Designer's Digest - Steve Jobs on the role of product and marketing people.

They boost the share price for a while, but then the competition takes over. Steve Jobs has the best explanation for this. ▶ this video

> resource curse, where countries with rich natural resources are prone to foundering Steve Jobs calls this out wonderfully here: ▶ this video > [...] the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies. Like, oh, IBM and Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or a better computer. So what? When you have a monopoly market share the company's not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people. And they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. [...] the product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to the monopolistic position gets rotted out. By people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers.

▶ this video Steve Jobs talking about Apple of the future. (His comments on product people running a company vs sales)

I doubt it. For one thing, the ergonomics of an "orb" are horrible. This is a solution looking for a problem and seemingly designed by people who took the wrong lessons from Apple's success. Incidentally they have a typo in their announcement page[1]. > The Orb is the incluse[sic], secure and anonymous device that enables World ID holders to verify their humanness and uniqueness. I assume "incluse" is meant to be "inclusive". But what's "inclusive" about letting a startup with foggy monetization plans collect everyone's biometrics? Sounds like bullshit. [1] link Edit: I'm reminded of this old clip: ▶ this video From all external appearances, "World" is being run by sales and marketing people from its inception.

Apple has had no problems with providing their macOS libraries, tooling, and associated updates for free, even with a drastically smaller user base, and it appears to have been sustainable for decades. The truth of the matter is Apple would almost certainly continue to do offer their iPhone services, updates, app store, etc; even if they were statutorily prohibited from making any money off of any of it, because in the end it makes for a better user experience and helps them differentiate and sell their phones at a premium. What is happening, is the more financial-minded types within Apple have realized they have substantial lock-in and market power, and they can leverage it to take a % of profits from other market entities. If you actually care about Apple products, and want them to continue to deliver great products well into the future, then the best thing that could happen would be for them to get the message and accept a loss in this battle. Otherwise you will see increased financialization continue until they are thoroughly hollowed out of great product/engineering culture, and collapse under their own weight, like so many before them. ▶ this video

They hired people who introduce Jack Welch methods. This is like in that Steve Jobs video about product people being kicked out and exchanged by ones who dont care about product: ▶ this video They will not make good search. That is not their priority.

Reminds me of the interview with Steve Jobs where he talks about large companies not caring about product because of their market position. Soon all that really matters is sales and marketing, so all the people that were good at making good products leave or get drowned out by bad decisions ▶ this video

The vibe I got reading Tim Cook wasn't involved: ▶ this video (wasn't expecting him to be because he's an ops/logistics guy, but that bit was a bit alarming).

Think of why the iPhone existed in the first place. It was because Jobs saw the writing on the wall and knew that cell phones were bound to destroy the market for the iPod, Apple's moneymaker. Before making the iPhone, he made the Rokr and Jobs threw massive amounts of resources into the iPhone at large risk to Apple. He bought up the patent for multi touch back in 2005. I honestly think people overlook this aspect of Jobs leadership, basically from the time he returned on Apple he doubled down on mobile computing repeatedly throwing 50% of Apple's marketing budget into the unproven iPod for instance. Why was Jobs able to see the writing on the wall and not Intel? I think Steve Jobs himself said it best: ▶ this video Intel itself was NOT totally blindsided by the mobile revolution. Intel Atom development started in 2004. Intel Atom could have dominated the market. There were Intel Execs pushing Atom. But all the R&D was pumped into the desktop and server business, the quality silicon was reserved for the desktop and server business, Intels execs didn't want these inexpensive chips for what were presumed to be peoples secondary computers to cannibalise its expensive desktop and server chips, and the strategic vision was simply bad. You can apologise for it but the mistake may have doomed the entire business and plenty of companies did not make the same mistake. Intel wouldn't even exist if they didn't already make such a shift away from the memory market into the microprocessor mar

"If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful." - Steve Jobs ▶ this video

Yeah, effectiveness is something too in monopoly tech firms. The Mythical Man Month link Steve Jobs on product dev vs marketing teams ▶ this video

This reminds me a lot of the Conflict vs Mistake framing[0] which is expanded on by his Tragedy of Legible Technique article[1]. It also reminds me a lot of the Steve Jobs Product vs Marketing clip[2]. > When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does. That means she's trying to solve a harder problem than Zvi is, and it makes sense that sometimes, despite having more resources than Zvi, she does worse at it. It seems to me like the issue is actually in rent-seeking, where the more rent-seeking you have available, the more the marginal mistake person converts into a conflict person. In a world of perfect competition there would be no room for conflicts, and only once you have freely available rents does the land-grabbing phase begin. When your rules are written by the conflicters, for the conflicters benefit, it's already to late. They'll certainly never compromise on the simple correct path. [0]: link [1]: link [2]: ▶ this video