Selfish Crab

So Apple has this thing about not releasing a product or product feature until it’s awesome. For example, iPhone didn’t have 3G connectivity until it was ready (it was a battery killer); there wasn’t a half ass cut and paste solution put in the original iPhone, until they figured it out and now cut and paste and selecting text is unchanged since it was released. And so every iPhone from original to 4S was just like the previous iPhone, except unarguably better. As a a result, 1) nothing is ever half-ass, or 2) every product feels unrelentingly improved and refined with each new version.

It feels like the company is actually trying to figure out THE solution, rather than just tweaking things for the sake of change (moving button placements, inflating screen sizes, yes I’m talking to you Samsung galaxy note). This might seems like an obvious thing for a tech company to do, but apparently not. Look at every point and shoot camera ever made. Every company has a million diffusion lines, e.g., canon sd110, s100, sd1100x, but can we say with any certainty that the new version hasn’t fucked up something from the previous version? Camera companies will constantly up the mega pixel count but that does nothing to image quality. Or in another example, a car model may vary wildly between years, e.g.,The 2009 Honda Civic was amazing, but then they decided to redesign in 2011 and now nothing is the same or even better. Call me crazy, but tech products should not feel like wine vintages, e.g., “ah yes, 2005 was a great year for Bordeaux and LG cell phones.”

Back to Apple. Whats interesting is what this feeling of constant refinement does to Apple’s branding and to customer’s expectations. I can’t tell you how many times someone turned me last winter and said “I can’t wait to get the iPad 3″, then an unreleased product. People just assume its going to be there and it’s going to be better than the iPad 2, which they already like, and somehow they have done the math, and the iPad 3 projects to cross some purchasing threshold for them.

There’s a weird side to these kind of expectations, as evidenced by the iPhone released in fall 2011. according to many accounts, this was the month that Apple “did not release the iPhone 5.” What does that even mean?? A product called the iPhone 5 does not exist, yet people have an idea in their mind already of what that product is, and were disappointed when Apple released a product called “4S” instead.

If you look at the new iPad ads and info, you’ll notice they don’t call it the iPad 3. Apple just refers to it as the “the new iPad”, perhaps to move away from version numbers and the discrete expectations they inspire in people. I wouldn’t be surprised if the future “iPhone 5″, if it exists, follows suit.

# 2012 Mar 8 • From the 'nerd' dept • apple marketing tech• #

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs’ joint interview at the All Things Digital conference.   Fascinating dynamics, and good history lessons from two landmark figures in personal computing. (2007).  An excerpt here, full video on official site:

Steve Jobs narrates Apple’s “The Crazy Ones” commercial, though a version narrated by Richard Dreyfuss was the one that aired.  (1997)

Going In-House at Apple with Steve Jobs’ Former GC (2011)-  retrospective from the point of view of Apple’s general counsel.  Of course I’m going to have a lawyer/IP angle on here.

“He had the ability to shut things out of his mind and just focus very narrowly on one specific issue. I often said that his greatest strength was his ability to say no. Because you can imagine that over the years, so many people came at him with ideas about one product or another,” Cooperman says. “He focused very, very sharply on making excellent products that people would love, and not doing lots of other things that would distract from that mission.”

An extended conversation with Woz – by Dan Lyons (2011):

What was Steve’s biggest strength?

Everyone else will say vision, and gosh darn that’s important but that doesn’t go anywhere without operational discipline. Steve once told me that Apple only lost money when they built junk. It was his focus on good products that I believe was the biggest thing. All we have to do is make great products. If you have a big market. Apple had millions of fans, such a huge user base. Another strength was that he came back and put together a new board of directors. He organized the company to have good tight controls. Watching everything he could — that is operational excellence. Lots of CEOs just look at little points of data and make a decision. Steve was so much more than that. It’s rare.

Steve Jobs Presents to Cupertino City Council (June 17, 2011).  In one of his last public appearances, Jobs presents plans to Apple’s new campus to the city council. I’m shocked at how old and tired he looks. (via Kottke)

And, finally, by far, my favorite thing I have watched all week, Steve Jobs’ closing keynote at the 1997 WWDC. Context: Steve Jobs had just returned via Apple’s acquisition of NeXT Computer and he conducts an hourlong Q&A session with Apple developers.  They pick his brain and through his answers, you can see every bit of Apple circa 2011 coming out of Jobs’ mouth in 1997.  Honest, elegant, well-considered answers from off-the-cuff questions.  Focusing is about saying no.  We have a unique opportunity because we control the whole stack.   Being overly proprietary is not necessary.

# 2011 Oct 13 • From the 'Links', 'nerd' dept • apple stevejobs• #

-I never understood the notion that Apple products are overpriced toys for the gullible and the fashionable. This seems naive to me. A computing product is not merely the sum of its parts, but how well they work together (ask anyone that’s tried to enable wireless on a laptop running Linux). You cannot disassemble an iPhone, add up the cost of each chip, motherboard, sensor, etc, subtract from the wholesale price, and call that the profit margin. Engineering and software are not free, people.

-It’s still impressive to me that Apple is a company that makes billions of dollars by designing and selling physical objects, and not just ads (Google), software (Microsoft), or assorted paper bullshit (Goldman Sachs), but honest to god real tangible goods.

- To a lot of people, well designed software is just about making it pretty. Apple shows us good design is actually about how it works.

- Is steve jobs really that great of a salesman? I have watched many of his keynote speeches; he’s not that great of a speaker. I always thought 99% of his job as salesman is done before he even walks onto the stage. That is, he always makes sure he is selling killer products. And he lets the products basically sell themselves. When you go to an Apple store, did the pimpled-face “Genius” convince you to buy a MacBook or did you just turn the laptop over in your hands 2-3 times, play with it for 5 minutes, and say “I want this”?

-The hallmark of a well-designed product is that they are the products of saying “no”. Apple goods are full of No. Someone in some Apple office raised a question, someone made a suggestion, someone disagrees, someone stays up all night to argue with someone else, hopefully ending in shouting cursing and tears, and someone makes a goddamn decision. And that’s why I like them. I want my products borne of contentious, passionate, decision making.

Apple products generally do not punt issues and say Aw let’s just make it a setting in the preferences panel and go home. That’s chicken shit stuff. And that’s why most open source software can be absolute dreck, because some amorphous group of developers continuously compromise until you have the lowest common denominator software with an ass interface. No one fights for the best design idea and wins.

To me, that’s what you pay for: For someone to figure out a best way to put something together, the best way it should operate. I am not buying something so I can be a fucking middleware developer just to be able to play music on my computer and watch videos of puppies.

I mean, it takes a great deal of conviction to say “fuck you mobile Flash sucks, no way we are allowing it”. It takes courage to say No. The coward’s way is to throw in every feature, no matter if it is terrible, just so you can get some checkbox in some feature list in some comparison chart.

And that’s why I have bought Apple products.

# 2011 Sep 6 • From the 'nerd', 'opine' dept • apple• 1

Steve Jobs made a rare appearance on the last Apple earnings call, and unleashed a torrent of opinions on his competitors.  My favorite line remains to be his thoughts on the value his company brings to customers:

In reality, we think the open versus closed argument is just a smokescreen to try and hide the real issue, which is, “What’s best for the customer – fragmented versus integrated?” We think Android is very, very fragmented, and becoming more fragmented by the day. And as you know, Apple strives for the integrated model so that the user isn’t forced to be the systems integrator. We see tremendous value at having Apple, rather than our users, be the systems integrator. We think this a huge strength of our approach compared to Google’s: when selling the users who want their devices to just work, we believe that integrated will trump fragmented every time. (emphasis added)

# 2010 Oct 25 • From the 'nerd' dept • apple• #

In case you missed it, Adobe Flash is finally available for mobile devices, four months after the release of the iPad.  For all that talk about Apple “blocking” Flash from the iPad (and Apple being a freedom-hating arrogant bully),  how do you “block” something that’s not available anywhere?

# 2010 Aug 24 • From the 'nerd' dept • apple facts flash ipad• #