Doc Searls on Steve Jobs (1997) | Hacker News Reader

Doc Searls on Steve Jobs (1997)

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111 pointsidiginous40 comments

I think this looks a lot more prescient than it really is.

Searls says that whatever Jobs created at Apple would be: original, innovative, exclusive, expensive, [beautiful], maybe influenced by other software tycoons, and minimally influenced by developers. He's right on all counts. It's a good picture of Steve Jobs.

What's missing? Searls didn't say one word about the likelihood that Steve Jobs would be successful, and that success is what makes him something other than Just Another Malignant Narcissist CEO.

Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

I don't think this means what you think it means. Consider the situation in 36 AB (After Brian):

By the summer of 70 the Romans had breached the walls of Jerusalem, ransacking and burning nearly the entire city...

The Second Temple (the rennovated Herod's Temple) was destroyed on Tisha B'Av (29 or 30 July 70).

Tacitus... notes that those who were besieged in Jerusalem amounted to no fewer than six hundred thousand, that men and women alike and every age engaged in armed resistance, everyone who could pick up a weapon did, both sexes showed equal determination, preferring death to a life that involved expulsion from their country. All three walls were destroyed and in turn so was the Temple, some of whose overturned stones and their place of impact can still be seen...

The famous Arch of Titus still stands in Rome: it depicts Roman legionaries carrying the Temple of Jerusalem's treasuries, including the Menorah, during Titus's triumphal procession in Rome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Jewish-Roman_War

Even after crushing the Judean revolt, the Romans provided sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health. But they also destroyed the symbolic center of the Jewish identity.

I guess I have to put too fine a point on it, huh: the bit about the romans was incidental. I was using the character — "Reg" — as a parody of your criticism:

Reg: all right, but apart from originality, innovation, exclusivity, price-point, beauty, the possibility of being influenced by other software tycoons, and minimality of influence by developers, how was Doc Searls at all prescient here?

Searls said "Steve Jobs will do things exactly the same way as he has always done things."

He did a good job of describing those things. I said as much earlier. But he was being observant, not prescient.

Here's prescient: "Steve Jobs will do things exactly the same way as he has always done things, and this time Apple will become bigger, sexier, and more powerful than Microsoft."

Hindsight bias is the inclination to see events that have occurred as more predictable than they in fact were before they took place. Hindsight bias has been demonstrated experimentally in a variety of settings...

Yeah, none of that was lost on me. I wasn't laughing at your expense or trying to invalidate your message. The similarity to that scene was just irresistible.

But he was being observant, not prescient.

There's no difference.

Dude, that was a Monty Python reference. I like your counter-argument, but still: it was a Monty Python reference.

I make no apologies. Steve Jobs is Serious Business :-)

I await references from other movies, like "The Omen."

"To Steve, clones are the drag of the ordinary on the innovative. All that crap about cloners not sharing the cost of R&D is just rationalization. Steve puts enormous value on the engines of innovation. Killing off the cloners just eliminates a drag on his own R&D,..."

Repace clones with middleware when you read this.

As an iPhone developer, who developed the skill through brute-force experience and trial through throwing away lots of code, I wonder why Google doesn't take advantage of this. Currently, the iPhone SDK is better than the Android's SDK. Similar to the high value of Microsoft Visual Studio integrating everything into a true integrated environment, the iPhone SDK is much closer to Microsoft Visual Studio-like than the Android SDK.

Overnight, Google could start to change this underdog status. Why doesn't Google buy Appcelerator's Titanium or Phonegap? By buying a software tool company that makes it much easier to write Android apps, Google could show up in force for the battlefield of developer mindshare and consumer experience, by giving away the tool free and sponsoring conferences, contests, bloggers, heck even venture capital for Android-focus companies.

In the long run, because of their carpet bombing approach with devices, Google will earn the majority share of smart mobile device operating systems. Why not accelerate the process by making it easier for developers to make something? Not everyone is above-average when it comes to software development - why not make the Visual Basic for mobile platforms. I argue that Visual Basic was a key linchpin of Microsoft's Windows dominance. Before Visual Basic, you had to use the Windows API or (yes, a third-party app framework) like Foxpro.

Because ultimately developers go where the users are. It makes sense, then, to optimize for getting users first, and then take care of the developers once it's clear that they have a userbase to develop for.

Because Google has never genuinely competed on quality, except for search results, and that was only for a blessed golden period. (And not counting Gmail, which was a 20% project, and is only considered high quality because the rest of the state of web-based email interfaces is horrible, open source shit.)

Google doesn't need finesse: They strongarm, using brute force & sheer volume. That's what they do.

Ergo, they don't need to finesse the SDK or truly court developers. (The best way to court developers is to ensure apps sell - and the Android marketplace numbers are dismal.)

They think they will win anyway.

Google has not acceled at anything outside the expertise of the founders, search and building datacenters.

<i>, and is only considered high quality because the rest of the state of web-based email interfaces is horrible, open source shit.)</i>

I take issue with this. Google is also better than non-web based email clients as well, including outlook, thunderbird and Apple mail. It searches quicker as well, which is completely unbelievable.

Sure, some things these clients do better, but for most tasks, gmail is much better. Outlook 2010, just released last week, has just started linking email conversations.

Getting further OT: I used to agree wholeheartedly with this, but have you noticed how slow Gmail is getting? I recently switched back to Apple mail, after insisting on Gmail as my frontend for years. Can't beat Google on search speed, but Apple does a fine job of that, and every other function is considerably faster.

I never really thought about Google before like that. Thanks. I guess they will stick to their core competencies, and I wonder how much of Google's operational philosophy is due to individuals like Marissa Mayer. Or is it The Borg.

And not counting Gmail, which was a 20% project, and is only considered high quality because the rest of the state of web-based email interfaces is horrible, open source shit.

What's so bad about Squirrelmail? It seemed pretty snappy when I tried it.

    - It will be original.
    - It will be innovative.
    - It will be exclusive.
    - It will be expensive.
    - It's aesthetics will be impeccable.

Innovative? There will usually be a twist that distinguishes it from the mainstream pack, but all of the parts will have been implemented before. The result will have compromises, but they will be compromises fine tuned to the tastes of an actual individual person. Just about everything else will have been decided by committee. Imagine you are competing in a song writing market where most of the other compositions are written by focus groups and committees. That's the kind of advantage Steve enjoys.

(One can also think of this as: development unfettered by fear of failure.)

Expensive? Try "high margin." Read: the most lucrative market segments.

The iPhone was truly innovative, same for the iPad. iTunes as well.

<i>There will usually be a twist that distinguishes it from the mainstream pack, but all of the parts will have been implemented before.</i>

You could say that about anything innovative, it always consists of parts of things from before.

The iPhone wasn't the first touchscreen phone. It was the first to combine such a good execution, usable mobile browser, and multitouch. Add the App Store into the mix, and you have something unbelievably good.

I wonder if anyone still thinks killing Mac clones was the wrong move.

Well, it is more nuanced than that. Everyone I think would agree that Apple managed the whole cloning thing very badly. But Ross and Fujitsu didn't hurt Sun's sales (for example).

Kind of. Fujitsu has enjoyed lots of high-end SPARC/Solaris sales for large telcos, an extremely profitable market Sun had to compete with them in and, to my knowledge, mostly lose.

The Fujitsu relationship is a bit symbiotic, in that they also co-develop SPARC technology. IIRC, SPARC V is Fujitsu's kid, while Niagara is Sun's brainchild.

As for Ross, Sun hardware has always been low-volume/high-margin. I guess they were aiming to make more money out of post-sale services and software than hardware. Ross made hardware that had to run Sun software. In that scenario, clones didn't hurt that bad. Apple, OTOH, has always been a hardware company with a strong brand.

Good you reminded me of that - I have no Ross in my interesting computer collection.

I'll take the bait, Apple and everyone else lost a massive opportunity to dethrone the Borg, not once, but twice. First with Windows ME and then with Vista Microsoft were caught with their pants way, way down and without an actually usable consumer OS. Apple could have owned that and could have made a massive push for the mainstream.

This being said, had they actually taken on the Borg at their own game they would be a very different company than they are today, and not necessarily a better one.

That would have entailed finding a way through the fabled 500 orifices into a low-margin market. Good thing they dodged that bullet.

When ME came out, Apple was busy clawing its way out of the grave, and since Vista, Apple has been killing MS in consumer mindshare, revenue and profit growth, and new sector growth. MS is dead in the water in mobile and appliance computing - where do you think the growth over the next 3 years is?

that was saruman's play

Mac sales, at the time, were a non-elastic market. The clones did not increase the Mac marketshare, they just took sales of machines from Apple.

Keeping the clones wouldn't have helped them do the things you are saying, it would have just hamstrung them further.

Macintosh's high margins have always been derived from a strictly segmented product line, even pre-Jobs. There's simply too many "holes" in their line to support a consumer-based clone strategy without it turning into a race to the bottom.

What Jobs-era Apple realized is that a simple, distinct product line actually easier to market to consumers than a complex full-line. Easier to understand, easier to buy, less paralysis of choice.

The one place the lack of clones is hurting them is in Enterprise. Apple doesn't really want to be in that market, but they could outsource server/workstations to someone like HP for sales to larger companies only.

Remarkably prescient, though I guess the signs were there for anyone smart enough to see them at the time.

IMHO It is not prescient but Doc Searl recognized "the essential Steve P. Jobs". It is funny to see how most of us are blinded by noise in the echo chamber.

I think the only thing he got wrong was the irrelevance of NeXT.

Just about everybody I know instantiates lots and lots of NSObjects every day. ;-)

Nice strawman. He never said NeXT was irrelevant. He said, "Regardless of their market impact (which in the cases of Lisa and NeXT were disappointing), all four were remarkable artistic achievements." The key words being "market impact". In other words, they didn't sell much, which is true. It was a hindsight observation of market performance, not a forward looking prediction.

Actually, "market impact" does not mean "sales" either. It means more or less "relevance". At that, NeXT failed miserably to influence Unix workstation and personal computer makers.

> So his message to everybody was no different than it was at Day One: all I want from the rest of you is your money and your appreciation for my Art.

There's the conflict. Your art's success depends on the ability of others to say the same exact thing, in a symbiosis with your art.

Does it not go against the very spirit of art itself to tell other artists that they must paint your way?

> Does it not go against the very spirit of art itself to tell other artists that they must paint your way?

Not if you're curating a private gallery.

I see. The App Store is a private art gallery.

Stop kidding yourself.

You might read about the Paris Salon.

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