Pay for Quality

March 22nd, 2010

James Surowiecki on Apple and the iPad:

But it’s also a more fundamental gamble; namely, that people will pay for quality. Starting at five hundred dollars, the iPad is significantly more expensive than its competitors. But Apple’s assumption is that, if the iPad is also significantly better, people will happily shell out for it (as they already do for iPods, iPhones, and Macs). That’s why when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPad he said that, if a product wasn’t “far better” than what was already out there, it had “no reason for being.”

That’s the only kind of company I give a damn about. Unless a company’s goal is to make something amazing, and that motivation to do so is a deeply emotional one, I couldn’t care less what they’re doing.