One of the biggest insights we have was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless.

Go to the bookstore and look at how many bookshelves are filled with books trying to explain how to work the devices. We don't see shelves of books on how to use television sets, telephones, refrigerators or washing machines. Why should we for computer-based applications?

The role of designers and product makers is to really become much better editors. What kind of functionality is actually needed - and truly delightful - to consumers? Remove all the extraneous stuff.

Consumers have zero time for products that are not simple, intuitive, and attractive to use. This is especially true with Internet products, where clean and useful design is a prerequisite to keeping anyone on your site for more than 30 seconds.

Making a product better often requires removing features.

Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that's a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That's not simple.

The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That's not simple.

I've tried plenty of telephones. I tried to get into the Samsung Galaxy and the Blackberry, but the iPhone is just too easy to use. The camera takes clear pictures and the phone itself looks great. Like all Apple products, it kind of just makes sense.

Goal we've always had for design at Apple is to create solutions that are inevitable.

Ironically, the thing that will likely make the least improvement in the ease of use of software-based products is new technology. There is little difference technically between a complicated, confusing program and a simple, fun, and powerful product.

I routinely failed to understand that 'simple and straightforward' would have been a much better product strategy for Lotus.

The difficult part for us is adding features without making the product more complicated.

My most-used word was no! I said no to pockets, no to zippers, no to extra loops. In the end, all the products were so slim and light.

Customers want new functionality, but they don't want the traditional complexity that has marred products in the past.

For every new feature we add, we take an old one out. A lot of big sites don’t do that, and it’s a problem. Twitter started as a beautifully simple product, but it’s now going the same route as Facebook. The drive to innovate can overencumber and destroy a product.

We came out with a rice and a corn chip, then quickly decided we needed to focus on potato. It was just too much for consumers to figure out at once.

You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.

I'm pretty simple. I have every product in the world, but I tend to use three things: cleanser, toner, and moisturizer.

A Mac is a closed box, so Apple can make decisions about things that they don't include. That makes, it in some ways, simpler for them.

I don't like menswear that's too tricky, and I wanted to take a lot of inspiration from myself and really only do things that I like. I don't like chinos, but I do like dress pants and jeans, so we do them. It's pretty straightforward, and just a matter of doing the right products.

I liken myself to Henry Ford and the auto industry, I give you 90 percent of what most people need.

I need my products to work and be fast! I don't love having 50 different things in my bathroom, like a different cream for every inch of my face. That's so not me.

There is little that can be said about most economic goods. A toothbrush does little but clean teeth. Aspirin does little but dull pain. Alcohol is important mostly for making people more or less drunk ... There being so little to be said, much is to be invented.