One of the most defining Steve Jobs quotes, from WWDC 1997. This is how Apple works, and I mean all of Apple: from all the way on high, down to very low and disparate parts of the company.
Naomi Dunford with a deeply concerning update on recent events:
While this is a tragedy against womens’ rights, this is pretty normal stuff online. You should have seen what happened when I made the front page of Digg, back when people used Digg. Owwie.
But I was okay with this, because I have a strong support network, and when I chose this path, I had a fairly clear idea of the consequences. I chose to be a semi-public figure.
I just didn’t expect the death threats.
The lynch mob Dunford describes should be brought to justice, and all participating members should be put in jail.
There is one tangential thing I want to point out though. Dunford writes:
Hate bloggers claim innocence because they are acting within their First Amendment rights.
I know that many Americans want to justify their hate crimes and hate speech as being protected under the First Amendment, but, whilst it (concerningly) will rarely—if ever—be enforced in the USA anymore, free speech does not actually protect against neither hate speech nor death threats. These are crimes; yes, even under American law hate speech is a crime. But people are getting away with them because even politicians in this country commit this crime. Some on a regular basis. But here’s a simple fact to remember: the freedom of speech is not absolute in any nation on Earth.
I was at Apple for three years, never in a high enough position to have a close or particularly personal encounter with Steve, but at every opportunity there ever was—be it public or internal at Apple—I observed him closely to try and learn more about who he is, what kind of man he is and what makes him tick.
These are a few of the key moments of Steve that I’ll never forget; these are the moments that make Steve Jobs the great human being that he is, to me.
Resting his head
There is something very profound about this photo, taken by Lea Suzuki for The Chronicle right after the WWDC 2011 Keynote. Very few of us know what it was like for Steve to participate, even less so what went through his head after it was over. Did he suspect it might’ve been the last time on stage for him, or was he merely tired? Regardless of his thoughts, this moment shows him not as the indomitable businessman which we usually think of, but as merely a fatigued human being who loves his wife.
Macworld 2007: the launch of the iPhone
There are so many choice moments during this world-changing keynote event, but here’s the one image I can always bring back from memory. In unusual fashion, Steve’s entire family was present at the front row for this keynote, and just after he finished showing us all how Apple would change the world forever, he smiled the most genuine, happy, fatherly smile to one of his daughters. She was proud of him, and he was proud to have been able to finally share his life’s greatest work (up to that point) with his own family. In that brief moment, technology and products and Apple clearly came second-place for Steve.
Soccer practice
Is it unusual for a father to attend a daughter’s soccer game? No, not at all. Not even for Steve. Of course, Steve had to make a call as he watched—using an iPhone that, at the time, was still a never-released product. The tech world was all abuzz over this rare double-sighting in the wild, Steve and iPhone. But what stood out to me was the simple fact that he took the time to go see his daughter’s soccer game. Family has always seemed incredibly important to Steve, and this tiny example reaffirmed that.
Grace
Town Hall meetings with Steve were always a fun event: he’d go over how Apple was doing (consistently, things were even much better than the prior time), and then all employees would be given the chance to ask him, Tim Cook and Phil Schiller a question. I hope the three of them will forgive me for sharing this one anecdote.
One poor fool, a relatively new employee, had the lack of insight to complain about not being paid as much compared to people at other big corporations. Whilst every other employee in the entire company was burying their face in their hands in awkward embarrassment, Steve simply remained calm and graceful—and quietly bemused—and waited for the fool to finish. Steve then quipped that perhaps the guy should ask his managers why they thought he wasn’t worth being paid more, and moved on to the next question.
Of all the CEOs to ask for a raise…
“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.”
While by no means a pleasant memory, it’s one I’ll never forget just the same. It was a few months after MobileMe’s launch, and I’d just joined that product group two months before it. We were all called in for a meeting with Steve, who chewed out the entire department without raising his voice more than once.
I forget what specific things he said during that meeting that struck me so hard, but they had nothing to do with MobileMe’s problems. They simply made it clear how much Steve cared about Apple, about great products, and about all the people at Apple who work their asses off night and day, all to deliver their best work time and time again. Steve seemed personally offended, for himself and on behalf of the rest of Apple, by this one department’s failure to deliver. More so even than he was upset over the tarnished reputation, it felt that our failure was taken as a lack of respect, and that offended him even more.
Whether this is how Steve felt about it I’ll never know. What I do know is that I walked out of there not just agreeing with everything he’d said, but also that, were I ever to run a company, I would make sure to care that damn much about everyone and everything in it.
Honest and not full of shit
There is not one specific moment that can sufficiently encapsulate this. But over the past 6-7 years I’ve observed Steve say and do many things, and all of them have been surrounded by so much honesty, sincerity and integrity, it’s hard to even get a good feel for it. Sure, he calculates his answers and phrases them extremely precisely; sometimes he’ll speak the truth but put it in such a way that anyone not paying very close attention may interpret his words as meaning something else entirely.
The only times Steve has ever appeared to not tell the truth were when he doesn’t want to reveal a future Apple product or direction, but is forced to say something. You know how most CEOs typically wrap anything they say in marketing-speak or, worse, bullshit; Steve is nothing like that, and I admire that a lot about him. His utter lack of tolerance for shit is present in every aspect of what he does and says.
John Gruber noted on Twitter he was “reminded again that Steve Jobs is a remarkably good writer.” This is absolutely true; Steve has a tremendous mastery of words, be they written and spoken. It may in fact be one of his finest skils, his ability to articulate exactly what he wants to get across. A skill only very few people, let alone high-ranking CEOs, possess.
A life of his own
Steve lives life differently than most people, and I don’t mean that in the obvious way. To Steve, something made in poor taste is downright incomprehensible. He cannot fathom why anyone would work to make something that shows little to no taste, or foresight, or caring about the result. It boggles him that so many terrible products are produced and sold to consumers. He has very low patience for things that, to him, are a waste of time. One of his many famous quotes is as ambitious as it is poignant: “I want to make a ding in the universe.”
The other morning I had some time to kill at SFO, waiting for my flight to start boarding, and I decided to seek out the Google Chromebooks that were on display at Terminal 2. I’d been meaning to give them some hands-on time to see what it was like. I only had about 15 minutes’ worth of time, but these were my three main observations.
Confinement is not liberating
I don’t fault Google for their efforts and attempts at making the world live inside of a browser and rely on nothing more than the Web. That said, living inside of a browser should not be taken literally. The Chromebook does, as far as I could tell: you’re in a browser, and that’s it. You have tabs at the top and can open apps or sites inside each, but I could not figure out a way to get “outside” of the browser.
The idea of having no concernible desktop or home screen-equivalent felt confining. It felt like all I had been given was access to a terminal that happened to surf the web using a very capable browser. Not a computer of my own to do with what I wanted. For a company that touts the “open” nature of Android at every opportunity, their Chromebook product felt like the most walled-garden experience I’ve had since the mid-80’s. The experience was also a polar opposite of the one I had when I got an iPad.
This problem has nothing to do with it being a web technologies-based environment: webOS is more similar than different to ChromeOS, but it sports a proper home screen and a sense of separation between operating system and applications. With the Chromebook that line appeared so thoroughly blurred that it felt unnerving.
An easy way to overcome this is to adjust the UI so that the default tab view simply becomes a regular desktop or home screen, from which (web) applications can be launched just like they are on native desktop operating systems, which, under the hood, simply open up a tab view containing said web application. At least that way you’ll feel like you can go out of the browser, and see your computer.
(by the way: if it is already possible to exit the browser on a Chromebook, then it is very much not self-evident how to do this)
Computers are not toys
No matter how you want to position the iPad, its hardware design—aesthetically and physically—is easily one of the most sleek and professional in the market. Even those who think the iPad is “just a toy” for people who “don’t do any serious computer work” will admit the hardware feels very refined.
Not so much with the Chromebook, which felt like a My First Netbook kind of product. The feel of the plastic casing, the keys and, in particular, the mediocre trackpad, all amounted to me walking away being that much more impressed with Apple’s hardware chops. I forget whether mine was made by Acer or Samsung (they had both at the stand), but they all seemed similarly decent. And I use that word pejoratively, because after years of using MacBooks (Airs and Pros) my expectations are set to great hardware.
The overall chassis and lid of the Chromebooks felt robust in that “sturdy plastic toy” kind of way, not in a “modern hardware” one. It was definitely not flimsy, but it didn’t feel like a professional product either. And the mediocre trackpad was frustrating to use, as it caused occasional lag to and jumping of the cursor. The trackpad also felt “sticky” to the touch, likely a correlating issue, though there wasn’t always a correlation to the trackpad being sticky and the awkward cursor movement.
Our hands aren’t made for straining
I know that the majority of people come from a Windows world in which keyboard shortcuts center around the Control key, not the Command key. That’s fine, but it’s still ergonomically outdated. Let’s do a quick test:
Put your hands down on a desk or table in front of you, the way you typically have them when typing—so don’t flatten your fingers; they should form an arc. In this position, your opposable thumb with independent mobility should be able to slide effortlessly underneath the palm of each hand. On any Apple-made keyboard, both thumbs can reach a Command key without straining a single muscle or require any movement of the hand overall. If you have a non-Apple keyboard, you may or may not be able to reach the keys adjacent to the space bar easily.
Next, put your hands on a keyboard in the optimal typing position: left index finger on the F key, right index finger on the J, and the remaining fingers in resting position on the keys next to them. Now try reaching either Control key with a finger or a palm without moving the rest of the hand. You can’t; you physically cannot do this. Even with very large hands there will be some tilting of the hand or some strain on a ring finger when moving the pinky finger down to hit that Control key.
Now, if you’re a Windows (or Linux) user you’ll have gotten used to this, perhaps even decry the ergonomic superiority of the Command key and its placement. But no matter how much you may be used to it, ergonomically your hands endure more strain when using the Control key—and if you don’t feel any, that’s actually a bad thing.
On the Chromebook, there are only Control and Alt keys, and no Command key. And all commands are triggered via Control, keeping this bad ergonomic practice alive despite having no Operating System inheritance to justify it. It’s just another case of “that’s what people are used to”, done without thoroughly thinking it through.
Suffice to say, my left hand felt a little strained after using the Chromebook and having to switch to using Control as the command key. (For reference, I did not have this strain when I switched from Windows to the Mac, so in my body’s particular case, that switch was a clear and immediate ergonomic improvement)
Conclusion
Given these three observations, I have a hard time imagining any current Mac user being happy with a Chromebook, but I can see how a PC/Windows user that really doesn’t do much more than surf the web could get by with it, and even enjoy the simpler experience.
Google promotes the Chromebook using the phrase “Nothing but the web.” It’s fitting, but not a very compelling argument in a world where apps have reached a strong dominance in the (computing) market. Web apps have yet to make any kind of real dent in that dominance, and the Chromebook doesn’t particularly help in this regard.
The video of my talk on designing future-oriented websites and web applications, as given at the DIBI conference in Newcastle Upon Tyne this June. The presentation slides will be available online soon as well.
Apple now controls over 66 percent of all the profits amongst the major players in the mobile space. HTC, RIM, LG, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung Motorola, and Nokia combined for the other 33 or so percent of profits in the space (with a few of them: Nokia, Motorola, LG, and Sony actually losing money).
Apple, the company “losing” the great mobile race to Android, is destroying all the Android manufacturers combined when it comes to profits.
The point about Apple actually winning this great smartphone/mobile platform war because they’re the ones with all the profits is easy and obvious. All of these companies, Google included, have to make a profit or they will eventually go under. They’re not like Twitter or Groupon in that they can just knock on investor’s doors and get a couple hundred million dollars to keep operations going.
Google is in relatively safe waters, by providing a software OS only (no manufacturing costs) and having most of its revenues come from elsewhere—for now. But Nokia, HTC, Samsung, LG and SonyEricsson? These companies would stop making phones altogether if they run out of money, and most or all of their revenues come from smartphones.
Obviously, the Android ecosystem will keep itself alive, but chances are it’ll stay alive with only one or two hardware manufacturers. So let’s imagine that (against current odds), Android gets to about 70% market share worldwide and the iPhone drops to 30%. It’s like a reverse iPod-vs-the-world if you will. Maybe RIM will still be around for this, taking 5% out of either side to have a snug 10% with its Blackberries.
In this scenario, Google will make a good profit off of search and advertising revenues on the Android platform alongside its Web properties. The Android manufacturer(s)—let’s say HTC and Samsung, as they’re the only ones currently running a profit from their business besides Apple and RIM—now reap in massive profits compared to before, but in the grand scheme of things they still only barely match Apple’s profits combined.
Here’s where it becomes interesting: in this hypothetical (and in my mind, unlikely) scenario, Apple has room to reduce prices: they make far more profit per phone than any of their competitors. Their competitors do not, because they are already operating at comparatively low margins.
Now what do you think will happen when brand new iPhones debut at $99, and drop to $49 after a few months? Apple would still be profitable at these prices, but they’re already price competitive enough—they’re selling iPhones like hot cakes despite the higher sticker price. And all of that is pure profit that Apple is accumulating steadily right now.
The Android manufacturers could try giving their phones away to maintain market dominance, but they’re more likely to go the Dell route: minimal margins, enough to remain profitable—if only just. And there is no way that the Android manufacturers will be able to take serious competitive advantage of their market share dominance, because Apple’s ecosystem is so strong and tightly coupled between its various devices and stores (Music, Movies, TV and three App stores) that consumers will stick to it simply because it works better for them, and the pain of leaving the ecosystem is too great.
“I have to admit, starting with iPad, Apple got deadly serious about competitive pricing. [link]”
A better observation would be to say that Apple has been extremely price competitive with the iPhone too; they’ve just been playing a longer, smarter game.
Apple has lots of room to fail whilst competing with everyone else; none of them have much room to fail whilst competing with Apple.
