Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [23]
The design of OS X illustrates how Jobs functions as Apple’s one-man focus group. By concentrating on the customer experience, Jobs shapes the design and the drive toward simplicity. One of Jobs’s sharpest instincts is the one to strip back and simplify—whether it’s the number of products Apple makes or the number of buttons in an application’s dialog box.
Lessons from Steve
• Be a despot. Someone’s got to make the call. Jobs is Apple’s one-man focus group. It’s not how other companies do it, but it works.
• Generate alternatives and pick the best. Jobs insists on choices.
• Design pixel by pixel. Get way down in the details. Jobs paid attention to the tiniest details. You should, too.
• Simplify. Simplifying means stripping back. Here is Jobs’s focus again: simplifying means saying “no.”
• Don’t be afraid to start from scratch. Mac OS X was worth doing over, even if it took one thousand programmers three years of nonstop toil to do it.
• Avoid the Osborne effect. Keep the new goodies secret until they’re ready to ship, lest customers stop buying the current stuff while waiting for the new stuff.
• Don’t shit on your own doorstep. Apple’s engineers hated the old Mac OS, but Jobs ordered a positive spin on it.
• When it comes to ideas, anything is game. Jobs is not a design radical, but he is willing to try new things.
• Find an easy way to present new ideas. If it means spreading glossy sheets all over a big conference table, get a big printer.
• Don’t listen to your customers. They don’t know what they want.
Chapter 3
Perfectionism: Product Design and the Pursuit of Excellence
“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
—Steve Jobs
In January 1999, the day before the introduction of a new line of multicolored iMacs, Steve Jobs was practicing his product presentation at a big auditorium near Apple’s HQ. A reporter from Time was sitting in the empty auditorium, watching as Jobs rehearsed the big moment when the new iMacs would first glide into public view. Five of the machines in a range of bright colors were mounted on a sliding pedestal hidden behind a curtain, ready to take center stage on Jobs’s cue.
Jobs wanted the moment when they slid out from behind the curtain to be projected onto a large video screen looming over the stage. The technicians set it up, but Jobs didn’t think the lighting was doing the translucent machines justice. The iMacs looked good onstage, but they didn’t really shine on the projection screen. Jobs wanted the lights to be turned up brighter and to turn on earlier. He told the producer to try it again. Speaking into his headset, the producer instructed the backstage crew to set it up. The iMacs slid back behind the curtain, and on cue, they slid back out again.
But the lighting was still not right. Jobs came jogging halfway down the hall and plonked into a seat, legs dangling over the chair in front. “Let’s keep doing it till we get it right, OK?” he ordered.
The iMacs slid back behind the curtain and out again, but it still wasn’t right. “No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “This isn’t working at all.” They did it again. This time the lights were bright enough, but weren’t coming on soon enough. Jobs was starting to lose patience. “I’m getting tired of asking about this,” he snarled.
The crew did it a fifth time, and finally the lighting looked great. The machines sparkled on the huge projection screen. Jobs was elated. “Oh! Right there! That’s great!” he shouted. “That’s perfect! Wooh!”
Throughout all this, the Time reporter was utterly mystified as to why so much effort was put into a single lighting cue. It seemed to be so much work for such a small part of the show. Why invest so much elbow grease in getting every single little detail just right? Earlier, Jobs had been rhapsodizing about new twist-off caps on Odwalla juice bottles, which was another puzzle to the reporter. Who cares about twist-off caps or making sure stage lights come