Steve Jobs Responding to an Insult

First this shows that Jobs was a class-act. Instead of responding to the insult with another insult or calling him wrong, Jobs admitted he didn't know much about OpenDoc (He was not at Apple when it was invented) and could not find a way to make enough use of it for Apple to earn money (Apple was losing money on it) and that he learned from past mistakes not to invent the technology first and then market it, but instead cater to what the user needs and fill that need and make it a good experience for the customer.

What Jobs was doing for the past several years before returning to Apple was building up Next and Pixar, the technology at Next saved Apple by evolving into Mac OS X and also merging with Mac OS technology.

OpenDoc was Apple's answer to the Amiga IIF (Intelligent Interface Format) and Microsoft's OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) it allowed different software to share document objects, pictures, and the like between software and even platforms. Apple had problems with it using too much memory and could not find a good use for it. MS-Office used OLE to share Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc objects between applications. I programmed with it to control Word objects and other objects and exchange data, fill in Word templates with data from SQL Server for mailing lists and cover letters for FAX transmissions and other things.

Jobs was right to terminate OpenDOC, the Apple Laserwriter, the Apple Newton and other projects because Apple could not sell them and they cost more money to support than they brought in. Other companies made laser printers cheaper than Apple, even if Apple had a laser printer out first. The Newton didn't quite work correctly in handwriting recognition, and the Palm Pilot worked better than the Newton. OpenDoc wasn't finished and was using up resources and money at Apple that Jobs needed to divert to other things in order to save the company.

I can see why this guy thought Jobs was a jerk or a phony, Jobs didn't know what OpenDocs could do and he admitted to it, sometimes you just don't know things. I guess the guy liked OpenDoc and wanted to see it continue. Apple also had Cyberdog and other projects like MKLinux that they canceled. Good ideas yes, but they just didn't bring in enough money. Jobs learned to innovate to the customer experience based on the customer's needs. The customer did not need or want OpenDoc, the Newton, The LaserWriter, MKLinux, Cyberdog, etc so Jobs had to cut them out. Then replace them with things the customer did want and need like a lower cost Macintosh called an iMac, the iPod music player and the iTunes music store, a new Macintosh operating system called Mac OS X, the Safari web browser, etc. Those happened to do better and earn more money for Apple because the customer had a better experience with them and it filled their needs and wants.