If Kara's emotions and defensiveness can't handle a clearly articulated, rational, objective argument against design decisions, then for the sake of the product and the company, she probably needs to find another job. Avoiding discussions doesn't work for me. I'm happy Steve Jobs didn't read this post.
Kara Swisher is like that sometimes, and I don't like it too. On Steve Jobs last interview to her and Mossberg, Mossberg was trying to capture how Steve thinks, but Kara was only interested in the current event of apple dropping google on the maps app.
His vehemence made Tim pause. "Why?" he asked, a bit stiffly.
"It just does."
"In what sense?" said Tim, getting his feet back under him. "Give me a clue."
"Its shape is not innovative, it's not elegant, it doesn't feel anthropomorphic," said Jobs, ticking off three of his design mantras.
"You have this incredibly innovative machine but it looks very traditional." The last word delivered like a stab. Doug Field and Scott Waters would have felt the wound; they admired Apple's design sense. Dean's intuition not to bring Doug had been right. "There are design firms out there that could come up with things we've never thought of," Jobs continued, "things that would make you shit in your pants."
-- Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos meet "Ginger" (the Segway)
> That's not editing, that's literally throwing everything away
Throwing stuff away is editing. Sigh.
> and forcing his vision on them. Precisely what I'm talking about.
1. His vision was "a simple experience for the user". iDVD didn't end up with a simple rectangle and a single button marked "Burn". He refocused his teams around simplicity and ease of use.
2. I note that you've avoided responding to the other parts of my response in which I inquire as to whether you believe all designers in history are "forcing" their "vision" on others.
> And "empathy" is not a word I'd use to describe Steve Jobs, who by all accounts was a terrible jerk.
Product design is all about empathy with users. Steve Jobs was blessed with that in abundance. If you attribute Apple's success to his vision and design, then you have to acknowledge that users love their hardware and software. Jobs was great at cutting through bullshit and getting himself, his team, his engineers and designers -- who are all highly technical 'power users' -- to be humble and remove themselves from the equation and build something for mass consumption.
"That vague hostility towards humans keeps peeping through."
A story recounted here last year [0]:
During the development of the first iPhone, Ive and his team became enamored with the look of an extruded aluminum prototype. Even though it was immediately apparent that the model's sharp edges made it physically painful to use as a phone, they persisted in trying to push the design and paper over its principal practical problems. It took Steve Jobs to finally step in, point out the obvious, and check Jony Ive's worst tendencies. [1]
Steve Jobs is gone, and nobody is left to fulfill his roles.
I think most people agree with both points. Steve Jobs was rude and gave an unusual reply for a CEO. On the other hand, the girl was insistent and didn't "make lemonade out of lemons". She took offence instead. She is arguably in the spotlight now, but I'm not sure it's for the right reason.
Sure it was suicidal of an employee to call out their boss in public, but even more destructive for a CEO to spout nonsense without researching first, because it makes him look like an incompetent ninny.
EDIT: Steve Jobs wouldn't have whined like Musk, if anything he would have denied the problem existed while choking-throats behind the scenes to fix it (unless the "bad thing" happened live during the Apple developer conference...).
> What I consider soft is lashing out over the smallest emotional slight, which Steve was famous for. I wish we would all stop pretending that the platonic ideal of a leader is having the emotional maturity of a toddler.
Exactly. The lesson of this encounter wasn't anything more than: Steve Jobs had power and was willing to use it at the drop of a hat to puff up his ego over a tiny thing. Maybe there was something strategic behind that or maybe he just had anger issues and enough power that he didn't have to do anything about them.
Is it toxic that Steve Jobs liked the partially completed design they left out? Or are you just trying to cash in to the "Jobs is toxic" meme by finding the one mention of him interacting with the design team in the article?
The story is that Jobs was put off by Carmack's t-shirt (a smiley face with a bloody bullet hole in it). But they had a discussion, Carmack was critical of some of Apple's technical decisions, and Jobs listened and ultimately took Carmack's side. Jobs then yelled at one of his senior engineers.
reply