Hi Eric,
On 31 Aug 2009, at 17:03, j. eric townsend wrote:
Adrian Howard wrote:
And, a Todd says, if the majority of your customer base isn't
replacing batteries - is it customer focussed to add a feature that
they don't want or need?
If you take away the choice before they ever have it, how do you
know they want it? What if what the majority wants isn't actually
good, or is not good for the customer base as a whole? Is every
design nuance of the iPhone based on what the majority of the users
wanted or what Jobs/Ives and the bizdev people at Apple wanted?
I've no idea. Making assumptions either way seems premature. There are
costs as well as benefits to having a removable battery as I
previously mentioned.
The Android G1 has a battery that's easy to replace, which means I
can carry a spare on the road or buy an extra-capacity one. It's
an option I have, and there's enough people doing it that there are
plenty of aftermarket batteries available.
And that's great. If you are somebody who is on the road for extended
periods I can see that being an important feature for you.
I'm not. I've never needed an additional battery for my phone (which
isn't an iPhone :-) Never needed to replace it either.
The fact that I have a removable battery has only every been a problem
for me rather than a feature (accidentally become disconnected and not
charging, getting lost, separating and disappearing under the sofa
when I dropped it, etc.)
It doesn't make the phone any less reliable, I've dropped mine
plenty of times and it's never fallen apart. (It's certainly never
caught on fire or imploded or any such thing.)
But it is more complicated to design and build. Almost certainly more
expensive to build. Possibly larger. Probably more fragile than a
built in one.
(Just because your phone didn't break doesn't mean that over larger
numbers it's not an issue. The product designers I've talked to in the
past have all hated battery packs coz of the design issues I mentioned
before.)
There are also enough iPhone owners interested in replacing the
battery in their iPhone/iPod that there are outfits selling
replacement batteries and upgrade kits online.
Yup.
There are also people who sell extra battery packs to plug in to give
you an extended battery life. I don't think that means that Apple
should have made the iPhone twice as thick/heavy with a larger battery.
Is it customer focused to make it difficult for the user to change
the battery if the battery dies out of warranty and to make "upgrade
to a new model" the repair option? (And haven't we learn anything
from the planned obsolescence model of the US auto industry?)
It's certainly good business sense to make repair difficult -- when
the battery died in my 60G iPod, they wanted to give me %10 off a
new iPod if I'd "recycle" the old one. Let's see, I can pay $360
for the current version of my iPod that holds slightly more music or
replace a battery that probably costs $10.
Which is the better deal for me and which is the better deal for
Apple?
Of definitely a better deal for Apple there. Doesn't mean that it
isn't a better deal for the customer elsewhere though.
I'm really not trying to say that removable battery == bad. Or
removable battery == good. Just that there are costs and benefits. For
me (with my experiences of my built-in-battery iPod and replaceable
battery phone) the costs of removable batteries outweigh the benefits.
For you - the opposite seems to be true.
Who should Apple have designed for? No idea myself not having done any
research on the number of potential customers out there, what their
expectations are, what features they like/dislike, etc. Apple seem to
be doing pretty well with their choices though :-)
(BTW this whole discussion reminds me of the stuff Kathy Sierra wrote
about you only being in a good place with a product when you have folk
loving _and_ hating it http://is.gd/2Mxxm)
Cheers,
Adrian
--
http://quietstars.com - twitter.com/adrianh - delicious.com/adrianh
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