Simplicity Is a Decision

The day Apple stopped adding—and started winning

In 1997, Apple was drowning in its own output.

Not because they weren’t shipping.
Because they were shipping too many things to too many people, with no clear center.

After weeks of product reviews, Steve Jobs finally snapped in a meeting. He grabbed a marker, walked to a whiteboard, and drew a simple two-by-two grid: Consumer / Pro and Desktop / Portable. Then he said, in effect: We’re going to make four great products. Everything else gets cut.

There was stunned silence.
And then—clarity.

That moment wasn’t “design.” It was decision-making under pressure. The kind that changes a company’s fate. As Isaacson recounts, Jobs framed it bluntly: deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.

That’s the core idea:

Simplicity isn’t a style. Simplicity is a decision.

Why simplicity feels hard (and complexity feels safe)

Complexity has allies.

• It makes everyone feel included (“we added your feature”).

• It hides uncertainty (“we’re covering every use case”).

• It buys time (“we’ll keep options open”).

• It avoids conflict (“we won’t say no yet”).

Simplicity does the opposite.
It forces you to pick a direction—and disappoint every direction you didn’t pick.

That’s why Jobs’ version of “focus” was never about saying yes louder. It was about saying no more often.

And yes—this is even more brutal in AI.

Because AI can do anything, teams start believing the product should do everything.

That’s how you end up with a tool that “works,” but doesn’t land.
And users don’t love “works.” Users love effortless.

The real definition of simplicity

Most teams confuse simplicity with minimal UI.

Jobs didn’t.

He pushed for deep simplicity—the kind that comes from understanding the underlying problem so well that the obvious solution appears.

That’s why Apple’s simplicity often came from removing things other teams would keep “just in case.”

Like the iPod interface: Jobs kept pressing to cut clutter and get to anything in three clicks.
Or the moment he suggested removing the power button—at first it sounded crazy, then it became inevitable.

That pattern is the blueprint:

Simplicity is subtraction guided by taste—backed by engineering.

The iWise framework: The Simplicity Decision Stack

When we say “simplicity is a decision,” we mean a chain of decisions that locks the product into clarity.

1) Decide the user

Not “everyone.” Not “teams.” Not “the market.”

One clear sentence:

• Who is this for—specifically—on their worst day?

If you can’t answer this, you can’t simplify anything.

2) Decide the job

What is the one job the product must do so well that users forgive everything else?

Write it like this:

• When I’m ___, iWise helps me ___, so I can ___.

3) Decide the no-list

This is where most products fail.

Make a list called:

• “What we will not build.”

If it’s not written, it’s not real.

Jobs didn’t rescue Apple by “innovating harder.” He rescued it by cutting to four priorities and refusing the rest.

4) Decide the interaction contract

For AI products, this is everything.

Define the rules:

• When does the AI answer vs. ask a question?

• When does it say “I don’t know”?

• What does “high confidence” mean?

• What will it never do?

If you don’t define the contract, the AI becomes a magician—then a liar.

5) Decide the “one-window” experience

Jobs once saw a cluttered proposal for iDVD screens, drew a rectangle, and reduced it to a single flow: drag video → click “Burn.”

You want that level of clarity:

• One primary screen.

• One primary action.

• One primary outcome.

Everything else is support—not the stage.

A true test: could you explain it on a whiteboard?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

If your product can’t fit on a whiteboard, it’s not a product yet.
It’s a negotiation.

Simplicity is the moment you stop negotiating.

The AI trap: “We can do it” becomes “We should do it”

AI products are especially vulnerable to feature creep because capability expands daily.

So the decision must be stronger than the capability.

At iWise, the goal isn’t “AI everywhere.”
It’s AI where it removes friction.

If AI doesn’t make the user feel:

• faster,

• calmer,

• more certain,

…it’s noise wearing a futuristic costume.

The 30-minute exercise that saves months

Do this with your team:

The Simplicity Cut

1. Write your product in one sentence.

2. List your top 10 features.

3. Cross out 7.

4. For each of the remaining 3, write:

   • “If this disappeared tomorrow, what breaks?”

If nothing breaks, it’s not core.
If everything breaks, you found the product.

That “slash the list” move is exactly how Jobs ran prioritization at Apple—push to 10, cut to 3.

What simplicity gives you (that speed never will)

Simplicity creates:

• alignment (teams stop pulling in different directions)

• quality (your best people aren’t spread thin)

• brand (users can finally describe what you do)

• trust (the product behaves predictably)

• momentum (because the next step is obvious)

And it creates something rarer:

Taste at scale.

Closing: the decision is the product

If you remember one line, make it this:

Simplicity is not what you ship. It’s what you refuse to ship.

That’s how products become iconic.
That’s how companies become inevitable.

And that’s how we build at iWise:
less noise, more signal—until the product feels like it was always supposed to exist.

FAQ

What does “simplicity is a decision” mean in product design?
It means simplicity comes from prioritization—choosing the user, the core job, and explicitly rejecting everything that distracts from it.

How do you avoid feature creep in AI products?
Define an interaction contract (what the AI will do, won’t do, and when it should ask questions). Without boundaries, capability turns into clutter.

Why did Steve Jobs focus so much on simplicity?
Jobs believed deep simplicity required hard thinking and focus, and he repeatedly pushed teams to eliminate unnecessary components and screens.