Steve Jobs Insult Response

Amen. Or as Jobs said, "You've got to start with the customer experience first and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out how you're gonna sell it" ▶ this video

in “Why no one uses functional languages (1998) [pdf]” · View on HN

▶ this video Transcription at: [link] > The hardest thing is, how does that fit into a cohesive larger vision that’s gonna allow you to sell 8 billion dollars — 10 billion dollars of product a year? One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it. I’ve made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room, and I’ve got the scar tissue to prove it.

in “A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)” · View on HN

I disagree completely. First, stop using the term "marketing" for "sales and advertisements". It is not. Real Marketting is "the study of the markets", that is, what people need or wants. Apple in times of Steve Jobs was amazing in Real Marketing. Apple created revolutionary new products like the mac, Ipod, Iphone, Ipad that sold (and curently sell) in the tens of millions each year. No other company has been able to do so at that scale. Lots of people wrongly believe that people is brainwashed to buy what they don't want or need, because they don't understand. They do not understand that it is the other way around. You design what is going to be sold like hotcakes. Because people want it or need it. It is not even a secret: ▶ this video By the way for a lot of years I wanted a laptop that was done in metal(instead of using plastic with flame retardants) and Apple was the only one doing it. With batteries that lasted lots of hours, lightweight, and silent. Those were essential for me as a traveler. People that could not understand would believe(because they did not have my needs) I was stupid for buying something 3x more expensive than a 3kgs crappy plastic laptop.

in “How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance” · View on HN

I find Solid incredibly interesting academically, and watch it with interest, but I'm sadly skeptical that it'll find traction— it requires both substantial development resources (as apps need to be rewritten to its standards) and a change in consumer behaviour. I'm reminded of this Steve Jobs response from WWDC 1997 [1]: > One of the things I've always found is that you've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it. And I made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room. And I got the scar tissue to prove it. The beauty of the implementation I described is that it could work with any existing (web) app with little-no development effort while leveraging affordance users already have from using Touch/Face ID to authenticate Keychain, Apple Pay etc. Until a proposal like Solid is widespread, I'd love for a browser/password manager vendor I trust (for me, Mozilla or Apple) to integrate with a privacy-forward email vendor for unique email addresses to provide a less 'fingerprinted' approach to auth, useful today with all legacy (web) apps. [1] ▶ this video

in “Apple is now a privacy-as-a-service company” · View on HN

I appreciate the long response, and I kind of feel bad because I meant my question in a rather different way. And (assuming you even notice my response at this point) perhaps I'm going to take us down a road of talking past each other. My question is about incentives. An unchallenged organization, I would think, would have the tendency to perpetuate itself, and sing its own praises, and deem itself very important. Let me put it this way: The analogous question isn't what Microsoft does to maintain quality. The question is, how does the world at large maintain Microsoft's quality (and efficiency?). A decade or so of security embarrassments and OSX's and Linux's better reputation got them to step up their security game. Recently, Apple's design got them to step up their design game. If you asked a manager for a canceled project inside the company they might have a great process plan, a great argument for why they need more time and resources, and a great explanation for why they and their team are important. But they may have no sense of the needs of the outside world. This exchange between Steve Jobs and an (apparent) Apple employee highlights this mentality, vs the mentality of an entrepreneur who does respond to the outside world: ▶ this video It very well may be that the FDA does a fantastic job of filtering out bad stuff. And, as (I may as well come out and say it) a libertarian, perhaps I am guilty of not appreciating all the work that has gone into setting it up. But it doesn

in “Nearly 1 in 3 drugs have a significant safety issue after FDA approval” · View on HN

And then ▶ this video Don't forget Cyberdog [link] You could drag and drop files into that browser in 1997! Sadly some Youtube videos are hard to find. Should be here somewhere [link]

in “OpenDoc” · View on HN

A "Retina"-density foldable screen is a number of years away, and it'd mostly be a cool tech trick. You're missing the fact that you'd have to amp up computational power to match that of a regular desktop computer. Steve Jobs said it best here[1], where he discusses tech for tech's sake versus what tech enables you to do. What would a flexible, expandable, HD screen enable you to that you couldn't do already? Your question is the billion-dollar question that YC was founded for. Anyone you ask will have a different answer, if at all. I honestly think the Tesla company's products are going to cause an energy revolution. I think Elon Musk is the biggest "visionary" right now. The handheld computing space is pretty saturated at the moment. 1: ▶ this video

in “Ask HN: What will be the next wow product like the first iPhone?” · View on HN

"By the way, the Retina image on the blog post was 46kb over the wire which is bigger than all the JS in his app." Boom Baby! Sorry, I just love how you picked up on that. Yeah, lets complain about size of our code, but hey look at my pretty high-res image! "The lady doth protest too much, me thinks". Anyway, at the end of the day its about creating an experience that gets the job done (and ultimately get more $$$ in your pocket). Many of the problems I see (here and in the office) are debates on which framework is the best for this and that. Though those are good debates to have, one shouldn't sacrifice the end goal for the "proper" software solution. Jobs said it best here... ▶ this video

in “Frameworkless JavaScript” · View on HN

Cool video, by why not link to the original copy with 2.5+ million views instead of some copy with a bunch of SEO keywords and only 38 views? Here's the original: ▶ this video

in “Remember when Apple was failing? Jobs responds to insulting question (1997)” · View on HN

As `teovall noted, any particular reason you linked a version covered with SEO keywords with only a few views of the video instead of the one with 2.5 million (which has the exact same title but is remarkably lacking in SEO spam)? ▶ this video is the original, for anyone who's curious.

in “And Then Steve Said, ‘Let There Be an iPhone’” · View on HN

"Google Reader founder Chris Wetherell said that if the idea came to him in today’s Google, he would leave the company and build it on his own rather than put it at the mercy of Google leadership." Guess what dude?! If I were in that position and I were primarily worried about my project "being at the mercy of Google" (or any company that I don't have sufficient control over, for that matter), I would have left _anytime_. It should not be something you realize _today_. This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's Google". This is the tradeoff that you make anytime you decide to work for someone else; this is obvious and was obvious back in the day. If you had not seen it, the blame is wholly on you. Google Reader would not have been a guaranteed success that it was without Google's resources. If one does not have the balls to take the risk of working at his or her own startup, he or she is not entitled to the benefits either. In hindsight, it's too easy to say "I would have gone and pulled it off independently". I personally think Larry overall has been focusing on what matters and under his awesome leadership, Google is performing far better than Eric's time and this whole situation is not dissimilar to what happened at WWDC1997 and Steve's response to the random questioner in the audience: "...the hardest thing is how does that fit in to a c

in “Google Reader Founder: I Never Would Have Founded Reader Inside Today's Google” · View on HN

This is the video: ▶ this video For those not initiated, OpenDoc was a multimedia document format developed by Apple before Steve Jobs came back to Apple, which was when he violently killed OpenDoc.

in “Yahoo shutting down AltaVista and other services” · View on HN

Good observation, I think that's exactly what we're seeing. It's an interesting balancing act that can sometimes go against the very grain of tech companies, especially one the size of Google. Everything we as mere mortals in the tech business are taught is to try things, fail quickly, iterate. Jobs approach was to do a few things and do them well. Indeed, he felt the most important thing one could do, as an agent of change in that type of role, was to learn to effectively say no. ▶ this video Page has always been very smart and a phenomenal software engineer, but his new role is different. I believe Page finds himself in a somewhat similar position to Jobs in 1997, and it will be very interesting to see how he does as a technology leader.

in “Jobs Told Google's Page to Cut Bloat to Avoid Becoming Microsoft” · View on HN

I have heard several variants of this opinion, from several people, and it always blows my mind. Steve Jobs practically invented garish colored plastic housings. Don't you remember the iMac? In translucent 'Bondi Blue' and then every color under the sun? And how somehow just about every product on earth -- even like kitchen gadgets and car air fresheners and shit -- suddenly started coming out in weird-colored plastic housings? And then how Apple-under-jobs returned to that playbook for their music player line? I think the people who now say Steve Jobs wouldn't have made a cheaper colored-plastic-clad iPhone are the same ones who now say he would never have worn stonewashed jeans with huge non-functional thigh and knee patches.[1] [1]: ▶ this video

in “Apple Is Set to Announce Two iPhones” · View on HN