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Steve Jobs Interview on Apple's Success, Management and More
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It's exactly true too. When ever I go out and sit with users of software I wrote and watch them use it and ask them what they like and what they want. they always, and i mean always come up with the most trivial and un-important changes. But what I watch is the time they spend doing their jobs. It one case they asked us to have the software "analyze these graphs". Then I saw that it took them an hour to mess with the data and turn it into a plot and about a minute for a PhD chemist to look at the plot. Software would have never been as good as the chemist even if we had worked for years but we could shave that hour of work down to a few minutes.
The problem is that most end users can't separate a requirement from a design. They are not trained to think in terms of requirements so they jump to design. For example that guy who asked for "A faster horse" actually had a requirement for shorter travel times but he did not think to say it that way.
The company that does well is the one that can identify requirements that are currently not being well addressed and address them in some new creative way. "shorter travel times" is still a one of those.
The single customer making thoughtful choices about design and technology should definitely be listened to. However, what the company typically deals with is a mob of people asking for either the world and a pony, or people demanding a fix for their personal peccadillos.
So, with this in mind, I think Jobs' has a good point by referring to Ford's quote.
Your knee-jerk belief and comment aside. I have actual experience on forward leaning products (technology) that customers do not actually know what they need "tomorrow".
When your entire business model is changing the paradigm, the quote and philosophy applies. But Apple does something practical. It uses EMPLOYEES as a barometer of what CUSTOMERS would want if only they knew it was possible. That is kewl. It also skews the product to bleeding edge users and high end users, but if by coincidence that product can be offered at a low price point (Shuffle $49, iPod Nano with VIDEO $149, iPhone ATN $300), then you have a winner for the huddled masses.
It turns out I am right.
Rocketman
Imagine you go to a very, very expensive restaurant. You order your dinner and wait for something great to come to your table. But their management decided that it would be better to give you exactly the food that you want, so they ask you about hundred tiny little details how you want your food.
Fact is, the chef should know better than I do how to create a great dinner. Asking me what exactly I want will _not_ improve things.
Wow, is someone full of themselves and very lacking in production knowledge or even business sense. Look at how many companies have put out clones of Apple products within a short time of it coming out. So you feel that Apple would benefit by posting designs for the public to provide input on how? Nokia pretty much ripped off the iPhone within months. So lets see, Apple posts design information about the iPhone lets say 1 year before releasing the product. They then have to delay it to incorporate some "brilliant" idea that someone submits. Their competition puts out knockoffs before they can bring theirs to market, because the competition is more interested in putting out a product every 3 months than quality. So instead of being able to bring a cutting edge product to market first they get to come in second with a more expensive item (after all the other companies that ripped off their idea didn't have to pay as much to develop the concepts) and they loose out. How long do you think a company will last doing that? We are not talking about open source projects like linux where only those that are really interested can get into. We are talking about consumer products from a profit based company.
As well releasing one product is only part of it. Yes there are features we would love to see in existing Apple products. And if you think somehow for example that Apple forgot 5.1 surround sound in the apple TV your are not thinking at all. Design limitations have two parts. 1) Can we make it work the way we want by the time we have to get it to market (after all eventually your stock holders want to see some return on what you have invested their money in). 2) What can we add to make someone buy another one later on. Thats right. Many companies leave out features for later models not just because it will delay release of the product but also because as a business you have to think about ways to create repeat buyers. If you sell something that does everything someone will ever want to do, other then when it dies they never have reason to buy another one. Which means all that research and all that expense has 1 return only which is the initial models sales. Or you leave some features for later models so when you release it the person who bought your first one and has been enjoying it says "hmm I really like my X product and now theres one that does even more, i think its time to upgrade"
By and By Apple is a business that has stock holders that it is answerable to and as such has to operate as a business thats goal is to make money. That may not always mean do the most popular things for the consumers. At the same time so far I have found many of my favorite products are Apple products and for the most part they put out items that are far superior to many of their competitors, often because they do not suffer from having too many chefs in the kitchen telling them what ingredient to add next.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
You know I can appreciate that, but I've found first hand that you can get input from the masses and screen out the personal agenda (good for just me) stuff, so that you are left with mainstream stuff that will appeal to the crowd (of potential buyers).
Again, not to harp on just the one example too much, but it's really hard for me to picture an open innovation model not picking up on a concept like a "DVD player killer" device should have a core mainstream feature like 5.1 surround. On the other hand, its very easy to picture in a closed innovation system that a bunch of minds that have traditionally been focused on computers might not think that their new DVD player killer should at least have audio playback options as good as the DVD player.
I guess I would sum this up by saying that these days it's soooo easy to solicit the extra voice (of prospective customers) using the internet, that Apple would only be that much better at getting it right the first time if it would take advantage of the customer innovation channel.
Closed innovation will always be at least a bit off target when the product developers are choosing to ignore the product buyers. And arrogance in an analogy that the best the collective brainpower of prospective buyers could come up with in 2008 is "a faster horse" does make me think less of Apple.
But again, I'm not CEO of Apple, so the above must not be right.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
No surprise to see this kind of feedback on this site. And frankly, I am a huge fan of Apple regardless of how I feel about this particular thing.
I said nothing about publishing plans for new products. I mentioned floating concepts. They could float a thousand concepts of which an iPhone and an
TV could be just two to keep the competition from knowing what is actually coming. And stockholders want to see sales. By forgetting to include basic features like 5.1 in a product like
TV, they didn't exactly delight stockholders with the lack of sales of that new product. Instead it was met with ho-hum reception, and soon was spun from the "4th leg of the table" to "a hobby."The first rule of good marketing is "know thy customer." One of the best ways to do that is to listen to them and not think of them as so weak in imagination that they couldn't offer anything better than "a faster horse."
Apple does do many things better than many other companies (and I own a lot of their products myself including
TV). But this seems to scream opportunity for Apple to do what it does even better.Apple obviously listens to their customers, just not in the way that some of you seem to want for them to. They listen by sales volume. If an item sells well, obviously it's a hit with their customers and they're giving the average consumer what they want. And if it doesn't, it's either revised or killed. The Apple TV is a very good recent example of that. So to say that Apple never listens to their customers at all is being just plain ignorant to the reality of how business works.
The [T]rouble with Steve Jobs
By Peter Elkind, editor at large
(Fortune Magazine)
""As soon as people heard I was writing a book on *******s, they would come up to me and start telling a Steve Jobs story," says Sutton. "The degree to which people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Jobs is unbelievable. He made people feel terrible; he made people cry. But he was almost always right, and even when he was wrong, it was so creative it was still amazing.""
The best managers are *******s by employee perception.
"Jobs himself judges the world in binary terms. Products, in his view, are "insanely great" or "****.""
The ability to judge reality on the fly is in short supply.
"And in the 26 years that Fortune has been ranking America's Most Admired Companies, never has the corporation at the head of the list so closely resembled a one-man show. "
Risky (beta!!!) to a stock company. Worked beyond the wildest imagination for the customer by "Lockheed Skunk Works" (SR-71, U-2) and "Apple" (Apple II, Macintosh, iPod, iTunes, OSX, iPhone, X-serve, Garageband, Apple Music Label).
TMI to follow (close eyes):
"Clara and Paul Jobs, the working-class California couple who had adopted and raised him; Joanne Simpson, his biological mother, whom he'd tracked down as an adult with the help of a private detective; and his first serious girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, the mother of Lisa, his out-of-wedlock daughter.
There was no listing, however, for Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, his Syrian biological father - a man Jobs has never discussed publicly. Jobs had been born to Jandali and Simpson, a pair of 23-year-old unwed University of Wisconsin graduate students, in 1955. Just months after giving their baby up for adoption, the two married, then had another child, whom they kept: Mona Simpson, who grew up to become a critically acclaimed novelist and never knew her famous brother existed until she was an adult.
A charming, promising academic, Jandali later abandoned his wife and 4-year-old daughter, moving from job to job as a political science professor before leaving academe. Now 76, he works as food and beverage director at the Boomtown Hotel & Casino near Reno. Mona Simpson's novel, "The Lost Father," is based on her quest to find him.
When Jobs had his own illegitimate child, also at the age of 23, he too struggled with his responsibilities. For two years, though already wealthy, he denied paternity while Lisa's mother went on welfare. At one point Jobs even swore in a signed court document that he couldn't be Lisa's father because he was "sterile and infertile, and as a result thereof, did not have the physical capacity to procreate a child." He later acknowledged paternity of Lisa, married Laurene Powell, a Stanford MBA, and fathered three more children. Lisa Brennan-Jobs, now 29, graduated from Harvard and is a writer. "
Steve is human. I bet his moms and families are quite proud indeed. Enough said.
What about Lisa?!
Rocketman
By Peter Elkind, editor at large
(Fortune Magazine)
""As soon as people heard I was writing a book on *******s, they would come up to me and start telling a Steve Jobs story," says Sutton. "The degree to which people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Jobs is unbelievable. He made people feel terrible; he made people cry. But he was almost always right, and even when he was wrong, it was so creative it was still amazing.""
The best managers are *******s by employee perception.
"Jobs himself judges the world in binary terms. Products, in his view, are "insanely great" or "****.""
The ability to judge reality on the fly is in short supply.
"And in the 26 years that Fortune has been ranking America's Most Admired Companies, never has the corporation at the head of the list so closely resembled a one-man show. "
Risky (beta!!!) to a stock company. Worked beyond the wildest imagination for the customer by "Lockheed Skunk Works" (SR-71, U-2) and "Apple" (Apple II, Macintosh, iPod, iTunes, OSX, iPhone, X-serve, Garageband, Apple Music Label).
TMI to follow (close eyes):
"Clara and Paul Jobs, the working-class California couple who had adopted and raised him; Joanne Simpson, his biological mother, whom he'd tracked down as an adult with the help of a private detective; and his first serious girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, the mother of Lisa, his out-of-wedlock daughter.
There was no listing, however, for Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, his Syrian biological father - a man Jobs has never discussed publicly. Jobs had been born to Jandali and Simpson, a pair of 23-year-old unwed University of Wisconsin graduate students, in 1955. Just months after giving their baby up for adoption, the two married, then had another child, whom they kept: Mona Simpson, who grew up to become a critically acclaimed novelist and never knew her famous brother existed until she was an adult.
A charming, promising academic, Jandali later abandoned his wife and 4-year-old daughter, moving from job to job as a political science professor before leaving academe. Now 76, he works as food and beverage director at the Boomtown Hotel & Casino near Reno. Mona Simpson's novel, "The Lost Father," is based on her quest to find him.
When Jobs had his own illegitimate child, also at the age of 23, he too struggled with his responsibilities. For two years, though already wealthy, he denied paternity while Lisa's mother went on welfare. At one point Jobs even swore in a signed court document that he couldn't be Lisa's father because he was "sterile and infertile, and as a result thereof, did not have the physical capacity to procreate a child." He later acknowledged paternity of Lisa, married Laurene Powell, a Stanford MBA, and fathered three more children. Lisa Brennan-Jobs, now 29, graduated from Harvard and is a writer. "
Steve is human. I bet his moms and families are quite proud indeed. Enough said.
What about Lisa?!
Rocketman
I think the quote is relevant.
Another quote from the founder of delicious, who had notes about iterating his product
http://simon.incutio.com/notes/2006/summit/schachter.txt
In my experience of development the public are dumb, why bother asking dumb-asses when you have a team of focused foresightful individuals at you disposal?
I have said this before so sorry for repeating myself but 90% of humans believe in god. nuff said
I'm not saying a bit of product testing is bad, far from it, but only a VERY few people are blessed with minds that think out the box. And someone who suggests a "faster horse" does not strike me as someone with that ability.
What you appear to be suggesting is a product development strategy that is is the route your 'average' company takes. Which is why apple excels and others that lack imagination follow.
I personally love the quote.
Oh, Steve. Henry Ford was an idealist and innovator ... but not exactly a role model. Makes me wonder who SJ voted for on Super Tuesday.
back OT, I like any article that give some insight into Apple. It really is a business case unfolding before our very eyes.
back OT, I like any article that give some insight into Apple. It really is a business case unfolding before our very eyes.
Actually, yes.
Marketing doesn't pay attention to what a customer says. Marketing pays attention to what a customer NEEDS. Big difference.
And you could tell from the forums. Time after time, we see people picking on only the most obvious deatils or features. They're trying to define a market by focussing on the product. Better marketing focusses on what the customer uses the product for.
Apple called me on a phone survey once, to ask about the products
I bought from them, so they use traditional methods of getting
customer input also.
I am talking about abstraction and your primary association is accounting? "Dumbest thing" out of your mouth seems like a compliment to me.
