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Icon Ambulance

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Re: Icon Ambulance

#61

Post by eropple »

comice wrote: post #45

I think most rational people would have said something like: "Steve, I agree that is an important detail but it does not warrant a phone call to me on Sunday morning. Send me an email. We'll speak tomorrow." The question is, why didn't people say things like that to Steve Jobs? Or do only the ones that prostrated themselves to him ever speak up? (or get the attention when they do?) I want some stories of people telli…

Because at the level at which Gundotra and Jobs work(ed), you work weekends for important stuff. Branding quality is important stuff for a senior Google employee and providing an aesthetically appealing user experience is important stuff for the CEO of Apple.

Re: Icon Ambulance

#62

Post by uxp »

sachinag wrote: post #55
tlrobinson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs doesn't think so. Have you seen the insides of Apple products? They're as beautiful as the outsides of competitors' products.

This is another one of the ways in which Apple is very much like Nintendo. (Others include very strong leadership; doing things their own way, standards be damned; and cultivating the brand above all else.) The inside of the N64, in particular, was astonishing.

I am a trained watch repair technician. In school, we were trained to never touch the movement of a watch with our bare hands, even if it was filled with water and any sort of dirt, and to never leave a movement sitting out in the open air to collect dust, even if it was already filled with dirt.

The only reason why, it develops the habit of leaving fingerprints on parts and leaving clean watches out in the open.

If you don't strive to be clean, efficient, and build beautiful products that you enjoy looking at and working on, even when they are broken or where no single person outside of you and your colleagues are going to see it, then you will start making mistakes by leaving fingerprints and broken code snippets on the side where your customers are going to notice.

Re: Icon Ambulance

#64

Post by jarek »

sachinag wrote: post #55
tlrobinson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs doesn't think so. Have you seen the insides of Apple products? They're as beautiful as the outsides of competitors' products.

This is another one of the ways in which Apple is very much like Nintendo. (Others include very strong leadership; doing things their own way, standards be damned; and cultivating the brand above all else.) The inside of the N64, in particular, was astonishing.

Also proprietary screw heads.

Re: Icon Ambulance

#65

Post by jarek »

tlrobinson wrote: post #25
cmelbye wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think attention to detail in terms of a column name is different than attention to visual design and look and feel of a product.

Steve Jobs doesn't think so. Have you seen the insides of Apple products? They're as beautiful as the outsides of competitors' products.

Beautiful? Maybe. Functional? I'd rather service a Thinkpad.

Re: Icon Ambulance

#66

Post by [deleted] »

tlrobinson wrote: post #25
cmelbye wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think attention to detail in terms of a column name is different than attention to visual design and look and feel of a product.

Steve Jobs doesn't think so. Have you seen the insides of Apple products? They're as beautiful as the outsides of competitors' products.

[deleted]

Re: Icon Ambulance

#67

Post by zachrose »

nadam wrote: post #46
nhashem wrote: post #6

Because it's Steve Jobs, this is a great anecdote. I'm sure we'll hear dozens of them in the next couple days and weeks, all examples of Jobs' attention to detail and design resulting in superior products and software. Yet imagine your boss calling you on a Sunday and saying, "So I was reviewing the DBA's data model for the new product, and I really don't like how he's called the columns with customers identifiers 'c…

I think there IS a difference, I just don't know exactly what... So I am just thinking loudly: The diffrence may be that you have to work on a relatively risky product which when executed with extremely high attention to detail can have huge impact. A consumer hardware is seemingly such a thing. Probably a new programming language or a very elegant software lib either. The boring Java business application which I am…

I think there's something there, but what you're getting at might be scope?

The less the details matter, the easier it is to scale and abstract the business by hiring sub-managers and not worrying about implementation details.

Re: Icon Ambulance

#68

Post by raldi »

comice wrote: post #45

I think most rational people would have said something like: "Steve, I agree that is an important detail but it does not warrant a phone call to me on Sunday morning. Send me an email. We'll speak tomorrow." The question is, why didn't people say things like that to Steve Jobs? Or do only the ones that prostrated themselves to him ever speak up? (or get the attention when they do?) I want some stories of people telli…

Well, it was less than a week before the MacWorld keynote, where the logo would be shown on a giant screen in front of a huge audience.

Re: Icon Ambulance

#69

Post by joezydeco »

vvnraman wrote: post #22
nhashem wrote: post #6

Because it's Steve Jobs, this is a great anecdote. I'm sure we'll hear dozens of them in the next couple days and weeks, all examples of Jobs' attention to detail and design resulting in superior products and software. Yet imagine your boss calling you on a Sunday and saying, "So I was reviewing the DBA's data model for the new product, and I really don't like how he's called the columns with customers identifiers 'c…

Your example doesn't compare to Vic's post in the same way you intend to. Vic clearly states that But in the end, when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. Steve is not Vic's boss but only that Vic had regular dealings with Steve. In this case too its clearly reflects in the post that Steve is not bossing Vic to…

Having read a lot about Jobs, I take a more cynical view of this anecdote.

I picture it going down like this: Steve doesn't like the yellow color in the icon. Steve asks an Apple employee to get it done. Apple employee says he can't get anyone at Google to pick up the phone or bother with a little detail like this. Steve calls a Google executive to nuke the logjam.

Steve may have a meticulous eye for detail, but I also don't see him wasting time calling high-level executives at other companies (and wasting their time) unless there was no other alternative.

Re: Icon Ambulance

#70

Post by WalterSear »

giancarlofrison wrote: post #63

where is the story?? someone that call on sunday for the icon deserve so much admiration? I don't believe it...

I don't get it either. At first I thought this, and the other 'Steve Jobs' stories in my reader were some kind of concerted joke.
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