Steve Jobs was a remarkable visionary.
It would appear that one of his most enduring talents was his “reality distortion field,” which appears, all these years later, to still be in full force for some of the commenters here. Jobs’ contributions to Apple were undeniably and unimpeachably significant. After his exile, he came back to Apple, turned the company around and pointed it in its current direction. He ushered in iMac, MacBook (Pro), iPod, iPhone, iPad and more. Nonetheless, the reality distortion field has some people (literally) thinking he single-handedly created these things from nothing, willing them into existence, one right after the other, each imbued with infallible perfection.
Jobs was a perfectionist, no doubt, but the devices created under his leadership were not perfect, and were not fashioned from one of his own ribs, brought into existence by his own hands. He led teams of engineers, programmers and others to create new devices that were mostly recombinations of existing objects, made more user-friendly, intuitive and reliable. After releasing a new device, it was followed by incremental improvements. “One more thing” was an add-on or update far more often than it was a new device or category killer. The iPhone wasn’t really all that until its third iteration. The first two versions were incomplete proofs of concept. The introduction of the App Store revolutionized the software industry, providing a platform for wide distribution of applications, but at a low price, and with no boxes, physical media, or instruction books. Brilliant, right? We forget that even this paradigm shift began not so much with a bang, but a toot, as some of the most popular early apps did nothing more than play fart noises.
So guess what, kids? Steve Jobs was brilliant, but not infallible. He was a perfectionist but never created a perfect device. He led innovation by reformulating and enhancing existing categories, almost never was “first,” and spent far more time introducing incremental improvements than he did creating new category-killers. He also hand-picked Tim Cook to take over while he was ill and after he was gone. And Tim Cook has actually done a remarkable job of growing the company while holding fast to the model Jobs created. Apple still designs hardware and software together in a walled garden, is rarely “first,” but continues to reformulate existing ideas into category killers that take time to grow into a full vision of what they can be. They also spend far more time making incremental improvements than they do creating new category-killers, but if you compare the current model of most devices to their versions of just five years ago, the improvements are remarkable.
Oh, and one more thing. Releasing MacBook Pro exclusively with USB-C/Thunderbolt is totally a Steve Jobs move. It’s clean, simple, elegant, recombines existing I/O into something technologically superior, and it’s looking unsentimentally and unapologetically forward, never back. What could be more Steve Jobs than that?
