> The biggest commercial success is not the best technical design: Nokia N95 versus the first generation iPhone

That’s not a good example. Neither is Beta vs VHS. The most they illustrate is a different law I am coining right here:

Canyon’s Law of Design Optimization: you will inevitably choose to optimize for different metrics than your customers would wish. Don’t try to convince them they are wrong.

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jltsiren 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's not a good example, but for a different reason: the N95 outsold the original iPhone.

The original iPhone was a promising proof of concept. It got the form factor and the interface right, but the actual device was underwhelming. It had no 3G, no GPS, no third-party apps, and a weak camera. iPhone 3G added all the features competitors already had (apart from a good camera) and became a much bigger commercial success.

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elzbardico 13 hours ago | parent [-]

The N95 outsold the IPhone because it had a good camera and was cheaper, and got even cheaper with the phone companies subsidy.

But I'd be surprised if Apple didn't have a beefier profit with the IPhone compared to Nokia with the N95.

	▲	Tuna-Fish 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They definitely didn't. Apple was starting from scratch in the market, and the original iPhone did a whole bunch of things it shouldn't have, making it needlessly expensive to build for the hardware it included. This is partly why Nokia initially dismissed it, as soon as it was on the market, teardowns showed that it was basically an amateurish prototype that was pushed to production, internally much worse than you'd expect from a mature company that was used to building consumer electronics. The N95 could be sold for less because it was legitimately a lot cheaper phone to build. Then only a year later the iPhone 3G came out, and it was a rough wake-up for Nokia. Because that one was actually a well-built sane design.

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JKCalhoun 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I had to look up the N95. Yeah, Wikipedia goes to pains to rattle off things that made it better than the iPhone, but then I looked at a photo of the device and it was clear why the iPhone "won".

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canjobear 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This was the (juvenile) nerd take back then https://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=iphone/

(Nokia E70 not N95, but still)

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pfisherman 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I has a Nokia N95. The phone itself was great. The problem was the dearth of apps. Nobody developed anything for windows mobile OS. Maybe Ballmer was not so crazy when he was running around on stage screaming “Developers, developers, developers”.

	▲	Tuna-Fish 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		N95 didn't use Windows mobile. It used Symbian, and the reason there were so few apps was that the development experience was downright horrible.

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JumpCrisscross 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> That’s not a good example

It’s a great example. One can list a litany of technical specifications on which the N95 is superior. That, however, doesn’t make it a superior product.

	▲	gcanyon 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"technical design" vs. "technical specs" I think we're in violent agreement.