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John Gruber asks:
Gall’s law raises hard questions. Where do you start? How small? How simple? Where do you draw the line between simple enough to make it work and complex enough to be interesting? That’s the magic.
Well, the answer is just so simple:
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery
To improve on that, I’d say when you develop software (or anything really), make it as simple as possible to you while still keeping it useful to you, so that you’re left with the very core of it. Then submit it for others to use it, and the rest will just flow naturally for you to improve it for the next iteration.
Take note that use is context dependent here: it does not have the same meaning to a user (who is interested in applications) than to a developper (who is interested in the platform, framework, APIs and whatnot).
And that’s exactly what Apple did with the iPhone.
That’s how they laid out a wonderful platform and minimalist apps on 1.0. Then they moved on with a fantastic framework and the App Store for other developers to use it on 2.0. Now they move on to improve every part again, including the apps, for 3.0.
The impressive numbers given at the 3.0 keynote are just a consequence of this successful development pattern.
