[bslatkin]

Can we stop perpetuating this myth please?

From http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/07/apple-reveals-for-mon...

""Apple is famous for eschewing market research and focus groups during the creation of new products. However, it turns out the company does research consumer sentiment on existing products in order to optimize future designs.

Apple conducts detailed, quarterly iPhone buyer surveys, according to a joint motion regarding the sealing of trial exhibits. "The surveys reveal, country-by-country, the factors driving customers to buy Apple products versus competitive products such as Android," court documents state. The results break down which demographics are most satisfied with Apple’s products, and how different demographics respond to different features. The results also show how consumer preferences differ country to country.

Apple is asking the results of these surveys only be shown to the jury when proceedings begin next week. Language in the joint motion states, "Knowing what Apple thinks about its customer base preferences is extremely valuable to Apple competitors because it would allow them to infer what product features Apple is likely to offer next, when, and in what markets."

[lloeki]

> "Apple is famous for eschewing market research and focus groups during the creation of new products. However, it turns out the company does research consumer sentiment on existing products in order to optimize future designs."

This is not antithetic: Apple is not surveying customers what they want next, but what is good or bad in the current products. Paraphrasing the Ford quote, Apple asks customers what they like and don't like with their current horses, not what kind of horses they want them to make next.

This is key to the "Don't ask customers what they want" argument (which is _not_ "Don't ask customers anything"): people don't know what they want, people have problems, and we are here to discover and solve those problems. Once faced with a properly designed solution, more often than not from the user point of view it will seem obvious in retrospect, so much so that it could be qualified as what they really wanted in the first place but didn't know they did.

> Can we stop perpetuating this myth please?

So the myth really is "Steve Jobs Never Listened to His Customers". He (Apple) did listen, but just ignored people telling him "I want this to work that way". Hence the shouts and tears when Apple regularly pushes new stuff down one's throat, bruising our hacker's analytical prides in the process.

[gfodor]

There is a difference between using focus groups to decide if you should build a phone with an entirely new OS for touch screens and using one to see just how badly people need copy and paste for v1.

[gdubs]

The Isaacson biography talks a bit about, if I recall correctly, how a lot of post-game analysis done on apple products is meant to institutionalize knowledge gained during the development process.

[mratzloff]

Please also stop perpetuating the fake Henry Ford quote about faster horses.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4877934

[aggie]

It's interesting to hear about the historical facts (thanks for sharing) but I have to disagree with your position.

The quotation is a concise and eloquent means of making a point about consumer opinion that is true in some cases, even if not in the historical case being exemplified. The historical accuracy is not important when it isn't integral to the argument being made.

I could make a similarly weak argument about your word choice: "quote" is a verb, "quotation" is a noun, but the use of "quote" as a noun is concise and communicates the intended meaning without causing any problems.

[mratzloff]

I get what you're saying, but the quote is always used as straw man shorthand for "consumers don't know what they want", which is not true now, nor was it true for Henry Ford. Perpetuating it is perpetuating a bad argument built on a falsehood.