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Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

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Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#31

Post by steveBK123 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #4
naremu wrote: post #3

It's amazing how much "mystique" is assigned to a man who's success can probably be at least 75% attributed to just being an enthusiast about his own products in a business world where it's usually limited to the founding members. How many CEOs, product managers and the like have been caught promoting their own brand with a "tweeted from iPhone" tagline. Probably "efficient business people", but literally won't touch…

Eric Schmidt famously got a lot of flack at Google because he insisted on sticking with his blackberry

And its not like Sergei & Larry cared about product either.

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#32

Post by manmal »

iamerroragent wrote: post #26

I have a thing for not taking advice from someone that doesn't listen to their doctor.

That could imply that humans are very low dimensional, such that a habit of not listening to doctors immediately carries over into their product design habits. Have you found this to be the case about humans? I personally haven't. I've experienced humans to be highly complex and multi layered, often applying different concepts and world views to different domains. In some areas they are driven by fear, in other areas by curiosity or perfectionism.

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#33

Post by quacked »

bboygravity wrote: post #7
theaussiestew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing is, we all tolerate things which are sheer crap, if viewed through a different set of lenses. For example, you probably tolerate many things that I personally would consider rubbish, and vice versa. You say it’s trivial to have good taste, but it’s not trivial at all. My point is, many of us would have thought the plastic screen was fine, and that wasn’t because we weren’t “enthusiastic” about our own p…

> Consider this website, the outdated interface is held up as some kind of filter against an “eternal September” of an influx of “normies”... No. Hold up. This interface has 1 obvious reason that I see that no fancy polished interface can ever come close to: loading speed.

The day HN starts running that awful "squares on squares" JS design method where everything is a button with no borders is the day I leave HN. Luckily I don't think that day is coming.

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#34

Post by steveBK123 »

wmeredith wrote: post #29
amelius wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it seems that all Jobs did better than the rest is caring about his product rather than profits. And it seems that everybody is wondering why such a strategy could work and deliver actual profits.

> And it seems everybody is wondering why such a strategy could work and deliver actual profits. Survivorship bias. Jobs himself was almost Apple's undoing multiple times because he cared more about the product than profits.

The flip side of this is Bezos who cared about profits but not the product, generally speaking. He was a great operator clearly, but no product vision.

Probably why we all use Amazon but none of us love doing so. If someone else figured out delivery & pricing (Walmart is trying with Jet), we'll all slowly defect. There's no lock in.

Kindle is an adequate product that has sporadic iterative improvements and occasional backslides. Hardware is finally fine after many years of not, software is less so.

Alexa is whatever.

AWS is a cash cow, but thats more of a B2B/Enterprise offering.

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#35

Post by attractivechaos »

naremu wrote: post #3

It's amazing how much "mystique" is assigned to a man who's success can probably be at least 75% attributed to just being an enthusiast about his own products in a business world where it's usually limited to the founding members. How many CEOs, product managers and the like have been caught promoting their own brand with a "tweeted from iPhone" tagline. Probably "efficient business people", but literally won't touch…

Many CEOs have their preferences but their preferences may not be shared by their customers (e.g. metaverse). In my view, Steve Jobs was different in that a) his "taste" was deeply shared by targeted customers and more importantly b) he knew how to materialize his taste. Many people only like a product when they see/use it. Jobs was among the few who could make that product by instinct.

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#37

Post by Capricorn2481 »

misiti3780 wrote: post #30
beauHD wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are enigmas Elon is listening to the music inside his own head. He has the right people working for him, and he's often mistakenly seen as the person who takes all the credit, but he's sitting on the work of countless engineers who work painstakingly to create his product range. As for Jobs, again, sitting on the work of countless designers and product people who make Apple what it is. Jobs…

except lots of people that have worked directly for him and with him say the exact opposite. here is one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33703617 many others are documented in books about spacex and tesla

Elon has demonstrated publicly that he doesn't understand some pretty basic shit.

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#38

Post by lobstrosity420 »

bboygravity wrote: post #7
theaussiestew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing is, we all tolerate things which are sheer crap, if viewed through a different set of lenses. For example, you probably tolerate many things that I personally would consider rubbish, and vice versa. You say it’s trivial to have good taste, but it’s not trivial at all. My point is, many of us would have thought the plastic screen was fine, and that wasn’t because we weren’t “enthusiastic” about our own p…

> Consider this website, the outdated interface is held up as some kind of filter against an “eternal September” of an influx of “normies”... No. Hold up. This interface has 1 obvious reason that I see that no fancy polished interface can ever come close to: loading speed.

You can absolutely have both. A little CSS would go a long way here, there is no reason to go full JS SPA to make a page look nice. In fact many times it’s the opposite.

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#39

Post by JohnFen »

bboygravity wrote: post #7
theaussiestew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing is, we all tolerate things which are sheer crap, if viewed through a different set of lenses. For example, you probably tolerate many things that I personally would consider rubbish, and vice versa. You say it’s trivial to have good taste, but it’s not trivial at all. My point is, many of us would have thought the plastic screen was fine, and that wasn’t because we weren’t “enthusiastic” about our own p…

> Consider this website, the outdated interface is held up as some kind of filter against an “eternal September” of an influx of “normies”... No. Hold up. This interface has 1 obvious reason that I see that no fancy polished interface can ever come close to: loading speed.

I prefer HN website design for an entirely different reason: readability.

More "modern" designs put a lot of crap and distractions between me and what I'm at the site to do: read the articles and/or comments. HN doesn't so that, and that makes the HN design a million times better than most others.

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#40

Post by Ryder123 »

amelius wrote: post #25
naremu wrote: post #3

It's amazing how much "mystique" is assigned to a man who's success can probably be at least 75% attributed to just being an enthusiast about his own products in a business world where it's usually limited to the founding members. How many CEOs, product managers and the like have been caught promoting their own brand with a "tweeted from iPhone" tagline. Probably "efficient business people", but literally won't touch…

Yeah, it seems that all Jobs did better than the rest is caring about his product rather than profits. And it seems that everybody is wondering why such a strategy could work and deliver actual profits.

I think the real magic is that he cared very deeply about both.
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