YouSaid · the spoken record

Ken Kocienda

lines on the record: 35
first: 2022-12-12
most recent: 2022-12-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“He was gone, And then it only takes Ken one sentence to describe the impact that Steve had on him face had on me 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 motivated.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should thwart 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, 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. It would give him one more chance to give feedback before we shipped the upgrade to iOS. Henry responded with a shake of his head and a matter of fact, at this point, I think we should go with a multitasking gestures as they are. We finished our chat a few minutes later, 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 knew. Steve wasn't coming back. About six weeks later, Steve resigned from his position as CO of Apple. About six weeks after that”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 moderated half day session to discuss melding technology and liberal arts, the reasons it might be difficult to work at this intersection and why it was essential to keep trying. Since the effort lay at the core of the notion of a great product, also Edwin Land's notion of a great product, right? Not only was the intersection freely discussed inside the company, but oddly for Apple, the discussion did not stop at the edge of the”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perhaps concentrating keenly 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. I don't know myself many years ago, which I think still works, is the power of ideas. Edwin Land, Steve, the founder of Polaroid, and Steve Jobs Hero, changed Apple. Steve took one of Edwin Land's ideas and 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 was an idea 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 manufactured at scale. We hope to make our products meaningful.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Engagement. So again, goes back to the idea that 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 this the seagull, the seagull manager and says, so this is like the opposite of Steve Jobs. 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 very minute decisions, right? It's such a widespread affliction that it has its own meme. It's called the Sea Goal Manager. It describes a 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 establish large, cutting-edge software research departments to question”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to read this to you because I think, first of all, he does a good job of tying in that story, the Vincent Bardi story from the very beginning. It's one of Steve Job's most famous quotes, which is focus 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 consistently over a period of time to yield results. Consequently, our success 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. We didn't shuffle around printed specifications or unchanging paper mockups 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.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At Apple, 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.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so now we go into what is really the anti-Steve's 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 at least made a podcast on this book. And I think I'm even deeper in that conviction that taste is something that's very real. 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 taste is through years of practice, which he talks about a lot. And I think it's hackers and painters, which is not just a book, but the actual essay. So it says, I'll soon share more ideas about what made our Apple approach special. But first, I'll discuss a counter notion. An example of a process that cannot produce iPhone-like excellence.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like and feels like. Design is how it works. Now, Ken jumps in. His message is clear, and I agree with it. Shallow beauty in products does not serve people. Product design should strive for 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 a product should tell you what it is and how to use it. Objects should explain themselves. It is impossible to overstate how much this matters.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The difference between Google and Apple. We'll get there. There's actually now we get this won't take that long. This is the 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 visually attractive 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. And in the context he provided around this statement when he originally made this claim, it was a 2003 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 looked like. 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.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting is like you can compare what you feel is a good taste at this point in your career with great work for the past. So this is why Kenneth, you and I do this professionally, right? This is what 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 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 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 catalog 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 section was about”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His or her respect for the company. As he put it, a corporation could quote accumulate or withdraw credits from its reputation, which is why he worked so hard to ensure that every single interaction a customer might have with Apple from using a Mac to calling customer support to buying a single from the iTunes store and then getting billed for it was excellent. Why? Because one bad experience might undo dozens or a hundred positive experiences that a customer previously had with your company. So in a few minutes, we're going to get to the difference in design the way Steve wanted to design or Steve did design products in Apple compared with the data-driven approach that Google uses. 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 what is it, like how do you develop good taste? And something that that was.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How frustrating would it be if you were using a device at it, what he just called ill considered, overlapping, and inscrutable features. You're going to be angry, like temporarily frustrated, right? You don't want to do that to your customers. Designing an 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 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 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.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another insight that Steve Jobs had was the fact that great products make people happy almost all of the time and rarely do the opposite. I'm going to read this section and I'm going to pull up something from 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 becoming Steve Jobs which I just read for the second time on episode 265 and I'll get to Steve's idea of the Apple experience, which you and I can use in our businesses. It'll make sense in one second. Let me go to Ken. 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. Over time, and this is an important part, designing an excellent user experience was as much about preventing negative experiences, meaning, you know,”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fail in the absolute dead end sense of the word. The purple team, which is the iPhone, 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 we were required to show we combined some inspiration craft tastes 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 want what we meant then we tried out each other's demos 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”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It involves overcoming apprehensions about committing time and effort to an idea that you are not sure is right. At Apple we had to expose that idea we then had to expose that idea and demo to the scrutiny of sharp-eyed colleagues who were never afraid to level pointed criticism, the psychological hurdle only grows taller with the knowledge that most demos”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. 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, 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 hand holds and footholds that helped boost us from the bottom of the conceptual valley so we could scale the heights of worthwhile work, 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.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 it could after a success. And so then Ken goes into great detail how difficult it was to build the keyboard on the iPhone. So the iPhone internally was codename purple. And I just want to pull out because I want to pull out a few paragraphs here because I think this is the main idea, really the main idea behind the entire book, which is demos just help you push the evolution of your product forward 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, 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.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Apple browser would be the best way for a customer to feel good about 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 for these product announcements, these product presentations. Just want to read one paragraph. This is not going to surprise you or I because me and you have been talking about this, the importance of practice over and over and over again. And it shouldn't surprise URI that Steve practiced a lot. I would learn more about how Steve prepared for these big splash product announcements. Three weeks or a month before the keynote itself, Steve would start rehearsing with portions of his slide deck. Slowly, day by day he would build the show by stepping through it as he wanted to present.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Love, I chuckled to myself over how much time I've spent thinking about this iPad demo and how much Steve taught me 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 1990s, maybe early 2000s. They were still, if you bought an Apple device, it would have Microsoft Internet Explorer on it as part of the deal that Steve worked out with Bill Gates when he got that investment from Microsoft. I think it was in 1997, if I'm not mistaken. And in this case, they're like, okay, we're going to make our own browser. And with Classic, very classic Steve Jobs, 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 it says, Steve Jobs himself had decided how he would judge our browser as a product. The focus would be on one thing, 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”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every nuance of every feature. Now that is a huge, really important. So what they're talking about there is like, hey, let's say you're the one coming up with the demo. You're the programmer. Steve's not going to let you sit there and describe your thinking behind it because, and he uses this example one time he called, I read this book called Insanely Simple. I made a podcast about it in the past. And it was a guy that did, that worked for the ads for Apple. Steve did this exact same thing with him too. In meetings, he would try to say, okay, this is the thing behind the SA campaign. Steve's like, shut up, just show me the ads. 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 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 happens.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This push for simplicity had a purpose, even though he was a high tech CEO, Steve could put a push. 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 16-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. She had a report due later in the afternoon and she was trying to fit in one more email reply as she headed down the hallway towards the next meeting. Steve believed she would do better with a product that wasn't loaded down with everything of Bob, 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 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 realized that nobody would be standing over the shoulder of a person who is having their first experience with software carefully described.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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's showing through his actions, right? Actions express priority, right? He's one of the best maxims that I've ever come across. Actions express priorities. He's showing through his actions what's important. 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 demo that 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 many, many pages after the demo because we're learning like what Ken learned from this demo with Steve, right? And he's going into detail. Two things he's going to pull out that was important to Steve. You have to put yourself in your customer's shoes and you have to hack away the unessential. Steve looked carefully at the software and asked me succinct questions to see if the work could be made simple.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 going to go to the punchline, which happens a few pages later. He's describing Ken is describing, again, a main theme of the book, why these demos are so important. Apple must make great, this is a note enough myself years ago. Apple must make great software to get there. They use a series of iterations in the form of demos. Now, Ken says demos served as the primary means to turn ideas into software. This statement includes the assumption that Apple made making great software an important goal to begin with. We did, and that came straight from Steve. He set the company's priorities, and he stressed in public statements, an 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 action.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“the demo verdict. 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 the index describes as part. I'm going to go back to a few pages where I jotted it down. The decisiveness of Steve Jobs. Remember this when Ken compares and contrasts the way Apple builds products relying on the taste and judgment of the founder with how Google makes their products. So then once he says the demo is over, Scott 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 going to see him again. Ken was able to demo several times. He says, you have to make substantive contributions to the discussion with him as a way. That's the way to earn future invitations. That is the price to be in.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. I think I could learn to touch type on it and I think other people could too. There's a picture of all these gold drawings in the book and one of this is just Steve staring directly at you on the previous page and this is what I think of It's what I think of when Ken's about to describe what happens next. 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, seriously considering my idea about the next big apple product. It was thrilling. He thought for a few seconds.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After several long moments of study 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 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 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 Yeah I guess so Steve sized me up a little and then asked Which one do you think we should use A simple question clearly directed at me and only me.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That he wasn't going to let me pull the wool over his eyes. He was now ready to see my demo. 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. 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, 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. He looked down. In front of him, the iPad was in landscape. In what I took to be an attempt to get a view of every corner of the display.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 last night with all my highlights, and I just went through the index to make sure I hit all the Steve Jobs parts. And I thought this was fantastic because this part, this is in the chapter called the demo, right? The part is not described the demo in the index. This part is described in the index as the decisiveness of Steve Jobs, which is a perfect description of it because we're going to go into it right now, right? He goes, his eyes met mine. His look wasn't obviously unfriendly or threatening, but surely he knew his unblinking gaze could intimidate people in my position, and it certainly had that effect on me. This idea that when Steve would stare at you, he wouldn't blink, I've heard like dozens of stories about this in the 10 or so books I've read on him. I saw his look as a signal.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Detailed specificity of what he wanted to happen next. He was always trying to ensure the products were as intuitive and straightforward as possible, and he was Through looking at demos, asking for specific changes, then reviewing the changed work again later on, and giving a final improvement before we could ship, Steve could make a product turn out like he wanted, 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 how he's going to end this section because Steve only speaks four sentences. It 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 previously he'd worked on, he helped create the Safari browser. This is like, you know, maybe 10 years before where we are in the book, worked on the original keyboard for the iPhone. In this case, he is demoing, this is very soon before about a year and a half before Steve.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As his chief means of deciding how Apple's software should look and feel and function. From my standpoint as an individual programmer, demoing to Steve 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. He was always easy to understand. He would either approve a demo or he would request to see something different next time. Although Steve's opinions and moods 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. 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”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fashion from problem to design to demo to shipping product, 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 to Amazon, I first ordered this book on January 7, 2019. 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 valuable company, he's brilliant. If I had to say the single trait I admire the most about him and the one that I don't even understand how it's capable that he was able to do it is his clarity of thought. Steve is the clearest thinker out of any single other person that have covered so far in the podcast. And when I think of Steve's clarity 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. He used these demo reviews.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 hypotheticals. He wanted to physically see the work. So they pushed all their work forward through a series of demos. And in many cases, him telling you specifically, hey, what I want to see next. So he says there weren't any company handbooks describing these elements. So he was just naming, I skipped over a bunch, but he's just naming like, you know, some traits that Apple used to develop their products. But this is the main point. There weren't any 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 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 step wide.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. Every day at Apple was like going to school. A design-focused, high-tech, product creation university. And he talks about how intense the work environment was and that Steve had unbelievably high standards in everything, which we're going to go into a lot today. Most of my highlights, I'm going to 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. 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.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is an excerpt from a book that I've read three or four times now, and the one I'm going to 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 Cosienda. Okay, so before I jump back into the book, I want to tell you why I'm reading this book for the third or fourth time. So even though this is episode 281, there's actually more than 281 episodes of founders. There's at least eight 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 on my hand. And so not numbering the bonus episodes was a giant mistake because I can't reference them, as you hear over and over again how I'm constantly referencing past episodes of founders because I don't think about this as separate episodes. I just think about this as just one giant 400 hour long 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 15 years at Apple, my efforts to make great software while I was there.”
2022-12-12 · Founders · #281 Working with Steve Jobs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source