Well, okay, not easy to do, but easy to describe.

Be (A) the first company to (B) bring out a hardware product (C) targeted at the consumer market (D) at a price which is reasonable (not necessarily cheap), which (E) has integrated software, where (F) the software/hardware combination is easy to use for (G) tasks most people want to do and (H) for which the device is marketed, and which (I) does not require the owner to have any deep understanding of the technology. There. One sentence. Easy, right?

Apple is not always successful at this.

Let's take one of their successes first: the iPod.

Anti-Apple zealots like to carp about the iPod: "it's not the first MP3 player, so why do people act like it was revolutionary?" These people Don't Get It, with capital letters. The iPod was the first music device sold which eliminated practically all of the barriers to easy use. I can take an iPod and buy music without having to worry about it expiring on the device (that, as it turns out, is where the bar rests for public acceptance of DRM), I can load my existing CDs into it with a minimum of fuss, and tinker with playlists, and I never have to know anything (although I can if I want to) about file formats, filesystem structure, or DRM. I can make choices -- in fact, I have iTunes set up to use vastly different settings for CD import, I turned off video entirely, and I fiddle with track metainfo quite a bit -- but I don't have to make choices to use the device.

To Linux users, this is inexplicable. In Linux, you have to learn to get any value out of the system, and you have to make choices to get anything done (often because the defaults suck). These are considered virtues, and the iPod is actually considered inferior to some of the MP3 players which came before it precisely because the iPod is easy to use. In addition, Linux users get all upset because the iPod can't do [insert non-playback audio-related function here], while [insert pre-iPod device which sold fewer units by an order of magnitude] can do it, so the iPod is clearly inferior! But these extra features are irrelevant: people aren't buying iPods (pre-Touch, at least) for future expansion, they were buying them to play back music, something which the iPod is really good at doing.

(And then there's the fact that the iPod is closed-source, which also gets hardcore Linux users all upset. But strictly speaking that's not relevant to the question of whether something will be a success in the market, so we'll ignore that for now.)

To Windows users, this is also kind of perplexing. Don't Mac fans complain about copycat products? They do, that's true. But although the iPod was not the first MP3 player, it was the first one where the hardware became "invisible" because the software and interface worked seamlessly. By the time anyone else realized that the average person is willing to pay more to simplify the experience, Apple already had dominant market share.

Look at it this way: a person only has so much spare time, and only so much memory. Do they want to spend a large share of their time and memory on learning how to use a hard-to-use MP3 player, or to do something else? The overwhelming majority of the world wants to do something else, and they will pay good money to make the "hard-to-use" part go away. Only computer geeks -- who are a fraction of the market -- care about the implementation details on a consumer device more than about ease of use.

This is also why Apple's server hardware/software continues to fail in larger business markets: mid-sized to large businesses have people whose job it is to handle the rough edges of technology. That means the implementation details are more important than ease of use, and Apple's implementation details aren't good enough to justify switching. Only in the consumer market, where everyone is their own IT department, can ease of use win out over implementation.

Or take one of Apple's consumer failures: the Apple TV. It wasn't the first well-integrated TV device, and it doesn't do things that most people expect to do with video. (It can't record and play back, nor can it pass through video from another device.) The Apple TV has almost exactly enough of a user base that discontinuing support will be a PR disaster. At the same time, if Apple significantly improves the product's hardware, they will alienate almost all of that user base (because the existing units won't be able to use the new features) which will also be a PR disaster. From Apple's point of view, this is a huge failure. They're apparently hoping to ride it out until the thing is a zillion years old and all the owners have moved on to other products, so they can kill the thing outright.

I'm not sure about the iPad yet. It could be a failure, or it could be a success. (Apparently it's already sold out in preorder in Norway. Is that good or bad?) The thing is, if it's a success, it will be a success not because it's the first touchpad device -- because it isn't -- but because it's the first touchpad device which makes it easy to do something that other touchpads have not made easy. I don't see any tasks like that at the moment, so I'm inclined to think it will be a failure, but then I'm a techie myself, so just like everyone else I have a hard time figuring out what counts as "easy".

I have to compliment you. That's one of the most level-headed descriptions I've heard yet as to why each player in technology (Windows/Apple/Linux) succeeds and fails where they do. Usually you only get the fanboy 'X sucks/Y is the greatest evarzzz', but that actually nicely sums up what Apple does better than Linux/Windows and vice-versa.