When a product tries to do too much, it often sacrifices quality and reliability in the process.
In fact, as soon as you hear of a product doing more than one thing, you’re inclined to think it’s merely passable at one and pretty terrible at the other.
If I offered you a great sofa bed, you’d mentally prepare yourself for 75% of the quality of a great sofa, and 25% of the quality of a great bed.
The spork works the same way. It’s a passable spoon and pretty useless as a fork.
Both are convenient. Neither is excellent.
This is where companies like Google, Facebook and Apple originally excelled.
They built reputations by being great in a narrow domain.
Yahoo was 16 different things. Google had a search bar.
Myspace had music and videos, bells and whistles. Facebook had a single feed of your friends from college.
Samsung has phones that flip, fold, and expand to twice the size. Their flagship phone has five different cameras on the back.
Google’s Pixel 7 had two.
Apple releases features 10 years after Android does, but they tune them to perfection.
Apple's iPhone 12, 13, and 14 are almost carbon copies of the iPhone 4.
"Be the best for a certain group of people" - Rob Fitzpatrick
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