TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Marco Arment on Apple’s product design philosophy, while responding to Neven Mrgan’s thoughts on the Apple tablet:

Apple is incredibly good at designing products that we really want, even if we don’t recognize that immediately because we’re blinded by the past or obsessed with the wrong metrics.

That’s exactly right: Apple doesn’t create new products which fulfill exactly what customers are asking for. Apple creates new products which fulfill their vision of what the product should do.

They didn’t build a regular phone with an iPod built in; they built a pocket-sized computer with a touch screen and a completely new UI paradigm. They didn’t just build a 12-inch MacBook; they built a 3 pound, incredibly thin 13-inch notebook with one USB port, no ethernet port and no disc drive.

Apple doesn’t take user requests and make products to fit them. They take user requests and try to get to the core of what they’re asking for — the underlying concept — and then make it how they think it should be made.