I’ve given some thought to the Apple of old, circa 1976 to 1997, and the Apple we know and love today, run by a more mature Steve Jobs.

They’re much different. The products are different. The focus is different. Apple’s treatment of customers is different.

Sure, Kate. Things change, right? When Steve Jobs returned to run Apple (again) in 1997, Apple had products galore, none of them selling well. Printers, cameras, scanners, handhelds, and so many Mac models you could find them at Office Depot.

Today, Apple has, arguably, more products that matter. The Mac? It’s never been better, either technically or in popularity. The iPod? It rules media players as a product segment. The iPhone? Everyone wants an iPhone and it has shaken up the cell phone industry.

When was the last time that Apple made a major product blunder, either software or hardware? By blunder, I mean a dud, as in The Cube. Some would argue that the original candy coated clamshell iBook was a bad product, but Apple sold plenty of that model.

The original candy coated iMacs sold well. The MacBook Air has been dissected and prognosticated to death. Some raged about another Cube episode in aluminum clothing. Two months from launch the MBA looks like a hit.

Steve Jobs gave an interview to Fortune Magazine recently and he intimated that Apple does no product research. Since the effects of Steve’s infamous Reality Distortion Field can affect the truth, we may need to know what he means by “market research.”

Does it not seem odd that a company with so many products and with millions of customers does not do product research? Steve indicated that Apple simply makes products they like themselves. Perhaps. If there’s one thing to note about the New Apple, it’s their ability to be disciplined about products.

Back to the question: when was Apple’s last product blunder?

Apple, and notably, Steve Jobs, seems to have learned that they can actually learn something from listening to their customers. Is that action not a part of market research? Apple plans to put Microsoft Exchange access into the iPhone. That request came from customers and those who want to be customers. Surely, Exchange connectivity isn’t something that Apple’s employees, engineers, and designers “want”, right?

Apple has become better at making new products better than old products, rather than waiting for the market to tell them by having their customers buy someone else’s products. Apple killed the iPod mini in favor of the iPod nano.

Sure, there are Apple products many of would like that Apple doesn’t make. Yet. A mid-range MacPro would be nice. A tablet Mac or tablet iPad would be nice. But there’s a difference between a customers dream and what they’re willing to shell out money to buy.

Obviously, Apple listens to customers despite their inherent corporate secrecy and closed design and testing methodology. I don’t believe it when Jobs says the company does not do market research. I do believe it when he says they don’t bother to build a product for a market segment that doesn’t exist. Apple builds what Apple likes, so in that sense, Apple is customer #1, and a large portion of their market research is internal.

Did Apple build retail stores because “market research” indicated that they should? All the common wisdom at the time said, ”Don’t build a retail store.” Apple’s customers love the stores. The stores are highly profitable and will end up being textbook instructions on how to do it right.

From my perspective, Apple has learned how to listen. How to wait. How to let a market unfold. How to plan and execute, not on a quarter-by-quarter basis, the bane of most publicly traded tech companies, but with a world view that is years ahead.

A store for Macs? That’s nice. A store for Macs, portable music players and cell phones and software and immediate service? That’s a revolution. Did Apple learn how to do all that from their customers by using traditional market research techniques? Or, did Apple learn what to give customers by listening to the innate customer #1, themselves?

Sure, we can parse Steve’s terminology, but let’s just go with the standard approach that involves focus groups and such. Now, if Apple were to do that sort of thing, product information would leak. Badly. This is not what Apple wants.

Instead, we have a company that does less taking and more shaping. By looking at the products that exist and what those products fail to do, Apple builds into the market, living by the 30% rule (a product, in order to supplant a market segment leader, must be seen as 30% better than the leader). Apple makes something when Apple can outstrip the competition and build a development path that will keep it ahead. The iPhone is a great example, actually. People at the cellular service providers were talking a great game about how lame touch screens were, but now everyone is selling second-rate knockoffs that make ATM interfaces look sexy.

Anyway, as far as the original question goes, I have to go with the Cube. I had a Blueberry iBook, and it was great until the right hinge broke. It is still my desperation machine in case anything goes wrong with this iBook, and it still works great.

Apple might not do market research in the traditional sense, but yes, I do agree, they observe, note what is good, what is bad, and what is missing.  They often create a market that does not exist.  They listen to what people like and what they don’t like.  Steve made that clear when introducing the iPhone.  He talked about what people loved and hated about their phones, and he suggested that Apple could do it better.  Indeed, I believe they have, and I believe they do it consistently.  They think ahead like the world of technology is a cyber-chessboard.  Many people used to espouse the belief that marketing and pricing was what attracted customers and built companies, and innovation was nice in only an ideological sense.  Phooey, I say!  Funny how no one smirks anymore when I tell them I own a Mac, and oooh!  You’ve got an iPhone!  Can I see it?  Ahem, I’ll demonstrate…

I my job I get to see a few people a day (greeting people in a brokerage house can be that way). A few months ago a man came in with his iPhone—others have as well, but this one stands out—and looked up some information he needed for a form. I noted that to him, and he said that he had found, since buying it, uses that he had never considered. These were not, however, uses for a phone, or even the iPhone specifically, but uses for any device. When a single product can alter people’s lives by stretching beyond just the functions people want or expect and into the realm of what people had not imagined, that product has gone beyond the scope of what market research can even predict.

I think Apple does do market research in some sense, but the way many companies do would be counterproductive for them, in my opinion. Simply snaffling a group of people off the street and putting them in a “focus group” would be idiotic for a company in their line of business. Remember, 75% of the people they would be polling are the ones whose VCRs always flashed “12:00” because they couldn’t figure out how to set the clock!

Trying to get a consensus of only techno-geeks would be next to impossible, as you would get 10 opinions for every person involved, and if you’ve ever read some of these forums, a lot of these self-designated “tech-savvy” people are, well...to put it politely; nuts!

Then there’s the gauge of popular enthusiasm. I know car analogies don’t play well here, but the last time I heard of a car company being swayed to release a vehicle based on wild enthusiasm among their intended market (the Gen-Y crowd) at a car show, the result was the Pontiac Aztek. Need I say more?

I think the folks at Apple regard themselves as a good cross-section of the market, at least the early-adopter segment, and think that if they find a new product “cool,” for lack of a better word, so will enough people to get it launched in the marketplace. Of course, they have to then actually design the product, and see if it’ll work, and if they can sell it at a price anyone’s willing to pay. This process isn’t infallible, but I think it’s giving us a larger percentage of cool products than any “market research” ever will. Most people don’t know how to want something that doesn’t already exist. Science-fiction writers used to be the ones who created a desire for devices that weren’t possible yet, and then when the people who read about them later realized: “Now we can do it,” they did. In many ways, the realm of science fiction in the computer business has arrived, and we’ve gotten ahead of what people were able to predict beforehand. I look forward to some really amazing things in the next few years, and random polling of the general public isn’t going to give them to us.

One word PinPin.

The answer is boring, but it’s a little of both. iPhone exchange support was an excellent example of improving a great-selling product after listening to customers. On the other hand, Apple’s UI is largely the product of Steve’s dogged determination to do it right. With class. And that goes way back to the early Mac days. Before anyone could tell you how they wished to interact with a computer.

By the way, I was privileged to use a dell laptop the other nite, trying to access a file on our network. Usually works. This time it wasn’t (probably because we were on a deadline, which automatically triggers murphy’s law). Oh what fun it was to type in IP addresses and stare at one cryptic panel after another, clicking this button and that. The solution, it appears, is to do it over and over and over until it suddenly works.

Moments like that make me realize how important vision is in a company. Thank You, Steve Jobs & Apple.

Please excuse the post above. All capitalization and sentence structure errors are due to a lack of sleep. At least I didn’t throw in a bit about sniper fire.