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By Dan Moren for Macworld
As tech gets more complex, the best tech stays simple
Easy is hard.
That’s been a tenet of Apple’s since its very earliest days, a sentiment expressed by Steve Jobs himself in a 1998 interview, shortly after he returned to the company: “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”
That simplicity is one reason that many of us became Apple converts in the first place, but the idea has always suffered from some tension. Because while easy is hard, “easy” itself is an ever-moving goalpost. Even though we get better at technology, technology gets more and more capable, which in turn requires even more simplification.
I think about this a lot, especially when I interact with people for whom technology isn’t second nature. It can be frustrating, coming from the perspective of someone who not only writes about technology but unabashedly loves gadgets and devices, who sees setting up wireless networks and home theater systems as a sport. But taking a step back, you realize that what it really means is that today’s simple just isn’t simple enough.