#281 Working with Steve Jobs

0:00 When Vince Lombardi joined the Green Bay Packers in nineteen fifty nine. The team had gone eleven straight seasons without a winning record. Upon arriving at training camp as their new head coach, Lombardi made an immediate and indelible first impression. After leading the players to a meeting room. Lombardi waited in front of a blackboard.

0:17 As the player sat down. He picked up a piece of chalk and began to speak. Gentlemen, he said. We have a great deal of ground to cover. We're gonna do things a lot differently than they've been done here before.

0:29 We're going to relentlessly chase perfection. Knowing full well. We will not catch it. Because perfection is not attainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it.

0:39 Пикас We will catch. Excellent. He paused and stared. His eyes moving from player to player.

0:48 The room was silent. I'm not remotely interested in In being just good. He said with an intensity That startled them all.

0:57 Lombardi soon followed up. With a clear cut description. Of the specific thing. They would perfect. One

1:04 Play. One single running play. Gentlemen. This is the most important play we have. It's the play we must make go.

1:12 It's the play that we will make go. It's the play. That we will run again and again. And again. This is the power of focusing on and perfecting one thing.

1:22 You wouldn't think there was so much to say. About a single running play. But John Madden described attending a coaching clinic. Where Lombardy talked about the power sweep. And only the power sweep.

1:33 For eight. Hours. Through practice after practice, drill after drill. Game after game. And season after season.

1:41 The Packers honed and refined Lombardi's power sweep. Even though opposing teams knew the play was coming, the They couldn't stop it. Lombardi built his victories.

1:52 On an openly declared challenge. To beat the Packers, you must beat the power sweep. Over the following seven years. The Packers one Five championships.

2:04 A step by step year by year progression through the ranks of From worst. To best All built on the foundations of

2:13 Of one humble running play. Initially described on the blackboard. And then executed exquisitely on the field. Over and over again. In any of the sentences is so important.

2:25 In any complex effort. Communicating a well articulated vision for what you're trying to do is Is the starting point. For figuring out How to do it.

2:35 It may seem like a stretch to draw a comparison between winning football games in Green Bay and and developing web browser software in Cupertino. But a significant part of attaining excellence in any field. Is closing the gap. Between the accidental

2:51 And intentional. To achie not just a something. Or even an everything. But a specific and well chosen. To take words and turn them into a vision.

3:03 And then use the vision to spur the actions. That create the results. Vince Lombardi. was the Steve Jobs Of football coaches.

3:14 That is an excerpt from a book that I've read three or four times now. And the one I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is creative selection inside Apple's design process. During the golden age of Steve Jobs And it was written by Ken Cosenda. Okay, so before I jump back into the book, I wanna tell you why I'm reading this book for the third or fourth time. So even though this is episode two eighty one, there's actually more than two hundred and eighty one episodes of Founders. There's at least eight

3:37 Unnumbered bonus episodes. And one of those unnumbered bonus episodes is an episode that I've previously done on the book that I'm holding in my hand. And so not numbering the bonus episodes was a giant mistake because I can reference them as you hear over and over again, how I'm constantly referencing uh past episodes of founders because I don't think about this as separate episodes. I just think about this as just one giant four hundred hour long.

3:58 conversation on the history of entrepreneurship that you and I are having. And so I want to jump into the introduction where Ken tells us what this book is about. This book is about my fifteen years at Apple. My efforts to make great software where I was there. And the stories and observations I want to relate about those times. If you want to know what it was like to give a demo to Steve Jobs or what made Apple's products culture special, read on.

4:19 Every day at Apple. Was like going to school. A design focused High tech Product Creation University.

4:26 And he talks about how intense the work environment was and that Steve had unbelievably high standards. In everything, which we're gonna go into a lot today. Most of my highlights, I'm gonna really focus the highlights on just The parts of the book that are about Steve Jobs. There's a lot of great detail in here for anybody building a product, but most of it is going to be about Steve Jobs today. With that intensity came an insistence on doing things right. And without explicitly trying to do so, we developed an approach to work that proved particularly effective.

4:53 And so the intensity of Steve Jobs. jumps off the pages of this book when I got to this section it made me think of one of my favorite quotes by Warren Buffett. And he shares that same intensity. He says intensity is the price of excellence. And so a main theme of the book is that Steve did not want to sit around and have a bunch of meetings and talk about hypothetical. He wanted to physically see the work, so they pushed all their work forward.

5:13 Through a series of demos. And in many cases him telling you specifically, hey, what I want to see next. So he says the uh there weren't any c company handbooks describing these elements. So he was just naming I skipped over a bunch, but he just naming like, you know, some traits that uh Apple used to develop their products.

5:30 But this is the main point. There weren't any c company handbooks describing these elements. Nobody outlined this list in a new employee orientation. Our approach flowed from the work. This happened from the top down, stemming from the unquestioned authority and uncompromising vision. Of Steve Jobs. We never waited around for brilliant flashes of insight.

5:50 That might solve problems in one swoop. And we had very few actual Eureka moments. Instead, this is the main point of the book. Instead we move forward. In stepwise fashion from problem to design to demo. to shipping product.

6:05 Taking each promising concept And trying to come up with new ways to make it better. This next section. I've thought about for years. So according uh to Amazon. I first ordered this book on January seventh, two thousand nineteen.

6:18 I probably read it shortly after I received it. There's a lot of reasons I admire Steve Jobs, why I consider him the greatest entrepreneur of all time. When it comes to building products and building a a valuable company, he's brilliant. This if I had to say the the single trait I admire the most about him and the one that I don't even under s understand how he it's capable that uh he was able to do it is his clarity of thought. Steve is the clearest thinker out of any single other person

6:41 That I've covered so far on the podcast. And when I think of Steve's clarity of thought, I think about this quick story from Ken's book. Steve was at the center of all circles. He made all The important product decisions.

6:53 He used these dem overviews. as his chief means of deciding software should look and feel and function. From my standpoint as an individual programmer. Demoing to Steve.

7:05 Was like visiting the oracle of Delphi. The demo was my question. Steve's response was the answer. While the pronouncements from the Greek oracle often came in the form of confusing riddles That wasn't true with Steve.

7:19 He was always easy understand. He would either approve a demo Or he would request To see something different next time. Although Steve's opinions and moods

7:29 Could be hard to anticipate. He would this is such I love this. He was utterly predictable. when it came to his passion for products.

7:38 He wanted Apple's products to be great. And he insisted on being involved. In the process as it went along. Whenever Steve reviewed a demo, he would say often with highly detailed specificity what he wanted to happen next.

7:54 He was always Trying to ensure the products were as intuitive and straightforward as possible. And he was willing to invest his own time Effort. and influence to see that they were.

8:05 Through looking at demos Asking for specific changes. Then reviewing the changed work again later on and giving a final approval before we could ship. Steve could make a product turn out Like he wanted.

8:18 Much like the Greek oracle. Steve foretold the future. And so Ken is going to describe what it was like to demo to Steve Jobs. This there's a bunch of highlights over several pages. This part of the book is absolutely fantastic. And I love it.

8:33 how he's gonna end this section because Steve only speaks four sentences. Goes back to Claire being really easy to understand. And there's no like there's no ambiguity in what Steve wants to happen next. And in this case Ken. Um previously he'd worked on he helped create the Safari browser. This is like, you know, maybe ten years before Where we are in the book.

8:51 uh worked on the the original keyboard for the iphone. In this case he is demoing this is very very soon before about a year and a half before Steve dies, unfortunately. He's demoing the keyboard on the iPad, which has not been released yet, where we are in the story. And I should tell you. So I was going back through the index of the book after I was done, um, last night with all my my

9:12 uh highlights and I just went to the index to make sure I hit all the Steve Jobs parts. And I thought this was fantastic because this part It's this is in the chapter called The Demo, right? The part is not described the demo in the index. This part is described Uh, in the index as the decisiveness of Steve Jobs, which is a perfect description of it,'cause we're gonna go into it right now, right?

9:33 He goes, his eyes met mine. His look wasn't obviously unfriendly or threatening. But surely he knew his unblinking gaze was could intimidate people in my position. And it certainly had that effect on me.

9:46 This idea that when Steve would stare at you, he wouldn't blink. Uh I've heard like dozens of stories about this and You know, the ten or so books I've read on'em. I saw his look as a signal. That he wasn't gonna let me pull the wool over his eyes. He was now ready to see my demo.

10:00 Scott stood up and crossed behind Steve's chair. Okay, let's look at the demo. Steve, this is Ken. He worked on the iPhone keyboard. He has some tablet keyboard designs. To show you.

10:11 Steve was still looking at me. Continuing the demo introduction from where Scott left off, I said Right. There are two designs. One has more keys, like a laptop keyboard.

10:21 And the other has bigger keys. Like a scaled up iPhone. We're thinking of offering both. Try the zoom key to switch between them. Steve then slowly swiveled his chair around to the demo table.

10:32 He looked down. In front of him. The iPad was in landscape. Steve moved his eyes all over the iPad screen. Rotating his head slowly in small figure eights.

10:44 In what I took to be an attempt to do. To get a view. Of every corner. Of the display. After several long moments of study.

10:53 He reached out to tap the zoom key. To switch the keyboard to my bigger keys design. No reaction. No hint of what he was thinking. Steve

11:02 was like an expert high stakes poker player checking his whole cards for the first time after receiving them from the dealer. Now that the screen looked different. Steve started his study. All over again. He took his time.

11:16 Taking a solid thirty seconds to absorb every detail on the screen. He turned to look straight at me. We only need one of these, right? Not what I was expecting. Steve was still looking at me, and so with a half shrug, I said

11:32 Yeah, uh I guess so. Steve sized me up a little. And then asked. Which one do you think we should use? A simple question.

11:42 Clearly directed at me and only me. Steve didn't shift in his chair. or motion toward anyone else in the room. It was my demo and he wanted me to answer. Well, I've been using these demos for the past few days and I've started to like the keyboard layout with the bigger keys.

11:58 I think I could learn to touch type on it and I think other people could too. Stick Okay. There's a picture. Uh there's draw all these cool drawings in the book.

12:07 And one of this is just Steve staring directly at you. On the previous page and this is what I think of. Uh It's what I think of when when um When Ken's about to describe what happens next.

12:19 Steve continued looking at me as he thought about my answer. He never moved his eyes to anyone. Or anyone else. He was completely present. There he was.

12:31 Seriously considering my idea. about the next big Apple product. It was thrilling. He thought for a few seconds. Then he announced the demo verdict.

12:42 Okay. We'll go with the bigger keys. That was it. The oracle of Apple had spoken. The demo was over. Before I read a few more sentences, go back to what

12:52 The index describes this part. I'm gonna go back to a few pages where I tr I jotted it down. The decisiveness of Steve Jobs. Remember this when Ken compares and contrasts the way Apple builds products. You relying on the taste and judgment of the founder. with how Google makes their products.

13:10 So then once he says the demo is over, Scott Uh walked a couple steps towards the door, giving me the cue that it was time for me to go. And Ken talks about, hey, when you're doing demos to Steve, this is the price to be in the room. If he feels you have no valuable insight, you're never gonna see him again. Ken was able to demo several times. He says You have to make substantive

13:27 uh contributions to the discussion to discussion with him. Uh as a way that's the way to earn future invitations. That is the price to be in the room. Can you make substantive contributions to the discussions on the products and help push them forward, help make them better. That's all Steve cared about. I'm gonna go to the punchline.

13:46 Which happens a few pages later, he's describing Ken is describing again a main theme of the book, why these demos. uh are so important. Apple must make great this is a no enough myself. Years ago. Apple must make great software to get there, they use a series of iter iterations in the form of demos. Now Ken says demo served as the primary means to turn ideas into software.

14:06 This statement includes the assumption that Apple made made making great software an important goal to begin with. We did. And that came straight from stів. He set the company's priorities. And he stressed in public statements.

14:18 and internal communications that making great software was a core corporate focus. What's more, Steve wasn't merely interested in paying lip service to this goal. He demanded

14:30 And so the software team produced demos in a steady stream. And whenever there was interesting new work Steve found the time to attend a demo review so he could see it. He is showing through his actions, right? Actions express priority. that I've ever come across. Actions express priorities. He's showing through his actions what's important.

14:47 His time is extremely valuable. He's like, Hey, I'm in this room. I'm reviewing on a very micro level what all parts of this product are going to look, feel, and operate like, right? Steve found the time to identify. Uh to attend a demo review so he could see it. His involvement kept the progress and momentum going. All of this, everything I'm reading to you is happening over

15:06 Many, many pages after the demo.'Ca d we're we're learning like what can learn. from this demo with Steve, right? And he go he's going into detail. Two things he's gonna pull out that was important to Steve. You have to put yourself in your customers' shoes. And you have to hack away the unessential. Steve look carefully at the software.

15:22 And ask me succin questions to see if the work could be made simpler. This push for simplicity had a purpose. Even though he was a high tech CEO, Steve could put himself in the shoes of customers. People who cared nothing. for the ins and outs of the software industry.

15:35 He never wanted Apple software to overload people. Especially when they might already be stretched by the bustle of their everyday lives. This is something Steve talked about over and over again from the time he was a young man in the nineteen eighties. Till right before he died. Consider a mom who is b they just

15:49 People just do not care about your product as much as you do. You have to make it simple and easy to use right from the get go. And so this idea of putting yourself in the customers' shoes And even attaching like a specific example of a customer helps you make better product decisions. This is an example of that. Consider a mom who's busy with her daily routine. On a day she was worried about her six year old son, who was homesick from high school and was taking care of himself. She was running a few minutes late getting to the office because there was bad traffic on the road.

16:14 She had a report due later in the afternoon and she was trying to fit in one more e ro email reply. as she headed down the hallway towards the next meeting. Steve believed she would do better with the product. That wasn't loaded down with everythingamab the product designers could dream of. This is hacking away the unessential. This is some Bruce Lee shit right here. He believed that stripping away non essential features

16:35 made products easier for people to learn from the start. And Easier to use over time. He wanted products and their software to speak for themselves. He realised

16:44 Then nobody would be standing over the shoulder of a person Who is having their first experience with software. Carefully describing every nuance of every feature. Now that is a huge uh really important So what they're talking about there is like hey

16:58 Let's say you're you're the one coming up with the demo, you're the programmer. Steve's not gonna let you sit there and describe your thinking. behind it.'Cause you're are you going and he uses this example, um One time he called I read this book called Insanely Simple. I I I made a podcast about it. Uh In the past.

17:12 And it was a guy that did uh that worked in for the ad on the ads for Apple. And he and he d Steve did this exact same thing with him too in meetings he would try to say, Okay, this is the thing behind the SAG campaign. Seems like shut up. Just show me the ads. He and he says something like Are you going to be there when I see this in a magazine or on a billboard? No, then shut up. I don't want to hear it. I'm going to experience it like the customer is going to experience. So same thing here. He's like he realized that nobody would be standing over the shoulder of a person.

17:37 who's having their first experience with software carefully describing every nuance of every feature. And so his point is, wouldn't it be better if software was clear and intuitive right off the bat, and this ends the section. This is what I absolutely love. I chuckle to myself. Over how much time I've spent thinking about this iPad demo. And how much Steve taught me.

17:55 In one meeting. Where he spoke just four sentences. So now he goes back in time. One of the first things he worked on was creating the Safari browser at this time in Apple history. I think this is the Maybe late nineteen nineties, maybe early two thousands. They were still if you bought an Apple device, it would have Microsoft Internet Explorer on it as part of the deal that

18:16 Uh way. That G uh Steve worked out with Bill Gates when he got that invention uh investment from Microsoft. I think it was in nineteen ninety seven, if I'm not mistaken. And in this case we're like, Okay, we're gonna make our own browser. And as with classic, uh like very classic Steve Jobs.

18:30 He's not going to give you A series of priorities. He's going to give you one priority. The name of this chapter is one simple rule. And says she jobs herself and decided how. He would judge our browser as a product. The focus would be on one thing.

18:43 Speed. Steve wanted our browser to be fast. To be really fast. much faster than Microsoft Internet Explorer, which is the product that we aim to replace. And this is why Steve reasoned that a speedy new Apple browser would be the best way

18:56 for a customer to feel good about our replacement to our replacement browser right away. Steve thought speed was the long term key to better browsing. So making a high performance browser became our top priority. Our definition for greatness. And so as a result of Ken's work on the Safari browser, he got a chance to see how Steve prepared.

19:19 For these product announcements, these product presentations. Just want to read one paragraph. Uh, this is not gonna surprise you or I'cause me and you have been talking about this the importance of practice over and over and over over again. And

19:30 Th it shouldn't surprise you or I that Steve practiced a lot. I would learn more about how Steve prepared for these big splash product announcements. Three were three weeks or a month before the keynote itself. Steve would start rehearsing With portions of his slide deck.

19:44 Slow, day by day, he would build the show by stepping through it. as he wanted to present it at the keynote. This was one of Steve's great secrets of success as a presenter. He practised. A lot.

19:56 He went over and over and over in the material. Until you had the presentation honed. And he knew it cold. And then throughout the book Ken also adds these stories.

20:10 uh both publicly and internally. that he thought were very valuable. This is one of them the fact that Steve Jobs did not believe. on resting on your loyal laurels. That once you do something great, then you can the next uh the next step is Try to do something else that's great.

20:25 At Apple, there was never much time to savor success. Steve Jobs explained this aspect of the company ethos in an interview with Brian Williams. Williams asked Steve. Where he thought he fit in the American family of thinkers and inventors. At first Steve attempted to brush off the question, but when Williams pressed him, Steve said I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good

20:44 Then you should go do something else wonderful and not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next. And then Ken says I found Steve's approach could work as well. After a failure. as he's as it could after a success.

20:57 And so then Ken goes into great detail how difficult it was to build the keyboard. on the iPhone. So the iPhone internally was uh codename purple. And I just wanna pull out because I wanna pull out a few paragraphs here because I think this is a main and uh the main idea, really the main idea behind the entire book, which is demos just help you push the evolution of your product forward.

21:20 Because the one essential demo expectation was progress. So he says exactly how we collaborated mattered. It reduced to a basic idea. We showed demos to each other. Every major feature on the iPhone started as a demo.

21:32 And for a demo to be useful to us, it had to be concrete and specific. We needed concrete and specific demos to guide our work. Since even an unsophisticated idea is hard to discuss. Constructively without an artifact to illustrate it. At Apple, we built our work on this basic fact.

21:49 Demos made us react and the reactions were essential. Direct feedback on one demo provided the impetus to transform it into the next. Demos were the catalyst. For creative decisions. And we found that the sooner we started making creative decisions.

22:04 The more time that's such an important point. The sooner we started making creative decisions, the more time there was to refine and improve those decisions. To backtrack if needed, to forge ahead if possible. Concrete and specific demos were the handholds and footholds. that helped boost us from the bottom of the conceptual valley so we could scale the heights of worthwhile.

22:25 Making a succession of demos was the core. of the process of taking an idea from the intangible to the tangible. Making demos is hard. It involves overcoming apprehensions. About committing time and effort to an idea.

22:39 That you are not sure is right. At Apple we had to expose That idea. Excuse me, at Apple, we then had to expose that idea and demo to the scrutiny of sharp eyed colleagues who were never afraid. to level pointed criticism.

22:54 The psychological hurdle only grows taller with the knowledge that most demos Almost all of them. fail in the absolute Dead dead end sense of the word.

23:05 The purple team, which is the IFO team. The iPhone team rarely worked without concrete and specific artifacts that's important to you and I because the iPhone is the most successful consumer product of all time. Literally. We had to demonstrate our idea. We couldn't get away with telling.

23:20 We were required to show. We combined some inspiration, craft, taste, and decisiveness, and we shared our results. We had to work like this. Because the team didn't accept anything unless it was concrete and specific. A demo showing what we w what we meant. Then we tried out each other's demos.

23:34 and said what we liked and what we didn't and offered suggestions for improvements, which led to more demos and more feedback. This virtuous collaborative cycle. another insight that Steve Jobs had. was the fact that great products make people happy almost all the time.

23:51 and rarely do the opposite. I'm going to I'm gonna read this section and then I'm gonna pull up something from Wha what I feel is the best. I mean, every single biography on Steve Jobs I've read I thought was absolutely fantastic. The best one if you can only read one. And I wouldn't just read one, but if you only had to read one, that'd be uh Becoming Steve Jobs, which I just read for the second time. On episode two sixty five.

24:11 And I'll get to Steve's idea of the Apple experience, which you and I can use in our businesses. Uh it'll make sense in one second. Let me go to Ken. Uh, Ken says we all own devices that had too many ill considered, overlapping, and inscrutable features, making the product nearly impossible to understand or use. Apple's whole identity. was bound up in not having this problem.

24:31 Over time. And this is an important part. Designing an excellent user experience was as much about preventing negative experiences, meaning, you know, how frustrating would it be. if you were using a device added what what he just called ill considered overlapping and inscrutable features. She's gonna be angry. Like temporarily frustrated, right? You don't want to do that to your customers.

24:50 Uh designing an uh excellent user experience was as much about preventing negative experiences As facilitating positive ones great products make people happy almost all the time. And do the opposite rarely, if at all. Why is that important? Or more importantly, why did Steve Think

25:07 That was important because Steve said every interaction a customer has increases or decreases the opinion of the company. He calls this idea, which I'm about to read to you, comes from becoming Steve Jobs. The Apple experience. It is brilliant. And it's simple too. The simple transaction of buying a song.

25:23 and handing over a credit card to Apple in order to do so became part of what Steve had begun calling the Apple experience. As a great marketer, Steve understood that every interaction a customer had with Apple could increase Or decrease. His or her respect for the company. As he put it.

25:37 A corporation could quote accumulate or withdraw credits from its reputation. Which is why he works so hard to ensure that every single interaction a customer might customer might have. With Apple. From using a Mac.

25:50 to calling customer support, to buying a single from the iTun store. And then getting build for it. was excellent. Why? Because one bad Experience might undo.

26:01 dozens or a hundred positive experiences. that a customer previously had with your cut with with your company. So in a few minutes we're gonna get to the difference in design, uh, the way uh Steve wanted to design or Steve did design products in Apple. uh compared with the like the data driven approach that Google uses.

26:19 And a lot of this goes down there's like several pages and essentially it's just like a lot of this comes down to taste, to having good taste, which is really hard to figure out like what is it like how do you develop good taste. And something that I thought was interesting is like you you can compare what you had the what you feel was a good taste at this point in your career with great work for the past. So this is why Ken Can I you and I do this, you know, professionally, right? This is what all everything what Founders is about. It's like we study great work from the past because there's all these insights that you and I can use in in present day. And Ken even adds another layer to why you should study great work for the past, because it gives you something to compare to. To see like to

26:54 To calibrate your taste. Studying great work from the past provides the means of comparison and contrast and lets us tap into the collective creativity of previous generations. The past is a source of the timeless and enduring. When I study the past, I make a point of deciding what I like And sometimes this built up catalogue

27:12 Of refined like responses. About past works. Find a suitable outlet. and a natural expression in my present day work. And so I was wrong. I thought the next uh section was about

27:25 Uh the difference between Google and Apple we'll get there. There's actually Uh now we get this this won't take that long. This is the Uh Ken's favorite thing that Steve Jobs ever said. And it's this idea, this quote from Steve, that design is how it works. And so Ken says making software and products appear beautiful in the sense of being virtually visually attractive.

27:45 Only goes so far. Steve Jobs once said Design is how it works. In fact This is my favorite thing I've ever heard him say.

27:54 And in the context he provided around this statement when he originally made this claim, I was a two thousand three New York Times interview discussing the iPod. Steve drove this point home. Or excuse me, Steve drove his point home. Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what a product look like. Looks like.

28:11 People think it's this veneer. that the designers are handed this box and told make it look good. That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. Now Ken jumps in. His message is clear and I agree with it.

28:27 Shallow beauty in products does not serve people. Product design should strive for a depth, for a beauty rooted in what a product does. Not merely in how it looks and feels. Form should follow function, even though this might seem like a strange notion for pixels on a screen. But it's not if you believe the appearance of our product

28:45 should tell you what it is and how to use it. Objects should explain themselves. It is impossible. How much this matters.

28:55 Okay, so now we go into what is really the anti Steve Jobs model. The note I left myself a few years ago, I think, is still really good. More data will never be enough. You need conviction. You need a point of view. And It's been what, let's see, almost three years, maybe, two and a half years since I last read or or at least uh made a podcast on this book, and I think I'm I'm even deeper in that conviction that Like taste is something that's very real.

29:20 I mean, Paul Graham talks about that, you know, decade after decade in his essays. that building a great product is not scientific. It's not something that could just be derived from data alone. You have to have taste And one way to develop tastes is through years of practice, which he talks about a lot and I think it's uh Hackers and Painters which is um not not just the book, but the actual essay. So it says I'll soon sh share more ideas about what made our Apple approach special, but first I'll discuss a counter notion.

29:46 An example of a process that can not Produce iPhone like excellence. For this I turn to Douglas Bowman. Who was a designer who started at Google in two taus

29:57 Becoming one of its early uh visual design leaders. Here's how he justified his departure. From Google almost three years later. So he is describing This product development path

30:08 This method of product development that can find I think grotesque. Uh, this is the designer at Google now. Uh without a person Or near the helm.

30:19 Who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of design. A company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. So this is again the anti Steve Jobs model. What is the the uh subtitle of this book. inside Apple's design process during the golden age of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs played this role that was lacking at Google.

30:38 So it says uh there's nobody at the home who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of designs. The company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions without conviction. Or without taste. Doubt creeps in. Instincts fail. When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. They reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data.

30:58 We just can just described The demo process. Uh Steve. Literally trusting his judgment, trusting his taste.

31:06 What data was involved when he was doing the demo for the iPad keys? There's two keyboards. Steve Trust in his taste and pick the one that he that he Like the most, right? He got some feedback from the designer, from the from the person that actually created it, which is Ken. So okay, yeah, we're gonna go with that. I trust my taste. And that's what shows up in the actual product.

31:25 It's the opposite of that sentence. Remove all subject subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Okay, launch it. Data shows negative effects back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision. Yes, it is true that a team at Google could not decide between two blues.

31:41 So they're testing forty one shades. Between each blue. to see which one performs better. Now Ken jumps in with his opinion on this. Forty one shades of blue sounds like a lot. But if they were willing to go that far at Google, why not test for a hundred?

31:57 Or a thousand. If some data is good, more must be better. Right? as Bowerman suggest, or as Bowerman, excuse me. As Bauman suggests, it isn't.

32:05 Google factored out taste. from its design process, the note on the left right and in the in between these two paragraphs is So he writes Google factored out taste from its design process. I wrote Wow. Apple relied on Steve's personal taste.

32:22 At up, but we never would have dreamed of doing that. And we never stage any A B test. for any of the software on the iPhone. When it came to choosing a color, we picked one. We used our good taste. And we moved on.

32:35 I read Johnny Ives. biography back on episode one seventy eight, he tells an exact same very similar story in that book, working with Steve. I can't remember the name of the computer. It was like um there I don't know if they were I think it was maybe early IMAX when they used to come Like

32:50 They were way way bigger than they are now, but they'd come in like all these different colors. I'm pretty sure this happened in the late nineties. And there's a line from that book where it says, Johnny was amazed at the speed with which Jobs gave his approval to the new colors. In most places that decision would have taken months. Steve did it in a half hour. So it's another example. It's just I'm gonna trust my taste. I know. that I n I'd like in especially at that point in his career, he's had

33:12 you know, two, maybe two and a half decades. of practice and experience with designing insanely great products. In other words, Steve worked himself into a position where he could trust his judgment. And so then Ken goes back into this idea of really explaining the way that they push their their Products forward, the importance of demos.

33:30 I'm gonna read this to you because I think um first of all he does a good job of tying in that that s that story, the Vincent Bardi story from the very beginning. It's it's One of Steve Jobs' most famous quotes, which is Focus is set is about saying no. And so that's what came to mind when I read this section. There are innumerable ways creative selection can become bogged down since this working method must be applied.

33:50 consistently over a period of time to yield results. Consequently, our success was was as much about what we did not do. As what we did. Mostly we avoided falling into any of the typical product development traps common Silicon Valley. For example, we did not talk about projects without examples to ground the discussion.

34:07 We didn't shuffle around printed specifications or unchanging paper mock-ups. For weeks on end. We did not have an imbalance between influence and involvement. Where a senior leader might try to mimic the commanding role of Steve Jobs without the corresponding level of personal engagement. So again goes back to the idea that

34:27 Steve demonstrated with his actions how he dedicated his time, what was important to him. It was the opposite of This is really funny. He calls us the seagull. The seagull manager. And says so this is like the opposite of Steve Jobs.

34:39 A detached high level manager making all the key decisions is such a widespread affliction. Detached. Remember Steve is not detached. He's in there. He's making m very minute decisions, right? Uh, it's such a widespread spread affliction that it is that it has its own Uh meme. It's called the Seagull Manager.

34:55 It describes a talk top executive who is rarely around but flies in occasionally and unexpectedly from who knows where, lands on your beach. Squawks noisily, flaps its wings all over the place. launches itself back into the air, circles overhead, and drops a big pile of you know what on everyone and then flies away. Leaving the rest of the team to clean up the mess. More things they did not do. We did not

35:17 Establish large Cutting edge software research departments sequestered from And with a tenuous connection to the designers and engineers responsible for creating and shipping the real products. Steve Jobs famously. disbanded such an organization at Apple. Which is called the Advanced Technology Group.

35:32 Shortly after he reasserted control over the company in nineteen ninety seven. These kinds of anti patterns can prevent creative selection from functioning correctly. Since they bought block. The steady accumulation of positive change in the form of demos.

35:47 While developing a product. And this is where he ties this all together beautifully for you and I. We managed to steer clear of all such pitfalls. If I were to take a stab at explaining the why I would say that our clarity of purpose kept us on track. In much the same way that Vince Lombardi won football games.

36:04 And Steve Jobs pushed us to make a speedy first version of Safari. Since our focus on making great products never wavered. If for no other reason Then that's what Steve demanded. Perhaps concentrating keenly.

36:17 On what to do. Helped us block out. What not to do. And then this is Steve preaching an idea. over and over again throughout the company.

36:28 uh known enough myself many years ago, which I think still works, is the power of ideas. Edwin Land, Steve the founder of Polaroid, Steve Jobs Hero. Changed Apple. Steve took one of Edwin Land's ideas. And

36:41 built his company around it and then repeated it and make sure he taught everybody else in the company why this is important. The intersection is the title of this chapter. It w it was an idea that h and was an idea that helped us. It speaks to the way that Apple valued expertise in both technology and liberal arts. Building a company at the intersection of technology and liberal arts is literally something Edwin Land talked about and did, something Steve Jobs learned from Edwin Land, and then Steve Jobs used it at Apple. This is the power of ideas. We use this notion to guide our efforts as we developed and lived on our gadgets, so that they turned out to be more than an agglomeration of the latest CPU sensors and software manufacturers at scale.

37:17 We hope to make our products meaningful and useful to people. Unlike the unspoken idea of creative selection, we did talk about Working at the intersection among ourselves. There was even a formal Apple University course on the topic. A a moderated half day session to discuss melding technology

37:34 and liberal arts. The reason and the reasons it might be difficult to work at this intersection and why was essential. To keep trying. Since the effort lay at the core of the notion of the at the core of the Apple notion of a great product.

37:48 Also Edwin Land's notion of a great product, right? Not only was the inter intersection freely discussed inside the company, but oddly for Apple, The discussion did not stop at the edge of the Cupertino campus. Steve Jobs told everyone.

38:03 What he thought about this topic himself. On stage. During the keynote presentation to announce the original iPad. mentioned it m multiple times. He mentioned it in in our um in interviews back in the nineteen eighties when he's still in his twenties. mentioned it in the Walter Isaacson book.

38:18 that he's writing in collaboration with Isaacson as he knows he is dying. This is a a fundamental idea. uh important idea to understand the life and work of Steve Jobs. This is what Steve said about that. The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. to be able to get the best of both. to make extremely advanced products.

38:39 From a technology point of view. But also have them be intuitive. Easy to use, fun to use, so that they really fit the users. The users don't have to come to them. They come to the user.

38:52 That's a really important idea. A few pages later it's repeat it. Steve Jobs did not say products. should thwart the the user. He said products should come to the user. And then the book ends on a sad note. Ken had been doing a series of demos with Steve. He's talking to his boss

39:10 Uh Henry And it says several months later, in one of my regularly scheduled one on one meetings with Henry to discuss my continuing ipad work. I suggested to him that it might be a good idea to have another demo with Steve. To show him multitasking gestures again. Now that the software was close to its final form.

39:25 Uh it would give him one more chance to give feedback before we shipped the upgrade uh the the the update to iOS. Henry responded with a shake of his head and a matter of fact. At this point, I think we should go with the multitasking gestures as they are. We finished our chat a few minutes later.

39:40 And when I left Henry's office and made my way down the hall, I heard his words again in my mind. At this point. Then it hit me. Henry New Steve wasn't coming back.

39:51 About six weeks later. Steve resigned from his position as CO of Apple. About six weeks after that. He was gone. And then it only takes Ken one sentence.

40:03 To describe the impact that Steve had on him. that he's had on you and millions of other people. Steve Jobs provided his single minded focus on making great products. And his vision.

40:16 Motivated. And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. Read the book. Anybody building a product should read this book. It should be uh in your library. It is a no brainer recommendation. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes.

40:29 You'll be supporting the podcast at the very same time. If you want to use the same app that I use to store all of my highlights, I have over twenty thousand highlights from the books I read. And I have a bunch of books I still have to put in there. I use an app called ReadWise And you can test it for sixty days for free to see if you like it as much as I do. The link is down below. It's uh the y or you can just go straight to the URL, which is readwise.io forward slash founders.

40:52 I spent some time organizing maybe the next ten or twelve books that I'm covering for the podcast. I'm calling it the murderer's row. of history's greatest founders, you can you will not believe the lineup that I have coming. So I'm looking forward to that. That is two hundred and eighty one books down, one thousand to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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