When faced with a choice, we have to understand that Opportunity cost is a real cost. However, after a choice is made, we must try to free ourselves of the retroactive burden and move forward with acceptance and Wu Wei.

The way that Apple chooses to build their product ecosystem seems to prioritize interfacial simplicity for the user, and remove a lot of the burden of choice.

“It turns out that our mind-set about how to make a good decision is as important as which decision we make. It seems obvious that the best way to be happy with a choice is to make the best choice. Simple enough—except it’s impossible. You can’t make “the best choice,” because you can’t know what that best choice was until all the consequences have played out. You can work on making the best choice you can, given what’s knowable at the moment, but if your goal is “make the best choice,” you won’t be able to know if you’ve done it. Your inability to know that keeps you focused on whether or not you did the right thing, and keeps you rehearsing the alternatives not chosen: this is called agonizing. And all that rehashing drains satisfaction with the choice you did make and distracts you from getting energetically ahead on the choice you have made.” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)

A good description of Optimization and removing the burden of choice by Accepting your choices

The idea of removing the burden of choice is critical here, and I’m sure there are many interesting product applications of this.

Part of this is not only making actions effortless, but also removing the burden of choice from the user. Operating at the speed of thought includes not getting in the way of that thought with extraneous details or options. This means the user’s thoughts and actions are guided as much as they are respected.