(photo: business week)

From designer to marketing manager, if you're involved in product development you've probably been in one of those meetings where people are saying that 'our products should be more like Apple's'. Some even have the ambition to 'make an iPod-killer'. That seems like a laudable attitude, as Apple is setting the bar for the quality of user-product interaction. And it's doing pretty good financially as well. However, if you want to make a product like the iPhone, according this incredible background story in Wired Magazine, you should be willing to invest the following:

• roughly 150 million dollars;
• your top 100 engineers;
• 5 years of (top secret) development time.

And, personally I would like to add to that, that you might also want to consider whether you:

• have an almost religious user group;
• have control over the whole product system (including services, hardware, software etc.);

To name just a few things. You might want to bring up stuff like this, the next time someone proposes to make an iPhone-killer or 'be more like Apple' and is willing to put a dedicated team on it of - wait, here it comes - four people, and give them - yes - four months.