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Insight into Steve Jobs' Product-Centric Approach in 1985 Interview
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Of course. You want to provide for the consumer, but not look to them for vision. Many people never realize what they need, anyway, or what they might find useful. Most people merely drift within popular opinion and peer expectations.
The average customer is better to help understand released products that actually use or would like to buy but are hesitant for some reason.
I want take this part of your point you are making confusion over. Yes, iTunes does a one size fits all approach very well. And it's a brave decision Apple made that paid off very well to simplify digital media. The average joe doesn't care about formats/codecs/ripping/burning. I care to some degree, but consumers don't want to waste time setting up Windows (or other Mac software) to rip CDs or convert videos into the right format. Apple is all about connecting the dots without any distortion/delay along those lines.
At the end of the day, people still have that that choice. No-one has to use iTunes. I still don't for certain things as I hate every track being moved over to iTunes when I try to play it (that's where VLC comes in) or where I want to use VLC on my iPad to watch videos not compatible with iTunes. On the other side, Apple allowed consumers to dump over their current whole MP3/CD music collection straight onto the iPod in easy steps.
Apple got the balance right in giving enough options for more advanced users, but catering the average joe market. This is where Windows struggles and even after a very good 'Windows 7' release. Proof in the pudding shows when my aunt (who's a new computer user) setup a new iMac without my help. When they wanted to setup a new Windows PC 18 months (which has just died); they struggled to move through all the menus and giff-gaff.
It's offering simple solutions without offending/belittling your customer.
Jobs is clearly a man with a great vision, he knows how to put things together and create the next new big thing instead of patching existing ones.
Get better Steve - the world still needs you and your visions
Get better Steve - the world still needs you and your visions
There's a couple times they've almost gotten it right. The beige ADB mouse of the performa era:
and more recently, the magic mouse, which would be fantastic if it wasn't so damn uncomfortable. But on balance, over the past 2.5 decades, if you were buying an apple product, you should have known in advance that there would be a terrible mouse in the box. Step 1: open new apple product. Step 2: throw away included mouse, replace with Logitech.
Agreed!
The mouse you picture is actually the Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II, and I agree it was the most usable mouse Apple ever did. I have been replacing the Apple mouse with a Logitech one for a long time now.
I have listened to LOADS of "How To Succeed" lectures. So few of them start off with "sell a product that people want". That is the entire point of starting a business and for some reason the very point that so many businessmen positively eschew. I suppose that is why there are so many failures every year.
Maybe it's real real hard to come up with a desirable product. But it's real real hard to watch yourself fail, too. Trust me. I have tried it both ways.
I hope Steve gets better fast. I hope he beats the odds and makes a liar out of all the folks who don't believe that he will be back. In a lot of ways he is my hero, and I don't say that lightly. I am firmly in his corner.
Maybe it's real real hard to come up with a desirable product. But it's real real hard to watch yourself fail, too. Trust me. I have tried it both ways.
I hope Steve gets better fast. I hope he beats the odds and makes a liar out of all the folks who don't believe that he will be back. In a lot of ways he is my hero, and I don't say that lightly. I am firmly in his corner.
When I said 'or watching DVDs and free-to-air over living entirely within the iTunes ecosystem', which is the part you bolded, I was actually thinking about Apple TV more than anything. As far as I can tell, Apple TV is still a glorified portal to iTunes media. I can't use it to play my existing library of DVDs or tune into the hundreds of free-to-air shows available. Correct me if I'm wrong.
See, I don't have a problem with iTunes per se. I actually quite like it, and I buy plenty of music on the iTunes store as it's a very convenient way of doing it. (Charlie Cheapskate likes to come here and tell us all how he paid $6.89 for the same album I paid $9.99 or whatever, but he spent half-an-hour scouring the bargain bin and two dollars in petrol.) However, I would like it if Apple didn't sometimes pretend like we don't have media from other sources. That's all.
Not my area of expertise but I would have thought, given as you say JB is only software, all you need to do is a full restore and your phone would be ok to send back if it had a problem. Then again after a full restore perhaps it would no longer have the problem so you can then see Apple's point ... or is this too complicated for you to follow?
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148a Safari/6533.18.5)
We ended up getting one Miele appliance. A diamanté plus dishwasher. Great machine.
We ended up getting one Miele appliance. A diamanté plus dishwasher. Great machine.
With the greatest respect, since iOS, Apple have become THE tech company that everyone chases. Microsoft are becoming increasingly irrelevant, while Android is just slapped onto as many devices as possible to gain market share, a strategy that has only been partially successful.
The success of Apple is down to Steve Jobs and the team that he has built around him. Saying that he shouldn't care about what people do with his products is to utterly fail to understand what has made him and Apple great.
Considering you are happy with a 2G iphone suggests that you don't exactly have an eye to the future does it?
Exactly. Some will never understand this, or acknowledge it's reality.
It is however, what concerns me the most these days.
Tim is a master at knowing how to turn Steve's "Things" into "stuff" we hold in our hands, touch with our fingers, place on a desk. Not convinced yet on the "hide away and dream" part yet.
Stay with us Steve.
Interesting read, but it's neither News nor Rumors, so why is it on MacRumors? Shouldn't it go on your partner website, MacBytes, instead? (Why hasn't a single new thing been put up on that website in 3 weeks?)
Get well, Steve. I really hope you're only half-way done. Looking forward to more consumer-friendly breakthrough products.
Seems he accurately predicted "Internet Explorer 6", and its far-reaching consequences, way back in 1996.
well, he could have at least listened to the many people wanting a second firwire-port... (there are just some things that would not hurt anybody to be listened to, and don't take much effort, I guess, an these are things that can't be compared to the "faster-horse-thing" mentioned before).
Word! I think most of Jobs strength lies in presenting things to the customer and spread a certain aura. I do not want to say anything offending. It's just that I do not know how a day in Steve Jobs Life at apple's developers headquarters is like.
This is how I picture it. Lets take the iMac G3 as an example:
Steve: "I remember we had this Mac Plus, with monitor and internals in one. Why not do something like that for customers on a lower cost basis?"
Man1: "Well, you mean an All-In-One Design?"
Steve: "Yes, some kind o'"
Man2: "ok then, why not take a bigger CRT and faster processor"
Steve: "ok, I will try to find someone to create a new Design"
Man1: "well, there's that guy. Jonathan Ive, you know?"
Steve: "ah, ok, I'll get him to move to the states and be OUR designer"
Can someone tell me, how much Jobs actually contributes? I think it is the same like a conductor of an orchestra, he just ensures that everybody plays the same tempo, volume and phrasing. And sometimes says to a single player in the orchestra "could you play that part just a bit sweeter?".
Sorry, if I offended someone. It's just that I don't know.
PS: I only saw this movie, which portrays Bill Gates and Jobs/Woz through their history. But I do not know how this movie actually is true in how they picture the relationships between workers and Jobs. I guess it is the same like with CCR, some say J. Fogerty is a mean man who screwed Clifford/Cook others say it was the other way round, Fogerty being a nice man.
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On the contrary, Microsoft is putting out some great stuff right now. Kinect, Office for Mac 2011 (and Office 2010), Windows 7, and even Windows Phone 7, all come to mind. I'm firmly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, but gone are the days when Apple was the only one who could come out with a decent product.
HAHA, you completely misread what i wrote and wasted a good chunk of your time arguing with someone who agrees with you. Everyone else got it though.
Albert Einstein openly sanctioned and supported the development of the atomic bomb. So no-one "misused" his theories, he basically donated them to the most violent cause ever conceived by man.
I'm in the camp among those hearing rumors that Steve wanted to get away for awhile.
I can only imagine the mundane things that occupied 99% of his day. He wants to make things, not go over accounting charts.
He departed when numbers were going to come out crushing the estimates; iPad 2 was ready to be launched; the Verizon iPhone deal was done.
"Antenna-gate" was behind him.
This is too coincidental, to be leaving at this time.
I can only imagine the mundane things that occupied 99% of his day. He wants to make things, not go over accounting charts.
He departed when numbers were going to come out crushing the estimates; iPad 2 was ready to be launched; the Verizon iPhone deal was done.
"Antenna-gate" was behind him.
This is too coincidental, to be leaving at this time.
You are kidding, I hope. Windows 7? Windows Phone 7?
MSFT's legacy is such folks are tired of anything preceded by the word "Windows."
When I google "windows" "msft" I immediately see "patches," "security," and "iPhone" hits.