You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen.
And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there are tremendous tradeoffs that you have to make. There are just certain things you can’t make electrons do. There are certain things you can’t make plastic do. Or glass do. Or factories do. Or robots do.
Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.
And it’s that process that is the magic.
Steve Jobs
Daniel
on 05 Apr 13Great quote.
GeeIWonder
on 05 Apr 13There are just certain things you can’t make electrons do. There are certain things you can’t make plastic do. Or glass do. Or factories do. Or robots do.
1) This repetition is inelegant.
2) Name one.
Don Schenck
on 05 Apr 13NAILED IT!
GregT
on 05 Apr 13Which part of the magic is it that made it impossible to replace batteries without a gigantic hassle?
Andrew
on 05 Apr 13I’m a huge huge fan of Apple and their products….and I’ve read this quote before….and unfortunately I think it is completely at odds with the ‘Steve left us with a deep collection of new product ideas’ argument of why Apple will continue to succeed. Steve Jobs was the one steering ideas through Apple and so far there’s no evidence that anyone else is doing it. Without that tough steering, products get watered down to ‘average’ :-(
YOHAMI
on 05 Apr 13Yes.
Patrick Huizinga
on 05 Apr 13@GregT Space, aesthetics and costs
If you drop the requirement for replaceable batteries, you can put the battery anywhere in the device, without considering ease of access. You could even choose to fill up leftover spaces with batteries. You don’t need protection around the battery or inside the slot. You can make the device slicker, because there’s no need for gaps, buttons, ridges or whatever for access to the battery.
Joe
on 05 Apr 13What does “Prototyper 37signals” mean? It’s in the “About Travis” section below. Does that mean you are a prototyper at 37signals?
Sen
on 06 Apr 13@Joe Sounds like the more practical/realistic/37s-version of what would usually be a product designer.
Adam
on 07 Apr 13The frustration about quotes like this is it leads to the misconception that really good ideas only come at the beginning of the process. This leads to people saying ideas don’t matter and it’s doing that matters. Like there aren’t important and great ideas throughout the process. Great products are built by a million great ideas.
Noone
on 07 Apr 13@Adam, I’m not sure we read the same quote. I read that there are a million decisions and discoveries that happen along the way and those are just as important as the initial idea, which sure sounds exactly like what you are saying it isnt saying.
Travis
on 07 Apr 13@Adam: and this is exactly what SJ said in the quote…
@Joe: yeah an at sign wasn’t being encoded correctly there.
Adam
on 07 Apr 13It’s just the word choice he said, “idea” to start and says that as a negative or something that certainly fuels the fire for people that dismiss ideas as a negative. People who like to say “ideas are cheap” and such might cite this. If I dare to edit the quote I’d say something like, “the problem was he only provided one idea to start the process.”
I think a bad head space for a lot of self-selected doers is that they just want a road map. I hear “tell me what to do and I’ll do it” too much. Instead I want to hear more ideas at every step and I think people believing that the only idea is the first idea is bad for everyone.
goodbyejobs
on 07 Apr 13http://www.slated.org/index.php?q=good_riddance_steve_jobs
Clever marketing is Apples secret. Nothing more.
Michael
on 08 Apr 13GeeIWonder, it’s that there is only so much glass or robots can do in a particular time with certain constraints. J. Ive might have thought glass could do anything eventually, but in 2007, he had to work with its limitations in 2007 and choose materials that had the particular configuration of properties possible in 2007 that he wanted.
dmr
on 08 Apr 13Great quote, except for the last sentence, which is bullshit.
Magic doesn’t exist. Illusion is a craft of tricks and slight of hand. Design is a craft of iteration and a quest for clarity. Novelty is surely a part of good design, but magic it isn’t.
“a tremendous amount of craftsmanship” ... “you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties”
Programmers and designers (and Apple marketing dept) need to stop using “magic” to describe a thoughtful process — it undermines the work, the process and that technology is built of tiny parts that are real and can be understood. That’s not magic, it just is.
Don Schenck
on 08 Apr 13Uh … @dmr … if you would read the quote correctly, you’d realize that the quote agrees 100 percent with your little rant.
Read it again; Go ahead, I’ll wait…
You see? “That’s the process and that is the magic”. Not “IS IT MAGIC”, but THAT (the tangible stuff mentioned) “IS” the magic. In other words, the “magic” isn’t an invisible cloud of mysticism … it’s a word used to describe all the work mentioned in the quote (keeping things together, doing the craftsmanship, knowing the limitations, etc).
“That stuff you call ‘magic’? It’s all the work I described in my quote.”
Make sense?
Don Schenck
on 08 Apr 13“IS IT MAGIC” should be “IT IS MAGIC”
Anonymous Coward
on 08 Apr 13Why do I get the feeling that if Bill Gates had said this, you Apple-ites would have been turning your noses up? Getting really tired of this mystical reverence for Apple.
Travis
on 08 Apr 13@Don :thumbsup:
David Andersen
on 08 Apr 13AC -
If Bill Gates had said that – or anything remotely like it – and meant it then Microsoft would be a substantially different company. And some of us would be celebrating the amazing products that have come from there. Microsoft doesn’t suck; they’ve done a lot of good for the world on net. But Gates and Jobs have two different perspectives; I happen to like the way Jobs thought and did things. It’s not blind admiration; it takes a lot for me to praise a public figure. I’m more skeptical than most. And I’m very aware of Job’s faults. No one is perfect. This particular quote is steeped in wisdom; it’s not fru-fru bullshit. Watch his lost interview. You can tell Jobs really thought deeply about his work. He really gave a shit about what they produced and that’s a big reason why he was forced out of Apple.
GeeIWonder
on 09 Apr 13Thanks heavens he wasn’t. We might be back to reverse polish calculators.
For one thing, Bill Gates managed to build a company and fill it up with people that can actually run it. He made himself obsolete. Steve Jobs failed to do this what—four times? Despite apparently having a good grasp on what the disease was and finding time to make at least 3 movies and one book about how clever he was. Then, as you allude to there’s the world.
It’s almost laughably irresponsible.
Fuck everybody, oh and by the way I’m a magic genius. Ok, not a magic genius, but a genius that can’t teach anybody or tolerate anybody else remotely capable at the top rungs in my stead. And when I go away? Fuck Apple! Fuck the world.
Stu Kruse
on 09 Apr 13@GeeIWonder – I’m not sure Bill did manage to make himself obsolete, judging by the difficulties Microsoft seem to be having these days. From everything I’ve read, there seems to be terrible difficulties in the way the organisation is now run and managed.
It seems to me that the culture that Steve Jobs left behind has more chance of letting Apple continue to grow and prosper into the future. Time will tell I guess…
David Andersen
on 09 Apr 13@GeeIwonder – Sure dude. Whatever gets you through your day.
GeeIWonder
on 10 Apr 13@DA Hah.
@Stu Indeed. Time will tell. But time has already kind of told—there are not Jobs scholars going around changing the world. Nor are their nameless-but-we-all-know-who-paid-for-them mosquito nets that save lives by the second. Nor is their a Steve and anybody who happens not to be Steve foundation.
Money has a half life. Even billions. Bio-Movies? Biographies? That’s your legacy?
Guess who’s not going to be in the discussion in 50 years.
GeeIWonder
on 10 Apr 13For all that, Steve Jobs will make an excellent couple of paragraphs in James Burke’s (or his sons?) next book: Connections 2. Right beside László Bíró.
David Andersen
on 10 Apr 13For someone who usually contributes bright and insightful comments your irrational bias is really showing here. And what an asinine statement about ‘Jobs Scholars’. As if that’s the end all, be all measure of someone’s influence and contribution.
And in reference to my compliment of Microsoft, I take some measure of it back. I haven’t had to deal with their software for a couple of years but I’m reminded tonight how convoluted it can be as I am routed in circles and to dead ends while trying to install SQL Server 2008 on a Win 7 box. Yes, it can be done but don’t ask for it to be easy. Not even remotely so.
David Andersen
on 10 Apr 13@Stu – Microsoft has always had difficulty running itself. Look at how many non-profitable products/divisions they have had. I worked there on a project for awhile about 10 years ago. They managed money like it came from a infinite printing machine. Nice problem to have I guess but it will never last.
GeeIWonder
on 10 Apr 13There’s no bias, because there’s no comparison. Stop comparing the two.
As an aside, it becomes difficult for me to identify which of Steve’s insights are trying to teach us about design or philosophy or the process or the team, from those which are about Steve at the center of that design, team or process, from those which are shots at others (which he quite liked), from those which are unadulterated promotion of self or one of his widgets.
David Andersen
on 10 Apr 13You’re not trying very hard then.
This discussion is closed.