Steve Jobs’ Itinerary for Apple's 2011 Top 100 Meeting | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs’ Itinerary for Apple's 2011 Top 100 Meeting

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129 pointssarreph40 comments

What's really interesting to me about this agenda is - for years I've always bought into the general apple narrative that they don't _really_ pay that close attention to what their competitors do, and that they just build what they feel is the best thing to build, period.

This agenda just makes them seem a bit more "human" (rather than just Jony Ive's magical workshop of super-designer elves) - at the end of the day, they are still another company that fears their competitors and closely watches them, and plans accordingly during these off-site strategy meetings.

Yeah, you have to more or less ignore stuff made for public consumption... or rather, imagine the PR employees you've met (better yet, imagine yourself as a PR employee), and filter out anything but the most basic idea or two which evidence supports.

(For example, it's hilarious to see a startup I know well (due to knowing a couple employees who rant about the dysfunctions, and I can ask whatever questions I want), and they have some front-page article here on HN where they make themselves out to be far more rational decisionmakers than they really are. Like when discussing a failure, they pose as humble and self-critical, when in reality they're the usual goofballs who spank employees (including team leads) for honesty. Often interesting to watch social dynamics around them with investors/purchasers and at conferences.)

I can understand paying attention to what competitors do. I can also understand tying all your products together.

But how human is this? so we further lock customers into our ecosystem

My personal favorite is: what about email? It shows solutions to big problems slip through the cracks even in top product companies.

> so we further lock customers into our ecosystem

This is a standard strategy topic at almost every company.

Cf. Peter Drucker: the job of any company is not to generate sales, it's to generate repeat customers.

(Apple's stores exemplify this lesson with their emphasis on customer happiness with the overall experience over actual hard selling. Which is why those stores make so much money. My wife talks of going into one as "worshipping at the Church of Jobs" -- they're designed to generate an emotional impact, wit the goal that sales will follow. Now compare with a purely sales-focussed retail operation, like, oh, WalMart ...)

I think that they probably take that approach to a point. For example when introducing brand new products. But when growth is slowing or no longer existent you have to look at your competitors and see what they've done differently. The "narrative that they don't _really_ pay that close attention to what their competitors do" is more of a testament that they don't operate like Samsung (watch their competitor and copy everything about their product).

Right - that makes sense.

I think in my mind I took that too far - that they truly say, forget what these guys are doing, we know better, and customers will eventually come around, PERIOD.

I'm not sure how you can think that after the Apple Maps fiasco.

>The Maps application has been featured on the iOS (then iPhone OS) operating system since the release of the first-generation iPhone on June 29, 2007, and was powered by Google Maps from then until September 19, 2012.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maps

I don't think Apple fears their competitors in quite the way you're insinuating. For better or worse, they're too arrogant for that. I think they "appreciate" their competitors.

This outline disproves exactly what you just said.

I still don't understand these rapgenius non-lyrical annotations that get posted here. Why not just write a blog post with your commentary? Having to click a bunch of times to context-switch between the real content and your thoughts is just an annoyance.

I (somewhat) agree that if there is only a single person's feedback, then RapGenius (perhaps) isn't the ideal model for everyone (though I personally like it a lot) - but, when you want to group source everyones feedback/annotations, it's awesome.

I read a lot of stuff on Rap Genius, and I find their annotation system to be one of the best - I was in a packed MRT in singapore, and was able to easily, with very little mental friction, read through the agenda and annotations, single handedly - thumb clicking the annotations and back.

The context switching added deeper understanding for me - mentally I might gloss over something that I could dig deeper into with a good source at hand - I love the format.

It's the same concept as having footnotes in printed books. Adding lots of commentary in the middle of a document breaks the flow of the text. On RG, you can read the text intact in its original form if the annotations don't interest you, and drill into the things that catch your attention. It sounds like you're questioning the concept of footnotes and annotations in general, rather than just on Rap Genius.

More on the concept of the Top 100 retreat --

http://www.edibleapple.com/2012/01/25/inside-apples-top-100-...

I would have thought a 'Holy War' with Google would also include trying to steal their best employees. Their illegal pact seems counter-intuitive in this light.

The no poach pact ended around the time of this document.

What's a 'tent pole'? Ironically, the RP doc didn't annotate that.

It's a term of art that, in movies, means the big blockbuster that is going to put the balance sheet in the black, in the process allowing a lot of other smaller and more risky pictures to be made. It has taken on an analogous meaning in other domains.

When referring to an OS update, I assume it means the compelling feature(s) that will get people excited about upgrading.

It's actually interesting that you flagged this, because of course Jobs was involved in movies thru being the major investor behind Pixar, and he admired Disney. It seems to illustrate him thinking about parallels between the two mass markets of computers and movies.

They're the major features. Steve used that term in his presentation for iOS 4.0: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/smartphones/apple-iphone-os...

Something that holds up the tent? You need 3-4 of them. That was my interpretation.

Didn't see maps on the agenda.

Probably the reason they screwed it up.

These two lines jumped out at me:

"Google and Microsoft are further along on the technology, but haven't quite figured it out yet - tie all of our products together, so we further lock customers into our ecosystem"

"make Apple ecosystem even more sticky"

Is using "itinerary" as a synonym for agenda/outline Apple jargon?

What's interesting to me is that there was only one point that was still "confidential"..I wonder if that means all the cats were out of the bag and it's really up to the new management to innovate?

Or maybe the top 100 doesn't know about the best of the best.

That Item was regarding Verizon iPhone, not some mystery product.

Do we know if there are really 100 attendees to this meeting ? If that's indeed the case, is it unusual to have that many people within a company capable of influencing things ? Any other examples in the corporate world ?

You should read about Jeff Skilling's leadership 'survival of the fittest' outings at Enron.

I can't find any clear examples on the net, but you should watch The Smartest Guys in The Room.

Pretty sure there were lots of people that went with him on crazy corporate holidays.

I'm not sure this is a mere corporate holiday, it sounds like; in addition to company stuff (reviews/headcount) real long term strategic decisions get made/debated in these top 100 gatherings.

As I recall, these are indeed the hand picked "top 100", movers and shakers within the company that go on this company retreat.

"create low cost iPhone model based on iPod touch to replace 3GS"

Oh, I wish.

How is this news? Does any company note have a "focal" or "prism" meeting like this?

It's news because the contents of any of these meetings rarely surface to the public where we can discuss them.

ok, fair point.

My favorite is the "average age" line. Why would that question be asked? One would guess, because he wanted to manage it. Another example of how Jobs had little respect for the law as it relates to employment practices.

They did not mention anything about MacBook Pro and MacBook Air (not even an update) :/ when they were mentioning about iPad 3

This is quite remarkable:

> we further lock customers into our ecosystem

Can't say we don't know it already, but seeing it explicitly mentioned as a strategy...

Well this is one of the more shameless examples of blog spam I've seen in a while.

this isn't a blog post

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