I just happened across this video with Apple’s new CEO and how Apple does things: https://youtu.be/4pqF5KMHOr8

He talks about a Steve Jobs story where he moved a piece of furniture and notes that the back, which would be against the wall, was still finished as nicely as the front, even though you’d never see it day to day.

He compares this to Apple products being beautiful on the inside as well as the outside. Even the cheapest products are like this.

There’s another story going around about the new guy, from his early days working on an Apple display. He was inspecting a supplier and discovered that the screws in the back had 35 grooves on the head versus the 25 specified. He ended up arguing with the supplier and making them fix it. Not because the grooves were core to the product, but because it’s important to get things right.

In short, craftsmanship. Build things well. Take care of the details. Make your stuff beautiful even if only a few people will ever see it. Even if nobody will ever see it.

Sure, an app maker could say, the Duo will be a small percentage of our user base, who cares if our app looks like shit to them. And quite a few of them will, I’m sure. And people will notice that these apps look and work like garbage on some of their friends’ and families’ phones. And this attitude will not confine itself to this one thing. These same app makers will say, who cares if this button is a little clipped. Who cares if the screen flashes during launch. Who cares if it takes five seconds to launch. Will we lose a noticeable number of users?

And that’s how we end up with legions of apps that are hot trash. Many of them will do fine despite that. My health insurance’s app is hot trash and they’re not losing me as a customer. But the company that makes the hardware and software their app runs on is way more successful than they are. Obviously a big part of that is down to what industry they’re in. But some of it is because Apple finishes the back of their furniture.