★ Want to beat Apple? Make it simple.

The Apple logo is a simple grey Apple silhouette with a bite removed, the iPhone is a lightweight device with only a single button on the front and Mac OS and iOS are no-frills effective operating systems that fade away when you’re using the current application enabling work to get done easily. It would seem that everything that Apple does is simple and I believe it’s why the amount of people talking about Apple has stayed the same even when sales were low. It’s easy to look at Apple today and claim that Steve’s product genius and his concept of the iPod and iPhone are credit for how things got to this point. Anyone could say that Apple’s supplier contracts and retail presence are why Apple has such high margins in their sales. It’s easy to say Apple’s customer support is just that good. It’s really none of that.

Why aren’t there more books on management tips that directly pull from Apple’s playbook? It is complicated and book-worthy to discuss how Microsoft and Amazon got to where they are today but, with Apple, you simply have to take away everything that doesn’t make sense in order to achieve their success. Apple keeps it simple.

Sure, anyone reading this that doesn’t like Apple will say that this is a fanboy’s excuse for why we only have 2 USB ports on our laptops and the only color choice is aluminum when it comes to buying an iPad but this isn’t about the products. It is the fundamental policy that’s ingrained at each step of Apple’s process. Hiring, development, marketing, production and the customer experience when they call tech support is simple with everything removed except what is essential and yet the amount of companies that get this are so few and far between.

I think all of us laugh when Jonathan Ive introduces a new product and pauses to say, “to create something so beautiful, so magnificent, we had to forget everything we knew about mobile phones.” Yeah, it sounds a bit too much but the more I use non-Apple products, the more this becomes obvious. From September to January, I didn’t own a Mac and my iPhone and iPad weren’t synced for months and were both stuck back in the stone ages of non multitasking hell. I was still loyal to Apple but my primary computer became a Dell running Windows and I moved from a city with public transit to a 30 minute commute to work. My morning routine involved an old fashioned alarm clock, a Comcast DVR box for recording television shows and an FM radio for my drive to work. The experience of becoming non-Apple for 6 months has made me grateful for the ability to have Apple products in my life again. In coming back to the Mac world, I’m realizing that they’re so simple and yet no one else has come close.

One day, I spent 30 minutes wondering why Windows said that I didn’t have a wireless card installed. I checked Device Manager, ran checks, disabled and enabled hardware and reinstalled drivers only to learn that there was a button on the right side of the computer that enabled or disabled the Wi-Fi card to save power. I wondered why my Dell LCD display kept flickering and it turns out that there is a display compatibility issue with my brand of laptop   a DisplayPort spec not being in sync. Suddenly, my external speakers began making a whining sound and I learn there is an issue with non-grounded power connections and that I need to pick up a 2 to 3 prong converter and plug the speakers directly into the wall and not into a surge protector. After going through 2 hours of setup to get my favorite TV shows setup on the Comcast DVR for recording, a power failure had me lose all of my work. Why wasn’t this being saved along the way? A call to tech support for any of my non-Apple electronics always left me going through 5 different people and eventually sent to a page explaining my issue with a download of some sort to fix it or having to scan through a 200 page PDF that covers all issues just to find the one I was having.

The simple truth is that us Apple users take for granted the simplicity of our machines. The fact that we sometimes pay a bit more for our hardware is overwhelmingly offset by the fact that we have an easier experience with great customer support by way of forums, web support, a phone call or a local Apple Store to get our problem fixed. The joy of going to one company for my phone, tablet, laptop and desktop no matter if it’s a software or hardware issue is an advantage that not many consumers have.

If you’re an electronics company that wants to beat Apple, start by simplifying everything. Simplify your headcount, your processes, your marketing and how you build products. Take away each feature you don’t need and don’t bother replacing it with something else. The day you can simplify your entire company to what is absolutely essential is the day you’ll have a chance of beating Apple. If you are a consumer electronics company selling 40 types of TVs that have model numbers like JDX-4x817Q, you have a lot of work to do.

Of course, it’s the people at Apple that make the difference so, you may want to convince a few of them to join your teams but I have a good feeling that won’t be easy.