This writeup looks at a successful product with a small number of features that was thereby distinguished from a field of unsuccessful products with a large number of features. Accounting for many products, considering both successes and failures (i.e. using a wide selection of data), it argues that the distinguishing factor of less features was related to the device’s popularity.
In the canonical example of survivor bias, the only bombers being examined (for their characteristics) in the original flawed analysis were the ones that made it back; the planes that were shot down (and their characteristics) were not being considered — an error.
Did you read it? Where do you see mention of "a field of unsuccessful products"?
It mentions the iPad, the iPod, Gmail as successful products. It mentions "laptops" (but in the description it actually includes all desktop computers, I would say) as unsuccessful products.
I wouldn't call desktop computers or even just laptops "unsuccessful products". Would you?
>I wouldn't call desktop computers or even just laptops "unsuccessful products". Would you?
With the caveat of "Casually browsing the web" I would, actually. They have been near completely subsumed by Ipads or Phones.
People state stuff like this regularly, but it's not correct. The vastly overwhelming majority of people still have and use a PC. The only thing that's really changed is that a 10 year old PC is good enough for just about every normal task short of high end gaming or a handful of rare tasks. So sales slowed dramatically.
But even with dramatically slower sales, that's around ~300 million sold per year. By contrast, the iPad is selling about 60 million units a year. In the US at least, the number of people that replaced their computer with a phone is negligibly low, and it's largely made up of extremely low income families.
Incidentally, phones are also headed for the exact same fate as PCs. The one saving grace they might have is that lion batteries die over time which is why Apple is quite adversarial with regards to users changing their batteries, but they are already losing that fight on multiple fronts.
Or other tablets. There's a lot of good ones out there, and they are popular enough.
Handspring and Palm sold millions of devices, and so did HP/Compaq, while Apple couldn't get traction earlier with the Newton. There's no real technical reason why the Newton was destined to fail, just as the other devices ascended and then fizzled out. There are network effects at work, society has to be receptive, and the price has to be acceptable.
> There's no real technical reason why the Newton was destined to fail
Which reinforces the survivor bias, doesn't it? Often the product theories are more "look I succeeded once, so I did it right and you should copy me" and less "I was at the right place at the right time, the technology was there and society was ready for it".
Sure, but is it fair to call something an unsuccessful product given an arbitrary caveat? With the caveat of "brushing my teeth", iPads and smartphones are a complete disaster.
I don't know the definition of a "successful product", but "selling billions of them every year" doesn't exactly sound like a failure to me.