Link: Erasing Complexity: The Comfort of Apple’s Ecosystem

Mar 24, 2018

Federico Viticci on macstories.net:

This shift didn't come out of nowhere. After a stressful 2017 that brought several new responsibilities in my life along with a persistent sense of overwhelmedness, I accepted the fact that I no longer tolerate any unwarranted friction in the technology I use. I understood that the busier I was, the less I wanted to remember the trade-offs I was imposing on myself by trying to fit ecosystems from competing tech companies around the iPhone and iPad.

iOS has long been my platform of choice. However, by a combination of curiosity and fear of missing out, I spent the past few years adding layers of complexity (in the form of audio gadgets, set top boxes, web services, digital assistants, etc.) that almost kept me from enjoying the technology I had.

Put simply: I tried too much, for too long, and it was time for a reset.

The whole article is very interesting to read as Federico picks the only three accessories he is willing to keep around after years of experimentations. I myself have been looking at those very three products with very high curiosity, being the ones that seem the most promising looking forward, the ones I would really feel the difference in my everyday life.

What actually caught my attention in Federico's article, is the quoted text above. Even if at a very different scales (very different scales), I myself had felt in a similar way. After years of experimenting for the sake of experiment, as available time got shorter, I found myself bothered by the complexity I had myself been accustomed to. And the reason I think this state of mind is useful, is that, beyond the tech writing-sphere, regular users do exactly this. They seek the path of least resistance, where everything needs not to necessarily be the best in class, but the most comfortable to use.

Those are the users Apple is targeting, with good reasons.

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