Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [13]
Jobs made sure that Apple’s organizational chart was streamlined and straightforward. His new managerial flowchart was pretty simple: Jon Rubinstein ran engineering, Avie Tevanian ran software, Jonathan Ive headed up the design group, Tim Cook ran operations, and Mitch Mandich ran worldwide sales. Jobs insisted on a clear chain of command all the way down the line: everyone in the company knew whom they reported to and what was expected of them. “The organization is clean and simple to understand, and very accountable,” Jobs told Business Week.26 “Everything just got simpler. That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity.”
Dr. No
Jobs’s dramatic focusing worked. Over the next two years, Apple introduced four machines that proved to be the first in a string of hits.
First there was the Power Macintosh G3, a speedy professional machine introduced in November 1997. It’s largely forgotten now, but the G3 was a big hit with Apple’s core audience—professional users—and sold a very respectable one million units in its first year. The G3 was followed by the multicolored iBook and the sleek titanium PowerBook, which were both chart toppers. But it was the iMac, a fruity-colored tear-drop-shaped machine, that was a blockbuster. The iMac sold six million units, becoming the best-selling computer of all time. The iMac became a cultural phenomenon, launching a dizzying array of see-through plastic products, from toothbrushes to hair dryers. Bill Gates was mystified by the iMac’s success. “The one thing Apple’s providing now is leadership in colors,” he said. “It won’t take long for us to catch up with that, I don’t think.”27 Gates couldn’t see that beyond the iMac’s unusual colors, the computer had other merits that would make it a hit with consumers: easy setup, friendly software, and a distinct personality.
Jobs focused Apple on a small selection of products it could execute well. But that concentration has also been applied to the individual products themselves. To avoid “feature creep”—the growing list of features that is often added to new products during their design stage and after their initial release—Jobs insists on a tight focus. Many cell phones are shining examples of feature creep. They do everything under the sun, but basic functions like adjusting the volume or checking voicemail are sometimes obscured by the devices’ overwhelming complexity. To avoid confusing the consumer with an endless array of complex choices, one of Jobs’s favorite mantras at Apple is: “Focus means saying no.”
Focus is also having the confidence to say no when everyone else is saying yes. When Jobs launched the iMac, for example, it didn’t have a floppy drive, then standard equipment on computers. It seems silly now, but there were howls of protest from customers and the press. Many pundits said the lack of a floppy drive was a fatal mistake that would doom the iMac. “The iMac is clean, elegant, floppy-free—and doomed,” wrote Hiawatha Bray in the Boston Globe in May 1998.28
Jobs wasn’t 100 percent sure of the decision himself, said Hoddie, but he trusted his gut that the floppy was becoming obsolete. The iMac was designed as an Internet computer, and owners would use the Net to transfer files or download software, Jobs reasoned. The iMac was also one of the first computers on the market to use USB, a new standard for connecting peripherals that no one except Intel was using (and Intel invented it). But the decision to ditch floppies and use USB put a forward-looking shine on the iMac. It seemed like a futuristic product, whether or not that was the intention.
Jobs also keeps Apple’s product lineup very simple and focused. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, Apple fielded at most half a dozen major product lines: two major desktop and laptop computers, some monitors, the iPod, and iTunes. Later, it added the Mac mini, the iPhone, the AppleTV, and some iPod accessories, like woolly socks and armbands.