I would argue that this is an approach that works only in mature consumer products.
Ask a 50+ iPad/iPhone owner what they love about their smart phone or tablet and you will find that ease of use, ease of seeing and low threshold of understanding (or the illusion of) is 90% of the experience.
Conversely, the early adopter/tech-savvy market despises the 'training wheels' that come with a lot of 'farmville' products.
Design your product for the market you are targeting.
How can you argue that it only works in mature products? The point was about revolutionary rather than evolutionary change.
Or am I missing what you mean?
When the market is mature, there will be a lot of competitors. Incremental/evolutionary change therefore doesn't reap big rewards.
If you want the big rewards, you've got to identify a new and radically better way to let the customers achieve whatever it is they're trying to do (in service of which they're buying the products currently on the market). Then you get to invent a new product category that is so obviously useful to people that they'll pay big bucks for it.
(Random anecdote: last week I was on a trans-Atlantic flight. (Premium economy, not economy.) Looking left: guy in the seat to my left had an iPad. Looking at my own lap: an iPad. Looking to my right: another iPad. I reckon of the 7 seats in my row, 4 or more were occupied by travellers with iPads. The iPad might not be a Mac/Windows/Ubuntu PC replacement, but as a gizmo for keeping the long-haul traveller entertained in flight it rocks. But if you'd asked most of those travellers what they wanted for flying a couple of years ago, they'd probably have said "a laptop with a longer battery life".)
I think that your agreeing with me, but do you know what SODaniel is meaning? Is his/her argument that Apple exploited mature markets? I'd like to understand that idea. Is it somehow meaning that Apple products are for 50+ year olds? That's pretty much the opposite of who I see using them, but that's just anecdata.
Ask a 50+ iPad/iPhone owner what they love about their smart phone or tablet and you will find that ease of use, ease of seeing and low threshold of understanding (or the illusion of) is 90% of the experience.
Conversely, the early adopter/tech-savvy market despises the 'training wheels' that come with a lot of 'farmville' products.
Design your product for the market you are targeting.