Steve Jobs Insult Response

Watch Jobs in his prime a year later describing his philosophy: ▶ this video I am very far from an Apple fanboy but gosh, this guy totally gets it.

Some good examples by Elon Musk and Steve Jobs described in this article. link This was probably one of Steve Job's most impressive example. ▶ this video

Jobs was all of that and more. Modern personal computing wouldn't exist without his insistence at making "Computers for the rest of us". There were many quite pissed at Apple for selling pre-assembled, ready to use computers. It was thought that unless you could assemble your machine you didn't deserve it. Heck you see a lot of that attitude today in many open source projects. And that's just one way he pushed modern computing into what it is today. Did he perform every detail himself? Nope - that would be absurd. But he took things that until that time no one else correlated, and he correlated and pushed for them. Often with amazing presence. And it wasn't willy-nilly, either. I mean just look at the way he handled this OpenDoc troll: ▶ this video How many can compose themselves and deliver that kind of a response that quickly? Not many. So yeah, those who try to dismiss Jobs as just a marketing or product guy are only displaying their profound ignorance. I don't think Jobs was perfect - far from it. But he certainly did make a dent in the universe, and many others too - perhaps it is a good thing that people like Jobs are pretty rare but there is no doubt we would all be a lot poorer if he hadn't existed.

I've been following Steve Jobs since I was a kid, about 30 years ago. Woz was more my hero then, but I read everything I could about Jobs even then, and ever since. I think Jobs transformed himself on a fundamental level. The young Steve seemed arrogant and self centered. Getting pushed out of Apple seems to have been a kick to the soul, and then in his 10 years away, he seems to have changed everything about him that was bad. Just check out how he responded to the insult given to him at the 1997 after WWDC session. ▶ this video Now that enough time has passed, all the people who were bashing Jobs from 1990-2011 are back bashing Jobs again. But I think these stories are the real guy. I was in his presence on a couple of occasions. You can fake some things, but its really hard to fake who you are. Everyone has their good and bad days... but one thing I can say about Steve, he was always genuine. Made him a great salesperson, too, cause even if he was wrong, he believed . So, I am grateful for these anecdotes. I'm eternally grateful for the 2005 commencement address. He was so private, and for good reason, and until the biography comes out these are some of the few views we have to him as a person. (I think the biography is going to be very revealing, and surprising when it comes out, since he's such a "control freak" but I think he didn't exercise any control, and people will be shocked.)

> But ultimately the people outside the company who said it was a poor move from a user POV turned out to be right. Survivor bias? I'm sure there were people outside the company who said removing the headphone jack was a poor move, removing the CD drive was a poor move, moving to Intel was a poor move, removing the HDMI was a poor move, removing the F-keys was a poor move etc. Eventually, some of those moves were reverted, some were not. Steve Jobs was exactly right: ▶ this video - you can please some of the people, some of the time. - some mistakes will be made along the way. That's good, because at least some decisions are being made - when we find the mistakes, we'll fix them.

It didn't help that Apple was broke and Steve was more focused on keeping Apple alive than funding pie in the sky initiatives that may or may not work out - as Apple continued to bleed money. A little of column A, a little of column B - in the end it didn't survive. But don't take my word for it - from the man himself: ▶ this video

Amen. Or as Jobs said, "You've got to start with the customer experience first and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out how you're gonna sell it" ▶ this video

▶ this video Transcription at: link > The hardest thing is, how does that fit into a cohesive larger vision that’s gonna allow you to sell 8 billion dollars — 10 billion dollars of product a year? One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it. I’ve made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room, and I’ve got the scar tissue to prove it.

I disagree completely. First, stop using the term "marketing" for "sales and advertisements". It is not. Real Marketting is "the study of the markets", that is, what people need or wants. Apple in times of Steve Jobs was amazing in Real Marketing. Apple created revolutionary new products like the mac, Ipod, Iphone, Ipad that sold (and curently sell) in the tens of millions each year. No other company has been able to do so at that scale. Lots of people wrongly believe that people is brainwashed to buy what they don't want or need, because they don't understand. They do not understand that it is the other way around. You design what is going to be sold like hotcakes. Because people want it or need it. It is not even a secret: ▶ this video By the way for a lot of years I wanted a laptop that was done in metal(instead of using plastic with flame retardants) and Apple was the only one doing it. With batteries that lasted lots of hours, lightweight, and silent. Those were essential for me as a traveler. People that could not understand would believe(because they did not have my needs) I was stupid for buying something 3x more expensive than a 3kgs crappy plastic laptop.

I find Solid incredibly interesting academically, and watch it with interest, but I'm sadly skeptical that it'll find traction— it requires both substantial development resources (as apps need to be rewritten to its standards) and a change in consumer behaviour. I'm reminded of this Steve Jobs response from WWDC 1997 [1]: > One of the things I've always found is that you've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it. And I made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room. And I got the scar tissue to prove it. The beauty of the implementation I described is that it could work with any existing (web) app with little-no development effort while leveraging affordance users already have from using Touch/Face ID to authenticate Keychain, Apple Pay etc. Until a proposal like Solid is widespread, I'd love for a browser/password manager vendor I trust (for me, Mozilla or Apple) to integrate with a privacy-forward email vendor for unique email addresses to provide a less 'fingerprinted' approach to auth, useful today with all legacy (web) apps. [1] ▶ this video

I appreciate the long response, and I kind of feel bad because I meant my question in a rather different way. And (assuming you even notice my response at this point) perhaps I'm going to take us down a road of talking past each other. My question is about incentives. An unchallenged organization, I would think, would have the tendency to perpetuate itself, and sing its own praises, and deem itself very important. Let me put it this way: The analogous question isn't what Microsoft does to maintain quality. The question is, how does the world at large maintain Microsoft's quality (and efficiency?). A decade or so of security embarrassments and OSX's and Linux's better reputation got them to step up their security game. Recently, Apple's design got them to step up their design game. If you asked a manager for a canceled project inside the company they might have a great process plan, a great argument for why they need more time and resources, and a great explanation for why they and their team are important. But they may have no sense of the needs of the outside world. This exchange between Steve Jobs and an (apparent) Apple employee highlights this mentality, vs the mentality of an entrepreneur who does respond to the outside world: ▶ this video It very well may be that the FDA does a fantastic job of filtering out bad stuff. And, as (I may as well come out and say it) a libertarian, perhaps I am guilty of not appreciating all the work that has gone into setting it up. But it doesn

And then ▶ this video Don't forget Cyberdog link You could drag and drop files into that browser in 1997! Sadly some Youtube videos are hard to find. Should be here somewhere link