This video is short, less than two minutes long, but, if you haven’t seen it, take the time to watch. Steve Jobs talks about the natural process that drives product people out of the decision making forums.
To me, Steve nails why it is so hard to maintain innovation over the long haul.
You said it Steve. Is there anyone listening?
Who pulls Jony’s head out of his ass now, because it sure isn’t Tim.
I certainly hope Jony Ive isn’t or hasn’t been too far removed from product design. Various details of software and UI design seem to be getting short shrift, as well.
And its why Apple is still chock full of product people…
The people who say otherwise are all just happy to continue with the status quo. They bitch at change, or having to pay for it, and they just can’t imagine a different future.
I loath Marketing on a whole, but they have been known to do good work from time to time. The mass majority of marketers are wannabes trying to sell you crap they know is crap. But look at what marketing did for the diamond monopoly De Beers, “A Diamond Is Forever”, I’ll admit, was brilliant.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/fashion/weddings/how-americans-learned-to-love-diamonds.html
Sounds like the problem with Apple today.
Most people think of marketing as sales support. In fact, marketing in modern companies is a role that coordinates all aspect of the life cycle. It finds out what to build, how to finance it, helps engineering decide features and works with manufacturing to decide how much to build. Steve’s point here is incredibly important. It is that the product guys, the engineers need to have a seat at the table at the highest level. Tektronix was once a company with 25,000 employees making a wide range of test equipment. When the founders (product guys) passed away, the finance and marketing voices were dominant and it dropped to about 5000 in 5 years.
Agreed. Never thought I’d miss Scott Forstall this much.
This is an excerpt of the Cringely interview, correct? A good reminder for me to see the whole thing.
Why? How is he in any way better than Craig Federighi? Most of the improvements we have with iOS came on Craig’s watch. Just because some people don’t like flatter UI doesn’t mean Scott was better than Craig is.
i see no problem with his work. can you be specific about your grievances?
what problem? my apple gear is the greatest i’ve ever owned and in the biz. there is no better phone or laptop or desktop or OSes in my experiences.
Compare the message of this video with the antiquated desktop Macs Apple is selling, especially the Mac Pro. SO disappointing.
also, you completely failed to understand Jobs’ point — the core of his argument was companies with a monopoly have no incentive to improve their product thus product people aren’t rewarded and the corporate culture reflects that until they reach the point of being unable to innovate commercially — e.g. IBM and Xerox.
that description couldn’t be further from the truth about Apple, which has no monopolies of any kind.
troll harder.
the entire message of the video was monopolies fail to innovate because they have no competition and thus no incentive to do things better. how on earth does that compare to apple? oh yeah, it doesn’t.
but yeah, you have Nerd Rage about wanting a newer version sooner or a product i doubt you even own. got it.
next.
I remember having a better time with iOS’ UI before he was pushed out. YMMV.
Cryin’ over spilt milk not allowed. I think the problem—if there is one—is simply not paying quite enough attention to the details. Federighi is entirely capable of getting that done.
And yet he has somehow allowed complexity to overtake simplicity.
It is not academic at all. Tim Cook (not a product guy) took over and immediately fired (product guy) Scott Forestall and a lot of the other product people immediately left. Suddenly Apple was just another tech company with buggy software and bolt-on gewgaws on the keyboard.
Me, I will never forgive Jony Ives for the iOS 7 icons.
It is so great that is the case for you. For many others, that used to be true but is no longer the case.
Me and my wife both have old Macs that need replacing but in both cases, our Mac models were discontinued and we have to pick new ones — but the new ones are worse for our needs than the old ones, and the new ones are 1.5 to 2x the cost of the old ones. So that is a problem.
In the past, every 3 years we would just buy a new Mac each of the same kind for roughly the same price and it was always 10x better. Now, we go to Apple Store, we price out a system for 2x the last one and all the changes it is going to bring are negative. For example, losing all connectivity with all USB accessories we have, including iPhones and backup disks, and losing connectivity with all external displays, and losing the capability to upgrade memory and/or storage later, and losing the better keyboard with the better throw.
And there are no Macs with built-in pen even though that is 5–6 year old hardware feature and a 25 year old software feature. I’m a graphic artist so I can’t ignore 5 years of progress in my field and stay stuck to a desk with Mac and external graphics tablet when there is a cheaper Microsoft Surface solution that is not only all-in-one, it is portable and battery-powered. MacBook Pro did not enable me to work anywhere because I always had to have a whole separate graphics tablet plugged in at all times. Surface will change the way I work for the better. New MacBook Pro will not.
So you might want to consider that your experience is not necessarily typical. You might want to try to have some sympathy for the people who are facing a lot of uncertainty in their work and business right now because we committed to Jobs’ Apple — products always get better — and we got massively let down by Cook’s Apple, where products get worse with each new rev, there are 4 kinds of USB connector on the 3 devices you just bought, the easy-to-use iPod has been replaced by a watch that requires in-store training, and the very best new product — Pencil — works on 2 iPads, zero iPhones, and zero Macs. Even though the Mac has supported pen computing for over 20 years and has almost all of the pen computing users that exist in the world, and even though iPad has even less pro graphics software than Windows.
No, Jobs’ point had nothing to do with actual literal monopoly because Microsoft and Scully-led Apple were his examples and neither ever had an actual literal monopoly. They just had overwhelming success for a time and lost their way because of it.
Jobs’ point was that an overwhelming success that dominates an industry to the point where it is viewed as a monopoly leads to being taken over by greedy business people. Success such as Apple had with Mac OS from 1986–1994 (Jobs’ first example) or Microsoft had with Windows from 1995–2005 (Jobs’ second example) or Apple has had with iOS from 2008–2016.
Are you saying iOS 2008–2016 has not been a success comparable to Windows 1995–2005 or Mac OS 1986–1994? I think you would find pretty broad agreement that those are 3 peas in a pod, and now there is also pretty broad agreement that Apple and iOS have followed those earlier examples into a ditch of their own making.
Scott Forestall (product guy) was fired by Tim Cook almost on the first day. This is not some academic discussion. They gave Scott Forestall’s responsibilities at least in part to business and marketing people.
I think it is you who has Nerd Rage, because it is completely unreasonable to knock a guy for being disappointed that there has been no Mac Pro update for over 3 years. From 2001–2010, all Macs were updated every 8 months.
Also, you should try to understand that part of the reason Macs were good when you joined the platform (probably post-Intel) is that Mac users traditionally cared about the platform and their own investment in it and did not just put up with whatever crappy product got pooped out. I once emailed Steve Jobs about a product that wasn’t up to Apple standards and he emailed me back: “You’re right. We’re on it.” He didn’t say “Shut up you are lucky you are not using Windiws right now.”
So you think that Madhuvidya is an Apple hater but the actual fact is that they are an Apple lover. They are disappointed in the same way as a longtime Ferrari owner whose new $200,000 car won’t start. They are rightfully disappointed, because Ferraris and Apple products literally exist NOT to disappoint. That is their number one reason for being. Disappointment can be had with a Ford or a Dell for much less money and time and effort.
I honestly don’t get it…
You say your old stuff needs replacing, but if your old stuff has all the capabilities that you want, why do you need to replace it with new stuff?
You say there’s 5 years of progress. Where is that progress? What do you want to be able to do that your old Macs can’t do?
You describe the Surface Pro as a good alternative. Why is that any better than the iPad Pro? What can the Surface do that the iPad Pro can’t do? Perhaps that 5 years of progress is reflected in products like the iPad Pro.
The thing is, Apple is changing the way we work. The new tools reflect new ways of working. If you want to keep working the old way, then keep your old tools. If you want the new tools, then yes, they come with a new way of working. Frankly I think drawing on an iPad Pro is a vast improvement over the old graphics tablets, but admittedly I’m no professional artist or anything so there may be things you know that I don’t on that topic. But I can’t see how the iPad Pro is any worse, for drawing and touch screen applications than a Surface Pro.
I think it comes down to this: Apple prefers to build devices that excel at specific tasks, so the iPad is 100% tablet. the MacBook Pro is 100% laptop. The Surface Pro is a bit of both and that’s just the way MS thinks it should be done. If that’s more to your taste, then the Surface Pro is the product for you. But Apple isn’t crippling their devices. Apple is simply building different features into different devices, instead of trying to build everything into one device.
All that said, I do personally wish Apple would make a convertible device that does both – something like a MacBook that converts into an iPad Pro. But every time I try to figure out how they should do it, I can’t really get it quite right, and the way the Surface Pro does it, for the most part, sucks, in my opinion, when it comes to actual day to day use. So I don’t know what the answer is there.
But ultimately, I don’t know. I’m not trying to attack you or anything. The purpose of this post is to genuinely say, I don’t get the issue. I don’t get how today’s devices have LESS functionality than the devices of 5 years ago, unless it really is just because you can’t plug in your old USB, HDMI, etc. stuff without a dongle…?
Help me understand what the problem is please…?
If only I could make the time. But most of my issues are covered by others as well. I’m still perplexed by the obsession with thin, light, unupgradeable PRO machines. It’s not that they can’t be pretty and well designed (aluminium Mac Pro), but power consumption and pretend battery life aren’t always the primary concerns in a f*****ng pro machine. There are plenty of “choices” there already. They could have easily continued the old Mac Pro with new internals, especially if they were having problems finding development funds.