How Google Docs Proved the Power of Less

You’ve felt this, right? Whenever we sit down to create something digital, we now have nigh-infinite storage space, massive amounts of processing power, free trial-periods for design software, and more. It leads to the “paradox of choice”: We wind up feeling not creatively free, but creatively  stuck.  When you have too many options it’s

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75% of the actions someone takes in Word fall into basic categories like formatting and file management. We focused our features on those areas so every user could benefit from them. When we examined how features actually get used, we also saw some that aren't used by as many people but for those who do use them, they use them a lot. That told us t

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In the late 1970s, Jef Raskin, a pioneering technologist who was one of Apple’s earliest employees, sketched out a radical vision for the future of computing.

Computers, he argued, should work like home appliances. The ideal computer would require almost no learning curve or upkeep. You wouldn’t have to upgrade its operating system, say, or install ... See more

Handwriting recognition software had to recognize a wide variety of writing styles. That necesssarily required complex code. And at the time even the best handwriting software—the software in the Newton was state-of-the-art—was not very good. Palm decided to reverse the logic. Rather than having software learn how to recognize people’s handwriting,

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