Steve Jobs would never have written this post | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs would never have written this post

zachinglis.com

39 pointszachinglis26 comments

People view Steve through rose colored glasses and then become indignant whenever those glasses get knocked off. It's selection bias, pure and simple. Steve was wrong about as many things as he was right. The magic of Steve Jobs was in taking something complicated, utilitarian, ugly, and confusing to the average person and making it accessible, beautiful, and enjoyable to use. You apply that formula successfully enough times, across a wide enough range of ideas, you are going to hit some home runs.

>The magic of Steve Jobs was in taking something complicated, utilitarian, ugly, and confusing to the average person and making it accessible, beautiful, and enjoyable to use.

That and a fucking massive reality distortion field that is STILL around.

It's not distortion if it becomes reality.

I don't think you understand what was meant by Jobs' "reality distortion field".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field

I've said it before, but we've got a few years before we really see the post-Jobs apple. Like the OP I find it very strange that people keep coming up with comments about Jobs wouldn't do X.

Steve has been dead for only a bit over a hear. The time it takes to deliver products like the iPad Mini or iPhone 5 are a tad longer than that.

We'll see the real post-Jobs Apple in another four or five years time. After we've had the products that aren't even on the drawing board delivered by people hired after Steve died.

Jobs had a reputation for killing products at late stages - after lots of money had been committed. Traditional big companies aren't good at that for reasons that I won't examine. If that reputation was deserved then a year is more than long enough.

100%. If any old jackass could say with any accuracy what Steve Jobs would or wouldn't do, then there wouldn't have been much magic to being Steve Jobs, would there?

Great post, Zach. I couldn't agree more. I even had the same thoughts yesterday, when a few of those types of posts popped up on HN. And I completely agree, although yes Steve had that old interview where he hated the idea of this middle sized iPad, I think at some point he would have had to make something like this to cave in to the market demand. And sort of like you mentioned, products like this are not made overnight. I would not be surprised if the early talk of the iPad Mini was when Steve Jobs was alive. I'm not sure if anyone can really publicly confirm or deny that.

SJ was famously against things before he was for them; the surest way to figure out what Steve-era Apple would do next was to listen for him to say some variation of "this is a bad market and Apple is not interested in it."

Tablets: "What are these things good for besides surfing the Web on the toilet?"

eBooks: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore..."

Video iPod: "You can't watch a video and drive a car...We're focused on music."

No offense, but I really dislike that sort of phrasing about people being "famously against things before (they were) for them". I can't help but think of all the problems caused by stubbornness, and the recent article on HN about how Jeff Bezos said the people who were right often were the ones that would change their minds. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4674270)

There is an art to being open-minded, but disciplined at the same time. I don't think anyone would argue Jobs was anything other than focused. Completely different from a flip-flopping politician. I'd almost say Job's flip-flopping instances were the exceptions that prove the rule, expecially because they seemed to be successful (in the market). There are (comparatively) few cases the flipped-into-flops, ya know? (pardon the pun =D).

Whenever Apple messes up people say that now. However remember Apple messed up under Jobs. Remember the iPhone's poor signal? What do you think would happen if the response to the Maps app poor quality was "You're using it wrong?", that's what happened (essentially) under Jobs.

>Can you remember when the iPad came out and everyone said it was a giant bloated iPhone (myself included.) Now it’s indispensable to most.

This is a little OT, but I just find it hilarious when people say this sort of thing. Something like 10% of people in the US have an ipad.

Fair enough. I am talking about the people who will be reading my post. The techies, designers, etc. I can't imagine anyone from outside that will be reading the article.

Ten percent of the US population is (a) a very large absolute number and (b) easily enough that you're likely to see an iPad every day if you look around you.

Then if you move into San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, and similar population hubs - the places that matter in the US - you can expect to see rather higher than 10% market penetration, especially if you then look primarily at affluent people (like engineers and entrepreneurs) in those areas.

Ten percent is not a small number here.

Also, it's important to realize what technology is "indispensable" and what technology is not. If all of the iPads vanished tomorrow, or even the Internet, people would basically be OK. If the electricity went out across the country and wasn't coming back, it would basically be the end of our civilization.

In fact, the "indispensable" technologies are so refined that people take them for granted, but their existence is much more amazing than that of the iPad. Being able to flip a handle in your own house and get life's most essential substance, ready-to-drink? Being able to get inside a metal tube and go clean across the country for a few hundred dollars? Being able to have your own vehicle that can go 80 miles per hour with refueling stations all over the country? Absolutely unbelievable.

Steve showed us the way with the Gourd, and all who claim the Shoe are heretics.

Steve Jobs said a lot of bullshit a lot of the time. In retrospect, I think he was trying to throw people off the scent.

Yes, in particular these statements come to mind:

"I’m not convinced people want to watch movies on a tiny little screen" - before ipod had video

"We didn’t think we’d do well in the cellphone business." - before the iphone was released

"There are no plans to make a tablet" - before the ipad was released

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is...people don’t read anymore,” - about kindle, before launching ibooks

Either he was very good at misdirecting competitors, or he was good at changing his mind.

Either he was very good at misdirecting competitors, or he was good at changing his mind.

I'll take the latter. I have every reason to believe that he vehemently and even violently against putting iTunes on Windows, but that, more than anything else, is what turned Apple around.

We know for a fact the tablet thing and the phone statement are both bullshit. They'd had prototypes in development for years and at the time of those quotes.

Mr. Jobs specifically asked that people not refer to him in this manner. Makes me sad every time someone does it.

Steve Jobs was smart enough to pivot when a market opportunity arose, despite what he said previously.

Steve would never have released the Cube! Or an ibook shaped like a toilet seat!

I'm so tired of popular HN comments because drawn out blog posts that volley back and forth. I'm also tired of talking about Steve, regardless of what direction it's in unless it's a purely historical one.

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