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Steve Jobs, BMW & eBay

blog.adamnash.com

21–30 of 71 posts

Re: Steve Jobs, BMW & eBay

#21
post #6

Having a market share as large as Toyota's doesn't mean that you can't make great products. Who says they have to be related? It seems to happen in practice, but I can't figure out any good reasons.

Apple seems to have proved your point, but they seem exceptional in that respect. Typical reasons are that the broader you make the audience, the more you have to dial down exceptional features for cost, scale and broad appeal.

One of the key things I feel like I learn from Steve Jobs is that while he may have been niche-focused at one time, he seems to me to have either intuited, or rapidly learned, that actually there's a very broad audience that values high-quality products. It's easy to forget that the "cheaper is better" pessimistic view of consumers is very strong, and that can become very cynical in a product company.

Deciding to trust the good judgment of your customers and put faith in your ability to appeal to their sense of value, rather than simply their cost-watching ability, is a brave and bold move. I think it is awesome that it turns out to pay off.

Re: Steve Jobs, BMW & eBay

#23
post #16

Here it is 14 years later. The thing about that meeting, that strikes me, is that this is what Apple always was. Steve wasn't bringing a purpose to Apple, he was reminding Apple employees of Apple's purpose. Apple still has that purpose. Every product cycle you see the blogs and the pundits speculating on what Apple will do, and exclaiming what Apple should do. Just today I saw an article along the lines of "now that…

"Apple could have kept both closed and innovated on them" Webkit is based on GPL code from KDE, so Apple had no choice but to release the source.

They didn't have to start http://webkit.org and run it as a public open source project. They did far more than simply comply with the GPL.

Re: Steve Jobs, BMW & eBay

#24
post #16

Here it is 14 years later. The thing about that meeting, that strikes me, is that this is what Apple always was. Steve wasn't bringing a purpose to Apple, he was reminding Apple employees of Apple's purpose. Apple still has that purpose. Every product cycle you see the blogs and the pundits speculating on what Apple will do, and exclaiming what Apple should do. Just today I saw an article along the lines of "now that…

"Apple could have kept both closed and innovated on them" Webkit is based on GPL code from KDE, so Apple had no choice but to release the source.

When you look at how much effort and time Apple has put into WebKit, I think Apple could have written WebKit from scratch without spending too much time on it.

Remember, Apple had experience web engine developers on the team from day 1. They knew exactly what was needed and how it should be done.

Re: Steve Jobs, BMW & eBay

#26
post #16

Here it is 14 years later. The thing about that meeting, that strikes me, is that this is what Apple always was. Steve wasn't bringing a purpose to Apple, he was reminding Apple employees of Apple's purpose. Apple still has that purpose. Every product cycle you see the blogs and the pundits speculating on what Apple will do, and exclaiming what Apple should do. Just today I saw an article along the lines of "now that…

"Apple could have kept both closed and innovated on them" Webkit is based on GPL code from KDE, so Apple had no choice but to release the source.

There's also the work that Apple did on LLVM/Clang, as well as Grand Central Dispatch. They weren't obliged to release that.

Re: Steve Jobs, BMW & eBay

#27
post #16

Here it is 14 years later. The thing about that meeting, that strikes me, is that this is what Apple always was. Steve wasn't bringing a purpose to Apple, he was reminding Apple employees of Apple's purpose. Apple still has that purpose. Every product cycle you see the blogs and the pundits speculating on what Apple will do, and exclaiming what Apple should do. Just today I saw an article along the lines of "now that…

> Here it is 14 years later.

Indeed. Also telling is a lot of the stories on folklore.org - You see a lot of what was described in this article, from yet another unique perspective.

Re: Steve Jobs, BMW & eBay

#29
post #16

Here it is 14 years later. The thing about that meeting, that strikes me, is that this is what Apple always was. Steve wasn't bringing a purpose to Apple, he was reminding Apple employees of Apple's purpose. Apple still has that purpose. Every product cycle you see the blogs and the pundits speculating on what Apple will do, and exclaiming what Apple should do. Just today I saw an article along the lines of "now that…

>Apple is not proprietary. Hell, Mac OS X is the most popular open sourced operating system on the planet.

Let's not let our enthusiasm blind us to reality.

Re: Steve Jobs, BMW & eBay

#30
post #16

Here it is 14 years later. The thing about that meeting, that strikes me, is that this is what Apple always was. Steve wasn't bringing a purpose to Apple, he was reminding Apple employees of Apple's purpose. Apple still has that purpose. Every product cycle you see the blogs and the pundits speculating on what Apple will do, and exclaiming what Apple should do. Just today I saw an article along the lines of "now that…

> Hell, Mac OS X is the most popular open sourced operating system on the planet.

No. Linux.

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