Per Karlberg

bits and pieces

Shrink the Mac or enlarge the iPod?

Since the passing of Steve Jobs, I have, like I imagine many others, read a lot about him, his way of thinking, working and... succeeding.

It is only afterwards that I have understood just how truly amazing it was for anyone to come up with a product like the iPhone in 2007. And it is only with hindsight that we can see how it came down to a series of very hard fundamental decisions like the one below, and how Apple and Jobs must have aced pretty much everyone of them.

Around 2005, Jobs faced a crucial decision. Should he give the task of developing the device’s software to the team that built the iPod, which wanted to build a Linux-based system? Or should he entrust the project to the engineers who had revitalized the software foundation of the Macintosh? In other words, should he shrink the Mac, which would be an epic feat of engineering, or enlarge the iPod?

This was of course a reason why the iPhone could change the game so fundamentally. It was not a slightly smarter phone, it was a post PC computer in the form factor of a phone and hooked up to the cellular network. Nokia et al failed by definition since they started from the other direction and Microsoft had failed that "epic feat of engineering" many times over since they were not an integrated player like Apple.


The article where the quote is taken from is actually about another Apple executive, Scott Forstall. Well worth reading.

Scott Forstall, the Sorcerer's Apprentice at Apple
Businessweek

More Steve Jobs

An interesting piece in the New York TImes that gives some insight to how and why Jobs did what he did:
About mr. Jobs relationship to Edwin H Land, the man behind Polaroid.

“Dr. Land was saying: ‘I could see what the Polaroid camera should be. It was just as real to me as if it was sitting in front of me, before I had ever built one.’ And Steve said: ‘Yeah, that’s exactly the way I saw the Macintosh.’ He said, If I asked someone who had only used a personal calculator what a Macintosh should be like, they couldn’t have told me. There was no way to do consumer research on it, so I had to go and create it and then show it to people and say, ‘Now what do you think?’”
 
The worldview he was describing perfectly echoed Land’s: “Market research is what you do when your product isn’t any good.” And his sense of innovation: “Every significant invention,” Land once said, “must be startling, unexpected, and must come into a world that is not prepared for it. If the world were prepared for it, it would not be much of an invention.” Thirty years later, when a reporter asked Jobs how much market research Apple had done before introducing the iPad, he responded, “None. It isn’t the consumers’ job to know what they want.”        

...few people are expecting Polaroid to be the extraordinary scientific think tank, pumping out ideas and profits in tandem, that it once was — or that Apple is. Here’s hoping that Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s new C.E.O., is paying very close attention to the Polaroid cautionary tale.
 
Also worth reading is Eric Schmidt's note on the legacy of Jobs:

He was so passionate about object-oriented programming. He had this extraordinary depth. I have a PhD in this area, and he was so charismatic he could convince me of things I didn’t actually believe.
 
I should tell you this story. We’re in a meeting at NeXT, before Steve went back to Apple. I’ve got my chief scientist. After the meeting, we leave and try to unravel the argument to figure out where Steve was wrong—because he was obviously wrong. And we couldn’t do it. We’re standing in the parking lot. He sees us from his office, and he comes back out to argue with us some more. It was over a technical issue involving Objective C, a computer language. Why he would care about this was beyond me. I’ve never seen that kind of passion.

The era is over

Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

The Steve Jobs video in the post below is an interesting, not only because Mr. Jobs says a lot of smart things, but since it features a Steve Jobs that has been out in the wilderness and returned stronger and better than he was when he left Apple. It is a Steve Jobs that has had time to think and make up his mind about how things will progress - must progress. It is 1997 and he is still only an post-acquisition exit advisor but probably know that he will get a second chance at the weel. Here ate the end of the WWDC he gives us a glance at his map of the coming decade, when he would take Apple back to the front of the pack.

Another interesting video comes 10 years later. In is his appearance together with Bill Gates at the All things D conference (D5) he again beams of confidence and excitement. He has restored Apple computers (John Hodgeman's PC guy might be funnier than the Mac, but there was no doubt at this point which was the supperior UX and product. - I had just switched to Mac at this point btw.) and have enjoyed massive success with the iPpod. The launch of the iPhone is a month away and it is clear that Steve is confident that he has a winner. So in a sense this is the starting point of the post-PC era of Apple. The contrast between Jobs and Gates in storytelling ability and understanding of the role of technology outside technology becomes very clear.

Also in the same theme:
Jobs_and_gates