Mike Cane
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 18 months, 2011–2022
5:18 · 11M views · Jun 9, 2011
A clip from Steve Jobs's 1997 WWDC session, in which he answers a hostile question from an audience member about Apple killing OpenDoc. He says to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology, and that saying no is part of focus.
Commenters link it as a canonical statement of Jobs's product philosophy and as an example of handling an insult calmly and articulately.
20 comments from Hacker News
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.
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.)
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.
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
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