[HN Gopher] The man who produced Steve Jobs' keynotes for 20 yea...
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The man who produced Steve Jobs' keynotes for 20 years (2018)
Author : allenleein
Score : 565 points
Date : 2021-02-05 06:29 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cake.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cake.co)
| jedberg wrote:
| That story about how the iPad lost its second 30 pin port on the
| side is so maddening. I understand Steve was all about the look
| of the device, but it would have been so much more useful if it
| could be docked on its side.
| juliendorra wrote:
| It's also most probably a small part of the story about the
| second port.
|
| We know from this interview with Schiller [0] that there was a
| clear price target for the first iPad, set early on at under
| $500, and that cutting everything superfluous was key in
| reaching the low price target (nearly all journalists were
| expecting a much higher price for an Apple tablet at the time)
|
| "Well, if we're going to get to a price point like that, we
| need to remove things aggressively."
|
| [0]
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/15/technology/de...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I wonder if they'd think the same about a side port with the
| Lightning or USB-C connector nowadays.
|
| That said, we'll see the end of physical connectors within five
| years I'm sure, at which point it won't be an issue anymore.
| jedberg wrote:
| It's really not an issue anymore. With the Qi charger, it can
| dock in both directions.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I don't think iPad has wireless charging?
| jedberg wrote:
| It can charge through the smart connector (slowly).
|
| But my assumption is that they will add the same magnetic
| charging setup to the next iPads that they have on the
| iPhone 12.
| riskable wrote:
| Wireless charging is terribly inefficient. Unless your
| house is powered by your own personal off-grid solar array
| I really wish people wouldn't use it.
|
| It's convenient AF, sure but it's the type of thing that's
| "meh" when only a few people use it but a bigger problem
| when millions adopt. Like K-cups.
| leetcrew wrote:
| the transmission loss itself really doesn't matter on the
| scale of a phone or tablet. we're talking about less than
| 10 Wh wasted per full charge (assuming a 40 Wh battery,
| much larger than we see in phones). this adds up to a
| large number when you multiply across millions of iOS
| users, but it could be totally offset if each of them
| chose a single LED indoor light to run for one hour less
| each day.
|
| a more compelling argument might come from the battery
| degradation angle. wireless charging accelerates battery
| wear, leading to a battery or entire device being
| replaced prematurely.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Of all the things I ever wished my ipads had, a second dock
| connector has never been one of them.
| Jerry2 wrote:
| > _He is writing a book about what it was like on the inside._
|
| Any idea if he ever completed the book? I can't find anything
| about it. Would love to read it.
| skrach wrote:
| I was looking for the same thing. Would be really curious if it
| got released. BTW I really enjoyed "Creative Selection: Inside
| Apple's Design Process during the Golden Age of Steve Jobs"
| Jerry2 wrote:
| Thank you for a book recommendation!
| j45 wrote:
| Great read. Jobs didn't seem to suffer anything he didn't like
| very well, but everyone had to suffer him.
|
| If it's possible to take the good from someone's habits and
| ignore the bad, this book could be an interesting read
| taurath wrote:
| One factor that helped a lot in their preparation - the "Just in
| Time" product reveal. As someone who's done big stage shows with
| software that is still over a year from completion, having that
| secrecy until it's basically ready to release makes for demos
| that have a lot less chance of going wrong. Of course, Murphy's
| law they still have gone wrong but having something so close to
| release helps things go so much smoother.
| allenleein wrote:
| FYI:
|
| - Questions & comments about the Wayne Goodrich panel?
| (https://www.cake.co/conversations/2Jf7ksx/questions-comments...)
|
| - That time I had Steve Jobs keynote at Unix Expo
| (https://www.cake.co/conversations/rZXhqtP/that-time-i-had-st...)
| khazhoux wrote:
| This is one of the most insightful Q&A's about Steve that I've
| read. I especially appreciated the part about the risers for the
| gumdrop iMacs not working perfectly smoothly: he was _pissed_
| even though the audience couldn 't possibly see the stuttering
| risers and even though the keynote was successful.
|
| One might think Steve Jobs was an arrogant, perfectionist prick.
| But you realize in this small story, that the whole keynote could
| have been torpedoed, could have gone sideways and been ridiculed,
| if those mechanical risers had failed. The big moment for this
| product that could (and did) save the company, might have been a
| laughable sad trombone _even though Steve had warned Wayne that
| it was a problem that needed to be fixed._
|
| The work of hundreds of people, and hundreds of millions of
| dollars, were pitted against shitty mechanical hand-cranks --
| that's why small details matter, and why Steve was pissed.
| soperj wrote:
| >One might think Steve Jobs was an arrogant, perfectionist
| prick
|
| That's because he was, regardless of this story.
| anonytrary wrote:
| Your comment is unsubstantiated, but okay. It is extremely
| unpopular on HN to like Steve Jobs for some reason. The way
| reputation works is that if you're extremely rude to 100
| people but are helpful for millions, people will still
| remember you as an asshole. People only see the mistakes, not
| the overwhelming successes, and that is an empirical fact,
| turned proverb at this point...
| Razengan wrote:
| Also see Tall Poppies
|
| There's this thing, or entity, that seemingly everyone is
| talking about. If I can point out even one contrary thing
| about it, I win. (or feel like I have)
| huhtenberg wrote:
| There's a whole book that substantiates this. Commissioned
| by Jobs himself no less.
| refurb wrote:
| If you're a dick, it doesn't matter how successful you are,
| you're still a dick.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's perfectly acceptable to both like a company's products
| and dislike the person at the helm.
| Razengan wrote:
| Probably because he was, first and foremost, a _user._
|
| And users are fucking sick of the shit most companies and
| devs have been pulling since forever and we would treat them
| the same were we in a position of power.
| philtar wrote:
| This non-sequitur made my chair spin.
| Razengan wrote:
| I'll try to simplify: Perfectionists don't put with shit
| by definition and not putting up with shit tends to make
| one a butt orifice.
| numpad0 wrote:
| And the fact that he was like that + attention deficit made
| Apple products the fastest and smoothest. Look how laggy
| flagship Android phones still are, compared to even obsolete
| iPhone... Fireworks exploding next to you is a tragedy but
| from miles away it's only beautiful.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The two statements can live in unison you know; you can be
| a prick AND be at the helm of a company that makes
| products.
|
| But be aware that you don't have to be a prick to make
| great products; that's cargo cult thinking.
|
| And just because his company makes/made great products does
| not excuse his behaviour. The two are separate statements.
| Ambroos wrote:
| You haven't used the right flagship Android phones the last
| few years. Android on a recent Sony flagship feels smoother
| than iOS on an iPhone X to me.
| baxtr wrote:
| _> The mythology of him mostly comes from individuals that
| didn 't survive around him. The people who got close knew the
| rules, knew how to work with him, knew his core desires and
| what he was trying to achieve. They never really had problems
| with it._
|
| From the article
| mcot2 wrote:
| End of this video: https://youtu.be/vN2vxYnAZf0
|
| Steve was coughing quite a bit throughout so he was probably
| not in the best mood already.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Oooh, there is also very very beta build of Quake 3 demoed!
| raverbashing wrote:
| 1:35:05 if anyone wants the exact timestamp
| Lammy wrote:
| I never noticed before how he grabs the Grape iMac, which
| also appears to be the one that's the most out of sync
| behind the others. I wonder if he was trying to subtly push
| it into a faster spin to even them up?
| Pyramus wrote:
| Thank you for posting the exact timestamp.
| yread wrote:
| Ah yes the commitment to make macs the best gaming machines!
| mikehollinger wrote:
| > Ah yes the commitment to make macs the best gaming
| machines!
|
| So... if Apple brings iOS games to a MacBook, does that
| satisfy that promise? :-)
| Pyramus wrote:
| > even though Steve had warned Wayne that it was a problem that
| needed to be fixed.
|
| I think you are mis-reading the situation here.
|
| In the Q&A Wayne says: > "A week before the event and we were
| still struggling to synchronize them and make the motion
| smooth. [...] However, Steve was on the stage watching these
| things not perfectly aligned with a little bit of stuttering.
| He wasn't happy and we could see it in the video feed we were
| watching."
|
| There is no suggestion of a risk of failure or that or that it
| was a problem. Steve simply wanted a perfect, smooth,
| synchronised motion.
|
| > "But when you were in the audience, you couldn't tell unless
| you knew what to look for."
|
| Watch the video posted by another user and judge for yourself.
| nojito wrote:
| Steve cared about the most minute things.
|
| There's a story about how he went into a meeting with an iPad
| and a MacBook and told his people that his iPad wakes
| instantly and his MacBook doesn't.
|
| https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs
| menzoic wrote:
| Startup time isn't really a minute thing. Its a huge factor
| in conversion thats widely measured. Like the load time of
| a web page. People always prefer to wait less.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Thinking about it, I suspect the issue was that a CRT IMac in
| a small moving pedestal was probably very wobbly.
|
| And a CRT Monitor is definitely something you don't want in a
| wobbly pedestal.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > a CRT Monitor is definitely something you don't want in a
| wobbly pedestal.
|
| One should always have a good monitor stand. And that's how
| the infection started. Pro Display XDR stand US$999.
| https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/
| gowld wrote:
| And as history has shown, the solution is to get rid of the
| CRT, not build a better pedestal.
| bch wrote:
| > There is no suggestion of a risk of failure or that or that
| it was a problem. Steve simply wanted a perfect, smooth,
| synchronised motion.
|
| But Jobs _did_ offer a solution that (for reasons he may not
| have been aware) wasn't used ("I know the guys from Cirque du
| Soleil, why don't you call them?")
|
| It actually reminds me of Van Halens brown M&M rider[0], but
| Steve doesn't get to just take the money, cancel the show,
| and go home.
|
| [0] https://www.sixsigmadaily.com/van-halen-quality-
| assurance-wi...
|
| Edit: better link
| menzoic wrote:
| This kind of thinking can be a problem. Spending outsized
| effort on unproven theories. Would it really have a serious
| impact if the shutters were bad?
|
| On the flip side, if it was truly so impactful, relying on the
| faulty shutters would have been a very irresponsible thing to
| do. They could have paid some humans to use a pulley system out
| of sight at that point.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _This kind of thinking can be a problem. Spending outsized
| effort on unproven theories. Would it really have a serious
| impact if the shutters were bad?_
|
| Yes, because if he felt the same about other things ("woult
| it really have a serious impact if this/that") he'd have
| built worse or more-samey to other OEMs products.
|
| So, it's not like you can have some precise cut-off point to
| stop caring, where the faulty systems in the keynote don't
| matter, but some other aspect of the product does.
|
| If he ended up only caring for functionality, high impact,
| aspects of the products, it wouldn't be the same products.
|
| And if the Keynotes didn't have such high production value
| demands, they wouldn't been as good.
|
| It's not a binary issue (stop being too demanding and start
| being ok with good enough).
|
| It's "where to put the cutoff point" in a sorite range (human
| caring).
| trulyme wrote:
| Meh. Remember Bill Gates presenting Windows 95 feature
| Plug'n'play, and the blue screen of death? The product wasn't
| exactly a failure, regardless.
|
| Presentation is important, but not _that_ important.
| m463 wrote:
| It tarnished the brand, but maybe it's like pennies, where
| people sort of expect them to have that brown tarnished
| color.
|
| Here's the deal - if you're charging a premium for a product,
| it has to be exceptional.
|
| I had a friend who worked for the airlines (this was pre-9/11
| days).
|
| He would tell me stories about first class customers. One guy
| came to the airport and bought 2 first class tickets to
| france for he and his wife and paid an astronomical sum for
| last-minute tickets. no problem. Stuff like this happened all
| the time.
|
| But he said the flip side was that you CANNOT disservice a
| first-class customer. If you want to see a REALLY MAD person,
| bump a first class customer. Their expectations are in line
| with the prices. high.
| jldugger wrote:
| It probably helps to recall that Apple had been on the brink
| of bankruptcy at the time, and as a hardware company, gambles
| their future every year by ordering inventory.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| For Windows, presentation wasn't that important. For Apple,
| it would have been.
|
| Windows was the default operating system for business
| already.
|
| Apple's products at the time were an alternative, not the
| mainstream, and sold largely on the customer's desire to live
| a different life. Apple sells a lifestyle as much as they do
| a product; you've always been able to see that in their
| marketing. The customer visualization of themselves in that
| life is formed first during those keynotes - and it's easy to
| break with a problem like the one Jobs cared about.
|
| Since Cook took over, Apple's really switched largely to
| productionizing what they already had; that makes sense, it's
| what he's good at. Hopefully, he's kind of a caretaker until
| someone visionary can take the helm again.
| birdsbirdsbirds wrote:
| That's the power of a monopoly. Apple didn't have it when the
| iMacs were presented.
| Lammy wrote:
| Please forgive my pedantry, but it was a Windows 98 beta, not
| 95 :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW7Rqwwth84
| EL_Loco wrote:
| >One might think Steve Jobs was an arrogant, perfectionist
| prick.
|
| Because he was worried about an important aspect of an
| important presentation his terrible behavior towards others is
| justified? C'mon, there are almost a hundred examples of him
| treating others like crap. Was every case justified as
| 'something very important at Apple will crack if I'm not all
| over this employee'? It that was so, then they were the worst
| hirers of talent in Silicon Valley.
| bitexploder wrote:
| It is a dichotomy. On one hand you have an innovative titan
| of the tech universe doing really amazing things. On the
| other hand you have, by all accounts, not a very nice human
| being to those around him. I think the hero/innovator
| narrative really wars with the asshole narrative in popular
| media. He was both of those things and it's okay to
| acknowledge his insufferableness along with his great
| accomplishments. I don't think the worst of his behavior was
| required to be the industry titan he was. A lot of people mix
| these up as somehow critical to the success of Jobs. The
| truth is, inspiring leadership that treats people fairly is
| very hard. It's an understandable fault, but still a fault.
| That is why I always tried to understand Steve as an
| innovator first and leader second. People followed him
| despite his lack of leadership because he was getting things
| done and it was worth it to be a part of the show. The people
| that stuck around made peace with his behavior (as
| illustrated in the article) and learned how to filter it in a
| way that let them work together, but that is not an easy
| working relationship and again I think it speaks to how much
| people believed in what they were doing despite the poor
| (human) leadership.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Jobs was a textbook narcissist. Absolutely by the numbers.
| But unlike most narcs he was actually good at some things,
| and he used those talents to create a Steve Jobs Memorial
| Corporation - i.e. Apple.
|
| The narcissism was the source of his drive to be the most
| amazing monkey in the room. If he'd been a normal human he
| wouldn't had the laser-like focus on creating a narrative
| about being the guy who made everything he touched game-
| changing, immaculately crafted, and insanely great.
|
| If you happen to be a narc you may have similar
| motivations. But it's unlikely you also have the talent.
|
| Which leaves a question - is it possible to be a
| billionaire wo makes game-changing, beautifully crafted,
| insanely great tech _without_ being a narcissist?
|
| Arguably the 60s/70s crop of tech companies came closest.
| CEOs like Ken Olsen had a paternal attitude and an interest
| in employee welfare and development. DEC were insanely
| great in their own pre-Internet way, so he must have been
| doing something right. But there was no worldwide media
| attention, and the market was almost exclusively fellow
| grad-level professionals who were more impressed by
| substance and less by showmanship.
|
| As soon as you open that up and create commodified mass-
| market products the level of attention goes up a few orders
| of magnitude, and a self-absorbed rock star attitude is
| more effective market fit.
|
| Non-narcs just _don 't care_ about that kind of attention,
| and aren't driven by a need to create it.
|
| Which is non-narc CEOs may be millionaire successful, but
| don't have the unhinged drive needed to be billionaire
| successful. And they won't have the kinds of followers who
| need the reflected glow.
|
| And that's why the top of the tech tree is full of people
| who have these personality issues. They're unusually
| effective in some very limited areas, and a cocoon of money
| protects them from consequences. But they're still...
| limited.
|
| A _real_ game-changing genius would be able to negotiate
| the attention and rock star challenge to do everything they
| do without paying the price of narcissism. But those people
| are not just vanishingly rare in general, they 're actively
| cancelled by current corporate culture.
|
| And this is a bad thing, because we're going to need
| effective but healthy management over the next few decades.
| And it's hard to see where that's going to come from in
| this culture.
| 7402 wrote:
| I was confused by the above until I realized that "narc"
| was probably being used as an abbreviation for
| "narcissist."
|
| I've only ever seen "narc" being used as a slang term for
| a government narcotics agent.
| AlanYx wrote:
| >Jobs was a textbook narcissist. Absolutely by the
| numbers.
|
| Narcissist in a colloquial sense, perhaps. But narcissist
| in a medical sense (i.e., a set of defined cluster B
| personality disorder traits), no. Jobs was known for
| changing his position in the face of strong enough
| rational arguments, sometimes a couple days later. He
| wasn't wedded to his positions in the emotional way
| typical of cluster B narcissists.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Was every case justified as 'something very important at
| Apple will crack if I'm not all over this employee'?_
|
| Does every case have to be justified? Perhaps without the
| overall "pressure" climate they wouldn't get as good results.
|
| Almost any company exec, even one phoning it in most of the
| time, would be all over an employee if "something very
| important at the company would crack" otherwise.
|
| But doing it for small, medium issues too (not just "company
| on the line" ones), helps maintain the pressure climate
| better than just flipping off when there's something very
| very serious.
| soneca wrote:
| > _"The work of hundreds of people, and hundreds of millions of
| dollars, were pitted against shitty mechanical hand-cranks"_
|
| That's one way to see it. In my opinion, a faulty mechanical
| riser in his keynote would have resulted in exactly zero less
| iMacs sold.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Even if it didn't hurt sales, it would still have been shitty
| and embarrassing if the big reveal of this massive multi-year
| investment had been torpedoed by the risers, and (to the
| story'd point) after the risers had been explicitly called
| out as a problem.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Windows 95 BSODed on demonstration in face of Bill Gates. Did
| not make it any less successful.
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| Windows 98 in fact.
| ollie87 wrote:
| USB stack error I seem to recall, can't remember if it was
| a scanner or a printer they plugged in.
| goto11 wrote:
| How do you know? It certainly did long term damage to the
| brand.
| marcusjt wrote:
| First impressions do count and the BSOD surely would have
| done at least short-term damage to the product & brand
| reputation.
| gowld wrote:
| The demo didn't. A decade of crashes in the field did.
| goto11 wrote:
| > The demo didn't
|
| How do you know? People still remember it 20 years later.
| l1k wrote:
| Wayne Goodrich was fired by Apple shortly after Steve's death and
| subsequently sued the company:
|
| https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2012-aug-21-la-fi-tn...
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| Couldn't read it there but archive.org has it:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210205073421/https://www.latim...
| sgt wrote:
| What was the outcome, was he compensated in the end?
| rincebrain wrote:
| A judge refused Apple's request for summary dismissal[1],
| but then news coverage about it just stops.
|
| My unjustified suspicion, since there's no evidence of it
| being resolved afterward, is that an out-of-court
| settlement was reached before it went to trial, and
| consequently, no press coverage resulted.
|
| I suppose, if this were true, it would qualify as a win-win
| - Apple doesn't have court precedent of them firing people
| unjustifiedly, he ends up with a bunch of the compensation
| he primarily claims Apple was denying him by firing him.
| The people who lose are anyone else who gets dubiously
| fired by Apple and don't have the resources to sue over it.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/05/21/man-
| behi...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean the article mentioned he had "restricted stock" (I
| guess it's like options?); I don't know how many he was
| entitled to, but the stock price of Apple has gone
| through a split and has become 40x worth as much today.
| gowld wrote:
| The value of a stock grant is not determined by future
| growth. You can buy stock on the open market on the same
| day an employee vests, and all else equal non-employees
| should by MORE stock than employees, due to
| diversification concerns.
| marcinzm wrote:
| RSU grants are afaik usually on a per unit basis based on
| the price when you start. So if the current stock price
| is $20/share and you get $20k worth of RSUs then that
| means you get 1k shares. If the value per share goes up
| to $100 then your RSUs are now worth $100k. This is why
| some tech company employees have massive stock
| compensations, the stock has gone up a lot since their
| initial offer.
| barrkel wrote:
| This depends on whether your RSUs are measured in $ or
| units.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| RSU. It's the kind of stock grants that are regularly
| handed out by tech companies. They're not options.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/restricted-stock-
| unit.a...
| paxys wrote:
| This is a fascinating case, and I'm surprised I have never
| heard of it before. I'm sure Apple lawyers could very easily
| argue that Steve Jobs' verbal "job for life" guarantee had no
| legal standing, and he probably wasn't authorized to make such
| promises despite being CEO. But the company then would also be
| publicly shitting on Jobs right after his death, which would be
| much more costly than a quick settlement.
| uniqueid wrote:
| If you watch different keynotes, you can see that he had
| different emotional ramps depending on whether it was a product
| he was totally into or not
|
| Probably the best known 2 minutes 30 seconds of 'not'
| https://youtu.be/jt7mbW8ov_U
| jimbokun wrote:
| "100 songs!"
| nostromo wrote:
| Your video stops before the best part:
|
| https://youtu.be/4--IoHXmj2U?t=1204
|
| Steve clearly hates this fucking phone.
| uniqueid wrote:
| Thank you! Also the clip I used seems to have pots and pans
| banging around in the audio.
| gowld wrote:
| I don't see 'not' there?
| uniqueid wrote:
| It's the brevity and the parts that are missing (eg: 'It just
| scrolls like butter' or 'isn't that nice? Would you like to
| see it again?') Instead he just rushes along, hitting the
| required bullet points. It's probably more noticeable if you
| get yourself into the mindset of the times (a couple years of
| anticipation of an iPod phone) and watch in the context of
| the entire preso.
| Daho0n wrote:
| And yet we wouldn't have had the iPhone without this, so good
| thing his dislike wasn't listened to.
| uniqueid wrote:
| In the context of the full keynote it was pretty funny. The
| contrast between all the great announcements that preceded
| the Rockr was close to 'and lastly there's this phone. It's
| fine. Okay, good night, everybody!'
| yreg wrote:
| Project Purple started in 2004, a year before Rokr was
| announced. They were aleady building the iPhone and Jobs was
| very much on board with the idea.
| mentos wrote:
| Yea honestly the Rokr seems like an intentional
| misdirection to throw people off the trail
| moftz wrote:
| It was a real product so no clue why they would come out
| with something to trick people. The Rokr was just a test
| of the market, could your phone replace your MP3 player?
| The Rokr wasn't a huge success mostly because the
| hardware sucked but it did show that people were
| interested in the idea of having their music on their
| phone. Once it was clear that the hardware was hampering
| the coolness of having music on your phone, that was a
| big green light for Apple to push forward with the
| iphone. If the Rokr had been more successful, maybe we
| would have seen more phones come out with iTunes
| integration and the iPhone would have taken longer to
| bring to market.
| mentos wrote:
| Of course. But I like to imagine Steve knew well in
| advance there was a huge market for an all in one device
| and feigned interest in this direction as a quick jab
| while he was building up the big left hook with the
| iPhone..
| Jerry2 wrote:
| Other than allowing them to use iTunes, Apple had nothing to do
| with Rokr phone.
| macintux wrote:
| The story of how the iPad lost its second 30-pin port is
| astonishing.
| [deleted]
| juliendorra wrote:
| And probably only a small part of the real reasons:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26034351
| nvahalik wrote:
| I can't help--during the reading of the interview--but think of
| how people said the same things about Clarence Leonard "Kelly"
| Johnson. You know, the the Skunkworks guy.
|
| He and Steve seemed to have a lot in common: really high
| expectations of their people, firing people without really
| meaning it, and ultimately producing things which are
| technological marvels.
| coldtea wrote:
| Did the book ever came out?
| fumar wrote:
| I couldn't find it
| BillyTheKing wrote:
| I sometimes feel we all take ourselves a bit too seriously in
| this industry. At the end of the day we're building little
| machines that can execute bits and bytes of software written by
| people in the same industry, it's all a lot of fun and we mostly
| make a decent living from it.
|
| I think this Q&A really brings this sentiment back to the
| foreground. The iPad lost a side-connector, so what? who cares?
| It's an interesting tool that many people enjoy using, but is it
| really going to make a difference to anyone's life whether or not
| that port was there? It doesn't and it won't, which is why the
| decision to get rid of it was taken with just about as much
| thought as should've been given.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It was just a mildly interesting story, about how a seemingly
| unrelated restriction changed the product. I don't think anyone
| is taking this to be an incredible development that'll change
| the world.
| paxys wrote:
| These fun bits of software also sometimes topple governments,
| lift billions into or out of poverty, permanently alter the
| meaning of labor, enable mass surveillance and end the concept
| of privacy, hasten (or help) global warming... If anything we
| need to take everything we are doing a lot more seriously.
| riskable wrote:
| >At the end of the day we're building little machines that can
| execute bits and bytes of software written by people in the
| same industry, it's all a lot of fun and we mostly make a
| decent living from it.
|
| We're also building little machines which, if designed
| carelessly can burn someone's house down, serve up your most
| private details to malicious actors, spread
| disinformation/propaganda, and completely destroy a person's
| life many times over an infinite number of ways.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| >At the end of the day we're building little machines that can
| execute bits and bytes of software written by people in the
| same industry, it's all a lot of fun and we mostly make a
| decent living from it.
|
| We're also building little machines which, if designed
| thoughtfully, can be reliable and helpful, enable sharing
| information reliably, connect with close ones, generally create
| good in the world.
| etqwzutewzu wrote:
| One last thing...
| j7ake wrote:
| Nice article but the emoticons between each question and answer
| were distracting.
| dandare wrote:
| I like this TED talk about Jobs' presentations: Nancy Duarte: The
| secret structure of great talks
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_...
| TheJoYo wrote:
| Reggie Watts is another epic keynote speaker.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHK_r9RXTc
| menzoic wrote:
| > "I was, but when NeXT stopped making hardware they laid me off.
| A week later, Steve called me and started to say "okay Wayne, we
| need to..." I interjected "what do you mean we need to? You laid
| me off." He said "oh" and then click.
|
| >Eight months later I heard from my brother, who was still
| working customer support, "Steve wants you to call. He won't call
| you but you should call him." The result of that conversation led
| to working directly with Steve on all his most important
| presentations at Pixar and Apple for nearly the next two
| decades."
|
| Steve Jobs' true skill was identifying great talent and
| leveraging them.
| nwsm wrote:
| Not seeing the connection between those two quotes and your
| comment.
| iwasakabukiman wrote:
| Another way to look at this is that Steve realized there was
| nothing this guy could do to help him at the moment, so he hung
| up on him.
| dannyw wrote:
| I don't buy that.
|
| Steve: "We need to do [XYZ]"
|
| Wayne: "OK, sure, but I'll need to be rehired."
|
| Steve: "OK."
| NotPavlovsDog wrote:
| He had defined leadership traits. It's easy to align with a
| leader if you are looking for alignment. I would have screamed
| "fuck that pompous fucker, why not call me?". And never
| consider working for him. So that edits me out. Saves me time.
| Saves Steve time. People that jump onboard self-select and know
| what to expect from the start. Welcome to the Steve Stockholm
| club.
|
| The damaging impact of Steve, an ongoing curse on industry, is
| the myriad Steve wannabes that only take the asshole part of
| Steve's leadership without any of his other qualities.
|
| "So many of the people who want to be like Steve have the
| asshole side down. What they're missing is the genius part".
| Bill Gates, of all people.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Yeah that quote pretty much nails it.
| ThouYS wrote:
| Amazing interview, but horribly "optimized" webpage. Impossible
| to meaningfully archive, because elements that are not visible on
| screen get instantly hidden.
| adsche wrote:
| Yes, super annoying. It also breaks the 'find in page'
| function. I wanted to go back to something I clearly remembered
| and didn't find it. I thought I was going crazy until figuring
| this out.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| If you have those emojis as much as I do, you add "display: none"
| to the CSS rules for post.footer and make them go away. So
| annoying.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Emoji use in any serious writing is an appalling practice that
| will erode away at writing quality until everything reads like
| some bullshit twitter take.
| Arubis wrote:
| Excellent suggestion; thank you. I am _entirely_ uninterested
| in my reading being crowdsourced and "social". I'll talk about
| the thing somewhere else, after I've read it and had time to
| think. This attempt to inject an attention-stealer in the
| middle of one of the last things we do without interruption is
| an enormous turn-off.
| Beefin wrote:
| The keynote that revolutionized the game:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7qPAY9JqE4
| whalesalad wrote:
| It's always interesting to watch other companies give
| presentations in their attempt at Apple style. Google comes to
| mind as being the worst.
|
| It's like everyone has analyzed or identified certain little
| nuggets of a good presentation and then sprinkled them in...
| versus truly and innately understanding how to deliver a cohesive
| performance to an audience. The most famous example of this is
| the way everyone started to use "we did x y and z and you're
| going to _love_ it!" which was thrown around like peanuts on a
| domestic flight.
|
| Richard Feynman's quote on cargo culting comes to mind.
| mattr47 wrote:
| I would even say that Apple still tries to, and fails
| miserably, replicate Steve's ability to present to a crowd.
| Austin_Conlon wrote:
| A lot of it sounds synthetic and like reading a script in a
| stiff manner, I think the only similarity is all the
| hyperbole. They do have some great speakers like Craig
| Federighi, and in my opinion John Ternus and Chan Karunamuni.
| dieortin wrote:
| I don't think they really try. Tim Cook has pretty much
| accepted he isn't Steve Jobs from the beginning, and takes
| little stage time.
| [deleted]
| lefstathiou wrote:
| I suspect part of this stems from the fact that he put more
| work into these than others realize / are willing to.
|
| People watch from the side lines, think it looks easy,
| procrastinate and start preparing the week of and the end
| result is a cheap imitation. Excellence in anything takes
| extraordinary preparation. He revved up the machine 3 months
| before a keynote and got an army working on it. I doubt most
| others do.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Yeah I was so impressed when I read that part about him
| taking 3 months to prepare.
| munificent wrote:
| Like watching a magic show and thinking the secret is just to
| have a deck of cards.
| scarface74 wrote:
| One of the differences cited between Apple keynotes and
| Google's is lack of strong leadership that will say "no" to
| departments that want to present. Everyone gets their moment in
| the sun without any clear vision.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Even Apple has struggled to deliver great stage presentations
| post-Jobs.
|
| The pandemic has forced them to stop trying, and it's been to
| their benefit. The new all-digital "presentations" (more like
| extended intro videos) are way more interesting to watch.
| Grustaf wrote:
| To me the worst Jobs inspired cargo cult effect is that
| everyone is suddenly obsessed with details and thinks that OCD
| is cool, "omg I can't stand that kerning, it's half a pixel
| off, it stresses me out."
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| I remember being really annoyed at one of my bosses for
| obsessing about fonts in a game online store I was working
| on. It's like ... really? ... we're strapped for time and we
| have time for this? The thing is, unlike some other bosses,
| he asked nicely, and he was a great guy. So I felt like ...
| okay ... for you I'll do it.
|
| There is something to the general strategy of insisting on
| excellence, and not being willing to let something go until
| it's just so. This can lead down idiosyncratic unproductive
| rabbit holes, but especially for design-based products and
| games it's important to maintain a culture of excellence.
|
| Wrt to games and entertainment products, there's no metric
| like "reduced clicks to perform task by 1.5". So you're
| ideally trying to optimize for joy, or enjoyment. Since you
| can't really quantify it, you can at least try to substitute
| excellent craftsmanship as a proxy.
|
| As a counter-example, when I was at Sago Mini, I was getting
| incredibly nitpicky and subjective feedback about the precise
| way in which to procedurally animate sheafs of wheat in a
| field in a game for toddlers. While the same culture of
| quality and branding concerns apply, this felt like a waste
| of time past the first few iterations.
| armadsen wrote:
| > As a counter-example, when I was at Sago Mini, I was
| getting incredibly nitpicky and subjective feedback about
| the precise way in which to procedurally animate sheafs of
| wheat in a field in a game for toddlers. While the same
| culture of quality and branding concerns apply, this felt
| like a waste of time past the first few iterations.
|
| For what it's worth, as the parent of a 5 year old who has
| loved Sago mini, the quality, care, and polish in the
| game/app and the subscription boxes has definitely shone
| through (I'm an iOS dev myself). Which is not to say that
| it was taken too far internally. Just remarking that the
| work you and others did there hasn't gone unnoticed,
| despite it being a game for toddlers.
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| Thanks, glad the games brought joy to you and yours.
| Craft and quality are certainly central to Sago's
| branding.
|
| Frankly, I'm a bit annoyed at them as they let me go just
| before the end of a long probationary period. They were
| totally happy to use me and my photogenic daughters for a
| Father's Day twitter post. When the project I was on hit
| a snag, my immediate manager overreacted and let me go,
| to the surprise of me and the other senior developers.
| Recently, during the George Floyd hand-wringing their CEO
| (who I think was not particularly involved in the events
| I've described) reached out to me on how to attract and
| retain diverse talent. I felt like replying "Dunno --
| don't fire diverse talent for BS reasons?"
|
| My kids still remember the awesome time they had visiting
| the Sago office and ask me why I don't work there any
| more.
|
| Anyhoo ... that's games.
|
| EDIT> Oh wow, 2017. I had put that away in a box. Got
| laid off, got dumped by brainy hot summer fling
| girlfriend, and got divorce papers finalized all in like
| a 3 month period. Good times. Not bitter.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I can see why you'd be frustrated by that but I don't think
| I'd attribute it to cargo culting. I'm like that myself but
| not because I was inspired by anyone else to be that way - I
| just like building really precise experiences.
|
| I guess there are probably folks thing that see it on TV and
| decide to play the role without any authenticity, though.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Perhaps I only notice it more now, but it seems like it
| exploded after he died and after all those stories of
| looking at pixels in loupes and making the back of cabinets
| look good became public.
|
| I imagined that people think that they just need to copy
| this characteristic and they'll also be successful.
| pfarrell wrote:
| I had a job doing that involved form layout for printed
| forms that would get used by tens of thousands. My boss
| could likewise spot things off by a single pixel. At
| first I was annoyed, but the bigger the audience for your
| work, the more those details matter. I'd further say this
| is the polish that should be part of a "one more thing to
| do" attitude if you want to produce your best output.
| It's all context though. Devote attention proportional to
| the size of the audience.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Oh I'm not opposed to being detailed oriented, I just got
| the feeling that people started using their imaginary OCD
| as a flex lately, and that some founders think it's the
| secret to success, when it's actually at most a hygiene
| factor.
|
| I put a lot of attention to detail myself, but I don't
| imagine that this in itself is worth anything. It's only
| one out of a multitude of things you need to do and be as
| a founder, and it's among the easiest.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't even know if it is Jobs style or ... if that extended
| into what I called "valley style" for a number of years, and
| that involves a handful of tidbits and habits that Jobs didn't
| do, but are pretty common patterns.
|
| I've sat through so many agonizing presentations of folks
| trying to emulate this or that. Granted I don't blame them,
| they want to make a good presentation, but I'd almost rather
| see folks try their own style and fail then mimic others.
|
| The biggest issue I have is the litany of different people
| giving different talks all with the same lead in with a story
| and then lead up to what they want to say. But none of it
| really accounts for that like 2 other people just did that
| too....
| kemiller2002 wrote:
| I'm not an amazing presenter, but I think I'm ok. People ask me
| how do I approach giving a talk, etc. I tell them, "It's a
| performance. You are telling a story. There is emotion
| involved, both with you and them." People always look at me in
| bewilderment and never seem to get the fact that a great
| presentation is really not about the information. No one ever
| said, "You know what would take this presentation to the next
| level? Another product shot of Gmail."
| jnwatson wrote:
| Back in college, I was in the the Toastmasters club. For
| recruitment, we'd bring in a ringer from another club. This
| gentleman was an absolutely amazing "speaker". I put speaker
| in quotes because he transcended speaking. It was closer to a
| dramatic performance.
|
| There are many tactical techniques that can get you to being
| a good speaker. To truly transcend, you have to treat your
| "speech" as a one-man play, with all the associated aspects:
| playwriting and acting.
| wenc wrote:
| One person who does that tremendously well is Trevor Noah.
| The man is talented as heck. If you watch his stand-up (not
| his Daily Show), you'll see all the elements of good
| storytelling.
|
| He's essentially acting out the story, with his voice
| impressions and physical movements. Pauses inserted in the
| right places, suspenseful narrative arcs, conversational
| bits with the audience, etc.
| dharmab wrote:
| I've always been a fan of Eddie Izzard's performances as
| well.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKQzqwn-jIM
| pie420 wrote:
| Are you serious? Trevor Noah is widely considered to be
| the least funny host on television. Google "trevor noah
| not funny" and the list is endless. He's so, so, so bad.
| His jokes are pandering to 12 year olds, and he reads the
| jokes off the teleprompter like it's the first time he's
| reading the lines. It's so cringy. I have no idea how
| People manage to watch an entire episode because every
| joke is just not funny.
|
| https://youtu.be/FwqT-FSJj6E
|
| Are you Trevor Noah? Because I really don't see how
| anyone can defend the dude, especially compared to John
| Stewart
| macintux wrote:
| > If you watch his stand-up (not his Daily Show)
|
| (I have no knowledge of how funny his stand-up is, but
| you're arguing against a point the comment didn't make.)
| randall wrote:
| Storytelling is very under appreciated in business generally.
| Storytelling is what allows teams to make decisions without
| running every single one by their manager.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Storytelling makes things relatable. Without it, it's as
| boring as reading a new tech gadget's spec sheet. (Though
| some would very much like doing that...)
| dagw wrote:
| But you have to make your story believable. I worked for a
| company where the CEO loved to tell 'inspiring' stories
| about the companies future riches glory. The problem was
| that his stories felt so outlandish ("We'll be bigger than
| Microsoft" etc.) that everybody basically wrote him off a
| delusional and ignored everything he said.
| ksdale wrote:
| That's arguably part of the craft, though. People will
| believe all sorts of outlandish things if the story is
| told well enough. The story not being "believable" could
| be a function of crappy storytelling as much as a
| function of fact.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| To directly connect this to the article: Jobs' famous
| "reality distortion field."
| billfruit wrote:
| Are there any resources/books etc that helps in improving
| ones storytelling skills?.
| wenc wrote:
| I took an in-person class at Second City Chicago. It was
| 3 hours per week for 8 weeks, and the class had to put on
| a paid show at Second City at the end of term -- pretty
| hectic, and very hands on. It teaches a genre of
| storytelling called "personal storytelling" (not the same
| as business storytelling, but the principles are similar)
| that is popular at events like The Moth.
|
| https://www.secondcity.com/classes/chicago/storytelling-
| leve...
|
| Storytelling is also seeing a resurgence as a community
| activity -- if you google "live storytelling" events in
| your area, you'll probably find some (there are tons in
| Chicago) though during COVID they are all online so it
| doesn't matter where you are. These are essentially open-
| mics -- you can YouTube "The Moth" to see what they are
| like.
|
| Storytelling is one of those things where you gotta learn
| by doing -- reading a book can only help so much. That
| said, there's also a book called Long Story Short (Margot
| Leitman), which I found helpful. (again only for the
| genre of personal storytelling)
|
| https://bookshop.org/books/long-story-short-the-only-
| storyte...
|
| If you're interested in business storytelling, I've heard
| that "Building a Story Brand" (Donald Miller) is a good
| primer.
|
| https://bookshop.org/books/building-a-storybrand-clarify-
| you...
| wenc wrote:
| I heard this on Lex Fridman's podcast a while ago. This is
| Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on "storytelling":
|
| Lex Fridman: Microsoft has 50-60 thousand engineers. What
| does it take to lead such a large group of brilliant
| people?
|
| Kevin Scott: ... (snipped)... One central idea in Yuval
| Harari's book Sapiens is that "storytelling" is the
| quintessential thing for coordinating the activities of
| large groups of people once you get past Dunbar's number.
| I've really seen that, just managing engineering teams. You
| can brute-force things with small teams, but past that
| things start to fail catastrophically if you don't have
| some set of shared goals. Even though this is sort of
| touchy feely, and technical people balk at the idea that
| you need to have a clear mission, it's very important.
|
| Lex Fridman: Stories are sort of the fabric that connects
| all of us, and that works for companies too.
|
| Kevin Scott: It works for everything. If you sort of think
| about it, our currency is a story. Our constitution is a
| story. Our laws are a story. We believe very strongly in
| them, and thank God we do, but they're just abstract
| things, they're just words. If we don't believe in them,
| they're nothing.
|
| Lex Fridman: In some sense, those stories are platforms.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I recently started to listen to Lex Fridman and really
| love his show. Makes long walks in the snow with the dog
| go by much faster. I want to go on just to have a
| meaningful conversation with someone.
| munificent wrote:
| I like to think of stories as data in actionable form.
| Just knowing the facts doesn't tell you what to do. Those
| facts need to be embedded in some larger framework of
| meaning that enables you to make correct choices based on
| it. That's what a narrative is.
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| I find it incredibly awkward when tech presenters do the self-
| conscious pause and wait for crowd applause. When the applause
| don't come, or they're not well timed, the whole thing ends up
| looking contrived and sad.
|
| Elon Musk does this a lot, and I've never seen it work well. It
| makes me wonder whether Apple had a lot of plants /
| cheerleaders in their audiences. I mean if you obsess so much
| about all the other parts of a presentation, would you be above
| planting cheerleaders?
|
| What would work better, I think, is to just do the
| presentation, and if you get a big round of spontaneous
| applause, then pause and acknowledge with a "yeah!". Definitely
| not the other way around, though.
| ZeikJT wrote:
| Honestly, I think the other factor is having a good set of
| microphones trained on the audience. Sometimes what looks
| like a presenter pausing too early is really just the mics
| not picking up the milder scattered applause that then builds
| up and gets heard after they pause.
|
| The whole thing is a production, and having a good setup can
| radically change people's experience of it.
| jiofih wrote:
| In Musk's case I don't think he's trying to emulate anything,
| looks like legitimate social awkwardness to me. Bet he does
| the same in private conversations!
|
| You may have a point re. the audience - as far as I know the
| teams involved in the launch would all sit in the front rows,
| and naturally cheer for every bit of their own work being
| introduced to the world.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I think the Steve Jobs presentations are great, but it's hard
| to really apply learnings from them because he had such a cult
| of personality along with the Apple brand itself. If you're
| just presenting some analysis results to a director and a few
| people, yes, Steve-Jobbs-ing the presentation is going to look
| like cargo-culting even if you manage to pull it off
| technically.
|
| For those of us that do pedestrian presentations (ones that
| DON'T need a "producer"), I think its helpful to watch and
| analyze presentations from peers who are well-practiced, as
| well as watching those who flopped.
|
| I like to watch AWS re:Invent and the chaos computer camp
| presentations because there are a lot of them, with wildly
| varying levels of presentation skills. It's easy to see what
| works and what doesn't work and that's helpful.
| riskable wrote:
| Any particular Chaos Computer Camp presentations you'd say
| are some of the best?
| sound1 wrote:
| Slightly offtopic but I felt Accenture's ads have the same
| 'gravitas' as Apple's ads
| rytill wrote:
| > Richard Feynman's quote on cargo culting comes to mind.
|
| Care to share? Probably 90+% of readers do not have this quote
| memorized.
| setr wrote:
| Google probably has 90+% of quotes memorized.
| [deleted]
| rytill wrote:
| "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself --
| and you are the easiest person to fool."
| whalesalad wrote:
| https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| _As I look back, if we had not been berated so much, we wouldn't
| have seen that these were amazing products and they could have
| been launched so much better._
|
| Textbook abusive relationship
| lebaux wrote:
| _I know that I quit 3 times, one kind of officially via email
| to HR. God only knows how many times I was actually yelled at
| and fired but it never went anywhere. Essentially I never
| really wanted to leave so I didn't._
|
| Smells a whole lot like Stockholm syndrome.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I assume you also think every Chef working in a majorly
| successful restaurant under world leading chefs are suffering
| from the same, yeah?
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| You paint with a very broad brush here, but I think that
| there is a pattern of toxic work culture in the kitchens of
| many top restaurants.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/dining/chef-restaurant-
| cu...
| breakfastduck wrote:
| It may appear toxic externally, sure. It's clear many
| benefit from the military-style discipline and focus on
| perfection in these places.
|
| So while it's easy to look back at something 'toxic' it
| completely skirts around the fact that their own personal
| skill likely benefited hugely from the experience.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| How does beating a dishwasher for taking a 45 minute
| break benefit his personal skill?
| breakfastduck wrote:
| It obviously doesn't. It's not that black and white.
| Veen wrote:
| Why do people confidently assert psychological diagnoses
| based on i) minimal knowledge of the individual and their
| situation and ii) minimal knowledge of psychology?
|
| It seems stupid to me.
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| Because sometimes it is this obvious.
| goto11 wrote:
| Stockholm syndrome is not even a real diagnosis. But it is
| pretty clear form the story that Jobs was abusive towards
| his employees and the employee tries to justify and
| rationalize this. Call that what you will.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Because people are desperate to project their own personal
| opinion onto other people.
|
| Jesus, the man clearly doesn't regret working with Steve.
| So there's no reason to give these weird pseudo-
| psychological takes any time.
| Daho0n wrote:
| I find that the more people like Apple products the less they
| can see how abusive it was.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I like Apple products quite a bit. But I can still say that
| every story I've ever heard about Steve in this vein makes it
| sound like he was very abusive. But I hear you. It's like
| people with their favorite sports teams/automobile
| moguls/organized religions/podcast hosts/political
| parties/etc.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Yeah, because you know more about it than the man himself,
| right? He clearly doesn't regret his decision to work with
| Steve.
| goto11 wrote:
| The real question is if people with a capacity (perhaps even
| desire?) to suffer beration and verbal abuse are better at
| their job compared to the people who just quit?
|
| If they are indeed better, then Jobs may have had a sound
| strategy. But if this form of masochism is not positively
| correlated with competence, he may have ended up with a worse
| team overall.
|
| A similar discussion happened concerning toxic language towards
| Linux kernel contributors. Some have suggested that a "code of
| conduct" (i.e. speaking civilized) would lead to worse code
| quality, implying that the best developers are also the ones
| who tolerate or even desire verbal abuse. Personally I doubt
| this psychological condition is correlated with competence as a
| developer.
|
| After all, how did Jobs get so good at his stuff when nobody
| abused _him_? The poor guy in the interview suggest it was the
| threats and berations which made him do his best effort. So why
| does this logic not apply to Jobs himself?
| birdsbirdsbirds wrote:
| Maybe Steve Jobs did the same berated to himself?
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