I Love Design Compromises

It's not possible to make something perfect. This is especially true with hardware and software design, and I find it tremendously inspiring.

Which is not to say you should design something crappy and shrug it off.  But when faced with a tough decision, figure out where your priorities are and design towards them.  It's that simple.

This means that your lower priortity items (your "nice to haves") may not happen, at least not right away.  But that's ok if the sacrifice was worth it in order to achieve your high priortity features.

I am writing this post on my iPhone, which lacks plenty of features.  But the simple interface was a conscious design decision, not an oversight.

When they figure out how to incorporte cut/paste or "open link in new tab", I'll use them.  In the meantime, the iPhone's easy learning curve (despite being a completely new way to interact with a computer) owes a lot to these purposeful design compomises.