The rise and rise of products like Apple’s iPod and applications like Firefox and Flickr have gotten me thinking. What do those products have in common?
Simplicity. They aren’t bogged down with hundreds of options and all provide a basic service that people want and provide it well. Flickr is possibly an exception as once you start digging it can be very powerful and complex, but if you just want to upload some snaps and share them with friends it is simple.
So, is the popularity of these products down to their simplicity? Are we all just sick of bloated software that takes minutes to start up, and has hundreds of features we never use? Are we sick of the latest gadget that now has “67 brand new features” that just make accessing the basic functions twice as hard?