Still, even your explanation is wrong. There are obviously times when adding something is required. If a car with no engine, I need to add one. I can't simply remove a wheel.
OK, put a lawnmower engine in a Hummer... Now this simply becomes an exercise in requirements gathering. Because your retort will be the goal is this accerlation curve, this torque curver, this gas mileage, etc....
And this presumes that the requirements lead to perfection. What is the goal of the Mona Lisa or Dante's Inferno? Could Micaelangelo have done less to satisfy the requirements for the Creation of Adam?
Can you point to any value in that quote?
And let me extend my last question. How many things can you list that would be perfect merely by removing things? I don't think there are many. I suspect most things, that even accomplish a goal, lack perfection due to an array of things, not simply due to having too much of anything.
I suspect Google and Yahoo don't have the same goal. Otherwise Yahoo wouldn't put a link to mail.
But this is exactly the type of reasoning that this silly quote leads to. That simply having less makes something better.
Apple could easily make a computer with no keyboard, no mouse, no OSK, no visual display. Simply a touchpad, to input a binary code that corresponds to text and numeric output that corresponds to what color and x,y location to draw pixel. Of course, this numeric output would simply be a binary light. But that's just stupid.
The reason you add something is almost always because there is a goal that you'd like to accomplish. Yahoo probably thought you should be a click away from your email account. Google doesn't.
maybe another quote will help you understand the point
“I'm sorry I wrote such a long letter. I did not have the time to write a short one.” - Abraham Lincoln
The point isnt to have less, its to have as little as possible required to perform the function you want, anything extra is just extra mental energy required to be able to understand it.
Have you ever written something and then vastly reduced it because you realise you are conveying the same thing in different ways, or written software and realised you have made 2 ways to do the same thing? thats all it means.
I get the point, but it's a bad quote. Let me give you an example of a quote that is right on target.
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" -- Albert Einstein
Einstein captures the fact that you need to both add ("as possible") and keep simple. The original quote does not, although apparently some people have a preface to the quote that has a whole bunch of assumptions that make the quote work. I've never seen that preface.
It was Pascal who said that in one of his Provincial Letters. The quote is often misattributed to Mark Twain, Cicero, and others, but I've never seen it ascribed to Lincoln. Out of curiosity, do you remember where you heard that?
In other words "the key to perfection is to take a perfect item and remove things that cause it to no longer be perfect". Clearly I'm the only person who thinks this is just flat out dumb. Why would you ever say that to someone except to irk them?
That's like saying the key to being correct is to take your correct statement and not put the word "not" in front of it.
So yes, if you have perfection, actions that lead away from it are problematic. I find it idiotic that this would bear repeating, but I guess I have a low threshold for this type of thing.