When did companies stop listening to their customers? Companies and fanboys often quote Henry Ford by saying, ““If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” The first problem is that there is no evidence that Henry Ford ever said this. And second, it’s dead wrong. The reality is that Ford actually did give his customers what they wanted: cheaper, more reliable, and faster transportation. In essence, if people wanted a faster horse, Ford delivered the fastest horse around, albeit in a metal box.
Take Apple for example. Over the years, its customers have begged for better battery life. Instead, Apple removed the headphone jack leaving subpar Bluetooth as the only means to listen to music. When it’s customers begged that they put the headphone jack back in, they removed the fingerprint sensor. Their customers asked that they make the phone thicker to remove the camera bump (it was getting scratched too easily), Apple made the camera bump even bigger. When fans asked to make it more durable, Apple made it entirely out of glass. When frustrations were made about design, Apple added a gaudy notch at the top. When consumers asked for a cheaper iPhone, Apple bumped the base price to $1000.
“Well, then don’t buy it,” some may say. The problem is, if you’ve bought into the Apple ecosystem, it’s very difficult to leave. The Great Wall of Apple means that none of the services that you’ve invested thousands of dollars into will work on anything other than an Apple product. This means that if you want to jump ship, you’ll have to accept the loses that come with it. Additionally, Apple has successfully fostered a culture where, if you leave, you’ll be mocked and ridiculed by your friends and family. All of that pressure amounts to one thing: Customers don’t matter.
There’s nothing you can do to change the system. In that world yo, just resign yourself to the fact that you have to live with the hand your dealt. You give up and spend the $3000 that’s required for you to be all in with the new iPhone. If you don’t, your experience will be subpar. Apple knows you’ll do it. They have more money than any company in the world and they truly don’t care what you think. They don’t want to make your life easier, they want to make more money. Knowing that you can’t leave, they remove ports and make changes forcing you to give them even more money just to be able to use their system in a way that doesn’t make you want to jump off the nearest bridge (Good luck with that as Apple Maps will probably send you to a beach instead). You have to buy the dongle to listen to music. You have to buy the adapter to charge your phone quicker. You have to pay for Apple Care so that you don’t break your incredibly fragile device. You have to pay just to use the thing you just paid for.
It’s not just Apple. When Samsung released Bixby, all of their fans asked Samsung to allow the Bixby button to be changed to Google Assistant. People wanted the option to choose. Instead, Samsung gave you the option to turn it off, but no ability to remap. Samsung doesn’t care about their end users, they want to make money on their own assistant. Sony removed all of the headphone jacks from their new devices since they have the largest chunk of the headphone market (An thusly can sell more wireless headphones). Google created the Pixel 2XL and marketed their new wireless headphones. No one asked for wireless headphones, but Google removed the jack to sell their product. The problem is, their headphones are terrible. Every review says the same thing. Google Home was made to control your home, but everyone already had that on their phone. No one asked for Google Home and, once the novelty wears off, everyone will realize that they never wanted Google Home either.
If Henry Ford had followed Apple’s model, he would never have made a car. He would have made a park bench. While customers wanted faster transportation, he would have taken their wheels away and told them it was better to sit and relax. He would have built a wall around the park so that no one could leave. Then, driven by the need for comfort, the prisoners would have had no choice but to buy more benches. Vindicated by bench sales, he would make better benches to sell and tell the world, “See, my customers didn’t know what they wanted.” The problem is, we still want faster horses. We’ve just resigned ourselves to the whims of manufactures with our only hope coming when they announce a new device, “Maybe this time they’ll have listened!” Only each time we see a new iPhone, we’re painfully reminded that, truly, no one’s listening.
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