Apple’s Secrets Reveal Consumer Focus

A new book examines Apple from the inside out, revealing details about the company’s level of detail that continue to give it an edge in the market.

“Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired-and Secretive-Company Really Works,” by Adam Lashinsky, senior editor-at-large at Forbes, shares highly guarded secrets about the company’s development and design processes, as well as insight into former founder and CEO Steve Jobs, who passed away in November of last year.

Apple is notoriously private about its inner workings, but the new book provides a window into the company’s structure that shows it often sacrifices cost-effectiveness in favor of consumer preferences. That laser focus on what its customer desires, from circuitry to packaging, is why Apple retains such a loyal consumer base, according to Lashinsky.

For example, the book describes a closely guarded “Packaging Room” devoted entirely to device packaging. One employee reportedly spent months opening hundreds of prototypes to refine and perfect the consumer’s experience when opening their boxes for the first time.

“How a customer opens a box must be one of the last things a typical product designer would consider,” Lashinsky writes, “Yet for Apple, the inexpensive box merits as much attention as the high-margin electronic device inside.”

Further, product designers are given priority, and during a product’s development phase, they have no contact with Apple’s finance department. The system allows designers to focus solely on creating the highest-quality product without having to worry about financial limitations.

Lashinsky also reveals that shortly before his death, Steve Jobs met with Ren Ng, CEO of Lytro, which makes highly advanced cameras that create “living” pictures. Jobs previously told his biographer Walter Isaacson that he hoped to reinvent the photography industry, and Lytro could have been part of that plan.

With the company still building on Jobs’ vision after his passing, cameras will likely remain on Apple’s radar as it continues to push its devices into the market.

“Inside Apple” is sure to intrigue readers and industry insiders alike, and emerging companies will likely take note of Apple’s attention to detail and dedication to their customers.

Jobs’ vision continues to inspire new devotees each day, and as he famously said, “we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.”