What has made Apple more successful than Microsoft? It isn’t the hardware, the horsepower, or the technical specifications. It is the software— the user experience, the ease of use, and minimalist Apple approach.

Hardware has hit a ceiling

I think we’ve hit a hardware ceiling.

Cameras are already good enough. We don’t need any more megapixels, or better image quality.

Laptops are already good enough. We don’t need our laptops to be faster or more powerful.

Smartphones are already good enough. They are thin, light, and powerful enough.

Where is the next innovation?

There are only so few ways you can innovate on a digital device. You can add features, remove features, make it faster, smaller, bigger, or thinner.

What we need to do in terms of innovation is to improve the software — not worry about the hardware.

Focus on the software over hardware

I actually quite like the direction Apple is going with macOS and iOS. The iPhone’s design is probably not going to change much anymore, nor is the MacBook computers. But Apple has invested considerable resources in improving the user-experience of the operating system (software). They’re trying to streamline it, help sync all your iDevices, and simplify the process.

If you look at Tesla, obviously they’re innovating a lot of the hardware of the cars (electronic batteries). But I feel the biggest innovation Tesla is going to do is in terms of the software (self-driving cars).

How to apply this to our lives?

We think in order to become more innovative in life, we need to upgrade our hardware.

We try to upgrade our phones, laptops, tablets, cameras, cars, homes, and other pieces of “hardware.”

Yet, we should strive to upgrade our minds. Our creativity, our innovative ideas, our theories, concepts, or ideals. This is our mental “software.”

How to upgrade the “software” of your mind

We have all the hardware we need.

So how can we upgrade the “software” of our mind? Some ideas:

1. Simplify: What superfluous features can you remove? What complications from your life can you subtract? How can you make your mind run more “lean” — by removing certain “bloatware” software?
2. Sync: How can we get all of the actions of our life to sync more with one another? How can we have our work, personal life, and spiritual life be more in-sync? How can we stay consistent with all the changes in our life, without any duplication errors, or losing any data?
3. Intuitive: How can we make the software of our mind more intuitive? How can we make our ideas so simple that a baby or grandparent can understand?
4. Streamline: How can we better streamline the software of our minds? How can we remove “friction” from our creative acts? What mental roadblocks can we learn to remove, so our ideas flow more smoothly?
5. Linking hardware and software: Rather than totally dismiss the hardware, how can we link the software of our minds with our hardware (devices and things we own). How can we make the best out of the cameras we already own, to fulfill our creative potential? Rather than upgrading the processing speed of our laptops, how can we learn how to be more efficient with our work and thinking? Rather than needing to upgrade our smartphone, how can we upgrade our minds to become less distracted with notifications and superfluous applications?

The ultimate resource you have is your mind, ingenuity, and creativeness. Leverage that to the best of your abilities— and never blame your hardware.

Never stop innovating,
Eric

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