[HN Gopher] Storytelling lessons I learned from Steve Jobs (2022)
___________________________________________________________________
Storytelling lessons I learned from Steve Jobs (2022)
Author : tosh
Score : 185 points
Date : 2025-02-09 11:53 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fastcompany.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fastcompany.com)
| outside1234 wrote:
| This loser (Tony Fadell) got fired from Google for yelling
| nonstop at employees, other googlers, management, everyone.
|
| But sure, tell me about his narcissistic story telling skills.
| not-chatgpt wrote:
| This guys recent startup endorsement is the infamous rabbit r1.
|
| Should tell you enough lol.
| jansan wrote:
| I always make sure to scroll down the comments on hackernews
| to the bottom, because sometimes that's where the best
| comments are.
| hckrnrd wrote:
| Tony Baloney
| thijson wrote:
| I seem to recall there being some controversy with Nest at
| Google. There were high hopes for it in the beginning, but it
| seemed like it stagnated.
| MaintenanceMode wrote:
| No wonder he idolizes Steve Jobs, another famous yeller.
| another2another wrote:
| Was he yelling "don't ruin my product Google, Nest is a great
| product, don't ruin it!!"
|
| Because... they ruined it.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Sadly that was the only thing he WASN'T yelling about
| azinman2 wrote:
| It wasn't about his skills. It was about Steve Job's skills.
| The writing I thought was quite good and provided a useful
| framing. Did you think otherwise?
| calmbonsai wrote:
| It's only fitting that a """leader""" like Fadell is featured in
| """journalism""" like Fast Company. Stay away.
| apt-apt-apt-apt wrote:
| I found the product story lessons informative. Then opened the
| comments to all the 'Tony Baloney' comments. Besides his
| purported character, would you say the info in the article has
| value?
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| Now that the guy is no longer actively litigating early stage
| startups that he _Angel_ invested in, and the true origin
| stories of the iPhone are more widely known he has become
| mostly irrelevant.
|
| However I would say there is meta information with value[1] in
| that he was able to get Fast Company to publish a puff piece on
| his Steve-Jobs-Like genius of coining the term "Rush Hour
| Pricing" - when in popular culture (and any editor would point
| out) we just use the simpler phrase: "Surge Pricing".
|
| [1] In the same way you can discount information from any
| outlet that publishes "The suit is back" in their fashion
| column as a serious article:
| https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
| DavidPiper wrote:
| > the true origin stories of the iPhone are more widely known
|
| Out of the loop on this but very interested: what are the
| true origin stories of the iPhone, and what is the
| traditional narrative they contrast?
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| tldr Jobs put two teams to work on the iPhone development-
| the iPod team led by Fadell and the iPad team lead by
| Forstall (Apple began work on the iPad before the iPhone,
| though Jeff Han's 2006 TED talk changed everything). Fadell
| presented an iPhone prototype with click wheel. Jobs went
| with Forstall's concept. Much later, Forstall became pretty
| unpopular and few people had qualms with Fadell taking
| credit.
|
| A lot of this is covered in various CHM fireside chats -
| this is a good one: https://youtu.be/5xDRdWFdsoQ
| DavidPiper wrote:
| Ohh interesting, thank you I'll have a watch!
| bastian wrote:
| The most interesting part to me was this: "He'd been telling a
| version of that same story every single day for months and months
| during development--to us, to his friends, his family. He was
| constantly working on it, refining it. Every time he'd get a
| puzzled look or a request for clarification from his unwitting
| early audience, he'd sand it down, tweak it slightly, until it
| was perfectly polished."
|
| I did the same thing for 12 years as CEO of Postmates and I still
| do it when I work on new ideas. I thought it was something I just
| did. But reading this I have to assume it is more common.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Just curious, what was the same story you said every single day
| for 12-years?
| bastian wrote:
| Probably a bad choice of words on my part. I was referring to
| the stories of the products we worked on, not the same story
| for 12 years.
| contingencies wrote:
| Hey Bastian, would love to have a chat about the impact of
| total automation in the food space (prep, package, deliver). We
| have 10 years R&D down, about to raise US GTM round, didn't
| find you on LinkedIn, email in profile. Cheers.
| bastian wrote:
| I deleted my LinkedIn. Email or text me. 415 629 9329 or
| bastianlehmann@gmail.com - I do not like to invest in
| anything related to food though.
| contingencies wrote:
| Cheers much appreciated. Will reach out.
| neom wrote:
| It's one of the first lessons I teach the founders in my
| classes, I learned it building DigitalOcean, I think it was
| Michael Dell who told me "yeah your job just becomes saying the
| same thing different ways all the time". Best I've seen at it
| is Flo the founder of mesosphere.
|
| Don't think you can build a startup into a business if you
| can't learn how to do this.
| matwood wrote:
| And it's a good lesson. The first hurdle for many (me
| included) was getting over the fact I'm going to repeat
| myself - a lot. And that's ok. There's a reason Coca-Cola
| still advertises. Repetition works. When telling someone the
| story, you never know what's in their head at that moment.
| They might be thinking about some other important thing they
| have to do that day and not hear anything you said.
| nicbou wrote:
| I do the same thing when I have a new idea. If people don't
| seem as excited, I either refine the story or reconsider it
| entirely. It tests the idea, but also my understanding of why I
| want to build it. Is my hype justified or will it falter once
| the caffeine wears off?
| matwood wrote:
| I also do this as I refine any pitch. I tell it to everyone
| over and over, tweaking it slightly, refining, etc... One
| difference is I don't think the polishing ever ends until it's
| time to move on to something else.
| veunes wrote:
| It makes me wonder how many great products were shaped not just
| in boardrooms or dev sprints, but in casual conversations with
| friends and family.
| itronitron wrote:
| How do you avoid annoying everyone around you, or does being
| CEO mean you don't have to worry about it?
| philodeon wrote:
| Just as movie stars get paid a lot to compensate for dealing
| with the unpleasant life-ruining consequences of fame, CEOs
| get paid a lot to compensate for the monotony.
| thom wrote:
| For me the internal part of this is far more important than any
| external pitch. Storytelling is a key skill for keeping an
| organisation aligned. Every company I've worked for that felt
| disjointed wasn't because of a lack of structure or process, it
| was the lack of a unifying narrative that people can follow and
| weave their work into. Once you have that, the sales and
| marketing part is pretty natural because you're already living
| the message like you mean it.
| BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote:
| The question is how do you find such unique narratives? Who
| decide it is unique.
| smugglerFlynn wrote:
| Uniqueness is not the end goal, first and foremost it
| should be competitive. Just highlight where exactly you do
| things differently (and better) than others.
|
| If that's not possible to formulate even internally, the
| company is in trouble.
| neom wrote:
| Tail Winds + Vision into-> Mission into-> Purpose. A world
| class leader understands deeply the coalescing ripples of
| shift across multiple sectors that result in the change
| their business is addressing, using this knowledge and
| extending it out into the future is called vision. If you
| can paint a good vision, you can then explain some missions
| people could go on over the period of time that matches
| your vision that results in positive things for the group,
| this is how an individual finds their purpose and is a
| prerequisite for a high functioning team (see tuckman's).
| The reason this is hard from a leadership perspective is
| that humans do not hear messages the same way, so you have
| to do what we call message modulation, where you tell the
| story many different ways depending on the constituent
| you're addressing until or such that, they understand what
| you are saying. You also have to be careful your modulation
| doesn't introduce confusion, 1 2 | 3 4 - if pipe is your
| baseline message, to be good at this, you have to think
| about what happens when 1 and 4 converse.
| no_wizard wrote:
| >A world class leader understands deeply the coalescing
| ripples of shift across multiple sectors that result in
| the change their business is addressing, using this
| knowledge and extending it out into the future is called
| vision.
|
| So few leaders understand this. Its not common, not even
| among 'successful' leaders. More than anyone likes to
| admit, lots of businesses big and small built their backs
| on exploiting some luck and then achieving a relatively
| dominate position and holding it by the virtue of
| traditional business tactics. There's _alot_ of copying,
| and very little actual innovative thinking.
|
| This is even true of 'visionaries' but I think there is a
| difference between outright copying w/ refinement vs
| taking technology (or technologies) and using them in
| genuinely unforeseen ways, or otherwise marrying them
| together in ways nobody else really has.
|
| Most success is entirely circumstantial. Right place,
| right time, things out of the control of anything.
| Certainly thats not visionary. Its refining someone
| else's idea (which is different than taking existing
| technology, refining it, and using it in entirely
| different ways than it was intended)
|
| Steve Jobs was unique in that he forged success despite
| circumstances. In multiple aspects of Apple's history
| there was no good reason for them to succeed the way they
| did but he actually had genuine vision. Few others have
| had that kind of vision. Bill Gates demonstrated this
| earlier in his career (by the late 90s, Microsoft was
| exploiting monopoly not visionary innovation). Perhaps a
| few others I can't think of off the top of my head right
| now.
|
| I can't say the same for 90+% of business people. It
| should be more humbling than it is. Unfortunately every
| CEO seems to think they have the 'magic' and they don't.
| neom wrote:
| It's part of what separates "founder" from "executive" in
| my mind. Most good execs I know understand market
| fundamentals due to either eduction or solid experience,
| it's what is taught in HBS, Columbia, etc. Most founders
| know it from gut, they can just see change and they run
| at it, but it's part of the shift from founder to
| executive, you have to operationalize it for a business
| to be sustainable. Because you are competing against luck
| (Clay Christensen), you are inevitability foundational
| relying on solid vision, but because business is
| extremely complicated and hard to nail most businesses
| bleed out to find death by a 1000 paper cuts. Friend of
| mine has a linkedin profile you might find interesting:
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/agnazem/details/experience/
|
| I'll also add, there are a lot of managers out there
| fancying themself in leadership, and lots of leaders who
| fancy themselves managers, this thinking that there is an
| ability to co-mingle, is generally incorrect.
|
| (I teach business for a living, this stuff is a lot of
| what I teach new founders how to understand.)
| no_wizard wrote:
| There (used to be?) an old saying about you need a leader
| to start a business and getting it thriving but an
| operator to keep it so.
|
| I imagine this is where that came from.
| neom wrote:
| Indeed, and probably why Steve got fired and had to take
| timeout. I break down some more nuance of it here if
| you're curious: https://b.h4x.zip/inventors/
| BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote:
| I've never come across a leader with a strong corporate
| vision. Can you think of any relatively unknown companies
| that have become successful, and would you be willing to
| share their story?
| neom wrote:
| Most of the founders and business I know you would
| probably also know, name a big devtool company from the
| 2011's era and I probably know the story well, the
| example I often use is my friend:
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/agnazem/details/experience/ -
| it's very easy from his linkedin to see how he thought
| about things. Jeff Lawson is another great example,
| Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn also fantastic.
|
| I'm sad you've never come across a leader with a strong
| corporate vision, when you work with them it truly is a
| joy.
| billfruit wrote:
| But is that the only way? Can organizations be driven on pure
| process instead to having to find, and refine 'some
| narrative' to keep it all together.
| dijit wrote:
| Yes, and many are.
|
| From what I hear Disney is very much a "process" company
| these days.
|
| You can draw your own conclusions about whether Disney is
| doing very well or not, though.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| People need a "why" to what they do. Generally "I do what
| I'm told because that is what the process says" doesn't
| scale as well as "we are here to get airplanes where they
| need to go". The narrative doesn't have to be outlandish,
| in fact unrealistic stories give narratives a bad
| reputation.
|
| What you do need is a simple why you are coming to work
| that is beyond "to get a paycheck".
| settsu wrote:
| It can also serve as a helpful reference point for "what
| am I (still) doing here?" so that you can judge when you
| perhaps should not be.
| thom wrote:
| I don't see those things as opposed - you want teams
| aligned, you want people to be able to plan and collaborate
| both the short and long term. A good process left shifts as
| much as possible so teams start out fairly well aligned and
| don't necessarily drift apart. A bad process requires
| constant interventions to pull teams back together. I think
| a clear, compelling narrative of where an organisation is
| going and why helps here, but it's certainly not the only
| prescription.
| darkerside wrote:
| Process without narrative means nobody knows why they are
| doing what they are doing, which means nobody can question,
| change, or iteratively improve on it. This works fine for a
| while.
| formerphotoj wrote:
| 100% - I used to sell/evangelize/promote/pitch the vision of
| the educational non-profit I used to work for every. single.
| day. to. every. single. person. Loved it, still do, and still
| storytelling at my current gig.
| rottc0dd wrote:
| Even just saying the whole thing out loud again and again,
| makes the talk better. Because, you would understand what you
| whizzing past, what you are spending time on and reduces the
| time you would buffer while talking.
| rjsw wrote:
| I see "mansplaining" as a variant of this.
| neilv wrote:
| I don't know how common it is for the different people who do
| an elevator pitch, but IIUC most successful standup comedians
| do this incremental testing and refining of bits very heavily.
|
| One difference I'd call out is that the delivery is different
| in what's understood as a formal rehearsed performance, than
| when speaking in informal one-on-one contexts.
|
| IMHO, for informal, it's OK if you use pretty much the same
| canned explanation each time (especially for an elevator pitch,
| which is understood as a thing), just don't pretend you're
| speaking off-the-cuff.
|
| For example, don't pause like you're thinking of the right term
| or analogy to use. (I've seen Steve Jobs videos where he seems
| to do this. And I had a colleague who would do it for one key
| metaphor term, even though they said the same bit about their
| research to different visitors almost every day.)
|
| If you go to a standup performance or TED talk, you're
| expecting a heavily-rehearsed performance, with artificial
| flourishes. But if you're having a one-on-one conversation with
| someone, you want a bespoke, genuine, engaged, adaptive
| interaction. Canned bits in that are OK, but don't pretend
| those bits are fresh.
| darkerside wrote:
| You can still do that, just know it's disingenuous,
| inauthentic, and disrespectful to your audience. May be worth
| it to you, for example if you don't care about that
| particular audience.
| z3n0n wrote:
| Pet peeve: I hate how the term "storytelling" is being used in
| marketing. No you are not "telling a story", you are selling
| fucking shampoo and paper clips. The real art of storytelling in
| a literary sense has absolutely nada, zilch to do with this
| stupid framing of promotional language. Pray tell, does good
| literature "solve problems"? No it fucking doesn't. In fact, one
| of the first rules of fiction is to always create more problems
| to move the tension along. It's what makes a story interesting.
| So yeah, you're just slimy advertisers, stop having Shakespearean
| allures.
| zigzag312 wrote:
| > does good literature "solve problems"?
|
| The last part of a story arc is called the reSolution.
|
| > In fact, one of the first rules of fiction is to always
| create more problems to move the tension along.
|
| In marketing, story reminds people of their problem. While the
| product they are selling offers a (re)solution to that problem.
| palata wrote:
| > In marketing, story reminds people of their problem.
|
| You mean _creates needs_ , right?
| zigzag312 wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand what are you getting at. Can you
| explain what you mean?
| palata wrote:
| Not sure either :-). I guess I agree with the parent that
| I don't like all the noise people can make around
| "storytelling", when they actually sell a "new
| revolutionary kind of" paper clips to people who did not
| need them in the first place.
| zigzag312 wrote:
| Ah, you mean convincing people they need something they
| don't. While that is true for some cases, there are a lot
| of needs people and companies already have.
| tosh wrote:
| A lot of good storytelling is about motivations, adversity and
| solutions.
| bregma wrote:
| Storytelling is about making stuff up, including the meaning of
| words. If marketers are telling you a story that what they're
| doing is called storytelling, well, that's pretty clearly
| metastorytelling.
| suyash wrote:
| I can feel your frustration, you must be a true literature
| lover. Think of it more as a narrative form of talking about
| your product in a relatable natural way vs listing features in
| a boring way.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I feel your pain. I recently bought a book on storytelling and
| it contains no hints whatsoever on how to _tell_ a story. Just
| like this article, the book it 's all "connect with your
| audience by opening with an emotional story" but not a single
| paragraph on why (say) a joke told by a comedian has much more
| punch than when I retell it.
|
| Obviously reading about comedy is probably like dancing about
| architecture, but nonetheless I'd expect _some_ discussion on
| the delivery itself. Otherwise it 's just "storyplanning".
| maxwell wrote:
| Stories and jokes are made of, or at least delivered with,
| words. Architecture (and music, as Elvis was referring to)
| are not.
| dogline wrote:
| Yes. I've been trying to take about what makes good
| storytelling, or even stand-up comics who can keep an
| audience interested in a wandering story, and those skills
| are what I'd think would be valuable in a business setup.
| Seems like readable analysis of this sort of thing should
| exist.
| CPLX wrote:
| I guess. But a story is different than a list of facts. It has
| a protagonist and narrative elements that imply a sequence of
| events and causality.
|
| Many people do in fact try to tell people about products or
| services by just stating a bunch of facts.
|
| But as humans we're wired to understand stories, not lists of
| facts. We don't really process facts without context, and if
| there's no main character or narrative our brain instinctively
| fills that in.
|
| So sure, marketing isn't literature. It might even be a
| horrible thing that should not exist. But there is in fact
| substance to the conversation. There's marketing that tells and
| story and marketing that doesn't.
| queuebert wrote:
| Furthermore, this "story" is actually a promotion for his book.
| It's amazing how many articles in legacy media these days are
| paid advertisements for someone's latest book.
| quesera wrote:
| Everything has a story attached to it. And different people
| have different stories attached to the same things.
|
| Intentionally composing that story and getting it into the
| heads of other people, for whatever purpose, is storytelling.
| Marketing, propaganda, self-promotion, employee culture,
| nationalism, the best version of yourself that you tell to
| other people. All of that and more.
|
| You can faff all you want about the pretentiousness of it, but
| the process of composing a narrative is not sacred (we all do
| it), and it's not the exclusive domain of people who write
| books.
| veunes wrote:
| And I think good storytelling isn't just about selling, it shapes
| the product itself.
| pcurve wrote:
| exactly. Apple has had its share of failed products that could
| not be saved by the best storytelling.
| cutemonster wrote:
| And sometimes the whole company? Eg who they feel they should
| recruit
| Annaschatz wrote:
| Simplicity is Key: "1,000 songs in your pocket."
| palata wrote:
| I always am skeptical about this idea that "great marketers make
| great products". I mean of course marketing is important to _sell
| stuff_ , and of course people want to think that they have a
| major contribution into the success of their company, but...
|
| Take the iPhone. My first iPhone was a 3G. I did not buy it
| because Steve Jobs convinced me: I bought it because a friend had
| one, I tried it and it was actually pretty cool. I had tried a
| PDA before, and did not feel like buying one. No storytelling
| there, just a product that was a better fit at a better time.
| whatever1 wrote:
| A good product and word of mouth is way more effective than
| marketing
| rahoulb wrote:
| People often mix marketing and sales. For me marketing is about
| "understanding your market". You wanted an iPhone because His
| Steveness knew what many people were looking for in a phone.
|
| (The other parts of marketing, IMO, are getting the right
| message across at the right time - to those right people. The
| storytelling is the message part).
| jbverschoor wrote:
| The "Product" is part of the "Marketing Mix". But these days,
| marketing means spamming ads, social media and seo.
|
| Marketing in essence is market making. Producer, Consumer.
| Product, Customer.
| bbarnett wrote:
| You missed the other horror of modern marketing. Using the
| thing sold to you, that you paid for, to trap you in
| endless marketing hell.
|
| I don't mean using it, eg to visit a social media site or
| whatever. I mean, the device spamming you with ads and
| "helpful hints' about more products to buy.
|
| Like Google and Android not shutting up about Gemini,
| nagging you to try it. Or dark patterns to trick you into
| subscribing to a service.
| palata wrote:
| Right. Yeah I often do, possibly because I only have one word
| (marketing) for both.
|
| I guess the storytelling is the part that I feel is
| overvalued. "This genius changed the world because of how he
| phrased it" seems like bullshit to me.
|
| The part where you define what a good product is, this one
| matters. Even though I feel like there is a whole lot more
| luck involved than what people want to think. "Steve Jobs was
| a genius" may rather be "Steve Jobs was really good, and at
| the same time he was lucky that what he considered a good
| product at the time was actually perceived as a good product
| by the masses".
|
| It feels like there is a lot of survivorship bias (let me
| link xkcd myself before someone does: [1]) that we keep
| ignoring. "If Musk/Besos/Zuckerberg/<name your crazy
| billionaire> is where he is, that's most likely because he is
| the best". Ok, they probably did something right (maybe?),
| but they got crazy lucky as well.
|
| [1]: https://xkcd.com/1827/
| ghaff wrote:
| Apple doesn't really do a lot of classic sales. They have
| people with enterprise accounts and so forth but most of
| what they do to tell you about products and get people to
| write about them is fairly classic marketing.
|
| But to your other point, sure. There is a saying about
| helping to make your luck, but, yes, there is also luck in
| just about any career or success.
| DrScientist wrote:
| > The part where you define what a good product is, this
| one matters
|
| From the article "It was the story of the product. And it
| drove what we built."
|
| The story is what kept the product development on track -
| and thus made the iPhone sell itself - the story isn't
| about convincing the public to buy, the story was an
| encapsulation of the products design - refined as time went
| on.
|
| Product dev can easily go off the rails - take the recent
| story about Jeep having Ads popup on their infotainment
| systems - people wondering how anybody could think that's a
| good idea.
|
| If you told a story about that product feature to your
| family and friends - you can be sure you'd get the 'puzzled
| look', and you'd remove it before the car ever shipped.
| dmonitor wrote:
| > Steve Jobs was really good, and at the same time he was
| lucky that what he considered a good product at the time
| was actually perceived as a good product by the masses
|
| Jobs did it multiple times, though. The iPhone no doubt
| overshadows everything else, but the Macintosh and iPod
| serve as evidence that he had a recipe for successful
| products.
| popalchemist wrote:
| Marketing is the process of finding out what people want, how
| to make it, and then how to communicate to them that the thing
| you made is that.
|
| Even if Steve never crossed your path, his marketing process is
| how Apple arrived at the product you wanted.
| palata wrote:
| Right, yeah I should have said "storytellers" instead of
| "marketers".
| olivierduval wrote:
| So you bought an iPhone because of its "(product) design" (how
| it fullfill your needs) and not about "marketing" (how to
| define the markets for a product and why people in these
| marketing will buy it...).
|
| As I understand it, for example, there's markets for "broken
| watches": it can be
|
| * broken luxury watches: to have a "rich man look" without
| paying the full price
|
| * for hobbyist watch-repair
|
| * for professional watch ressellers (after repair)
|
| * for educational / museum...
|
| As far as design is concerned, the watch is broken. But it can
| be sold if you find who will buy it and why... and that's
| marketing
|
| Jobs was a great designer too... (and/or knew how to hire great
| designers and let them get out the best of them)
| palata wrote:
| > So you bought an iPhone because of its "(product) design"
| (how it fullfill your needs)
|
| Sure. I guess my point is that its "product design" was
| essentially "it's a PDA with more modern technology". It did
| not look extra-terrestrial back then, it really looked like a
| better PDA.
|
| In other examples, I have seen product people saying that
| they had the "vision" of connecting their app to the cloud.
| Or more recently, "visionaries" will suggest integrating LLMs
| in everything they can describe (they would suggest writing
| an LLM driver in the kernel if they knew the word "kernel").
| And then, maybe, one such integration will work, and they
| will say "I had this vision that we should integrate LLM
| here" and forget the part where 99% of their ideas were
| worthless, and the one that work was actually not a
| revolutionary idea but just something that technically
| worked.
|
| Again, not to say that Steve Jobs was not good. He certainly
| brought a lot. But sometimes I feel like we overdo it a bit.
| DrScientist wrote:
| > it's a PDA with more modern technology
|
| Lots of people, including Apple with the Newton, tried to
| build a really great PDA - some people loved them, most
| found them too complex and slow.
|
| I'd argue that when the iPhone originally shipped (
| remember on shipping it didn't have an App store or even a
| custom app story - Steve said just write a web app ), it
| was simply a phone, a web browser, and a music player.
|
| In my view it wasn't trying to be a PDA at all - all that
| came later.
| palata wrote:
| > it was simply a phone, a web browser, and a music
| player.
|
| Sure, but again not revolutionary. I had a Nokia that was
| a phone, a web browser and a music player. The iPhone was
| just better at that, but not very different in the end.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Remember during this time he and Apple were riding high on the
| success of the iPod. So when he drums up excitement about being
| just as revolutionary with phones, people listened.
| snapcaster wrote:
| It existed at all because Steve Jobs convinced the people
| working on it to believe in it enough to care. This is really
| rare, most people don't care (and are rational not to) but it
| is required to make any great product
| pockmarked19 wrote:
| Or rather, because Steve took great care not to hire the
| bozos most companies are staffed with. This is an extremely
| difficult and underappreciated thing to do, and Steve himself
| failed spectacularly at it on at least one occasion (which
| probably made him even more cautious).
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > "An iPod, a phone...are you getting it?"
|
| Honestly, the response from the audience in the hall seemed to
| suggest we were _not_ getting it. We were expecting multiple
| devices.
|
| Fortunately Jobs delivered the punchline quickly then and moved
| on.
| tyleo wrote:
| I actually thought this worked nicely even though people were
| NOT getting it. You are right that getting to the punchline
| quickly turned what could have been a loss into a fun little
| win.
| quesera wrote:
| I don't know -- I remember that time and while I was not in the
| room, the rumors were flying for months in advance.
|
| I have to assume that most of the people who were in the room
| knew the rumors also, and were just _waiting_ to see if they
| were true.
|
| I did watch it live, and that's what I was doing, at least. :)
| cnees wrote:
| Agreed. I was in eighth grade and even I knew Apple was
| making an ApplePhone.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I wonder if, phones could just have a UI area on bottom half and
| display area on top. I just can't reach the top of the screen
| anymore with my thumb, and there are lots of controls that
| visually makes sense to be in the top half.
|
| iPhone was brilliant from cost and mechanical design perspective
| - there are just so few moving or essential parts in post-iPhone
| phones. But maybe, just maybe, this solution is not as good as it
| seemed, maybe it could be better. Just my cynical POV...
| halfcat wrote:
| iPhone has this as the "Reachability" feature
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/use-reachability-iph1...
| layer8 wrote:
| It's clumsy UI, and the downward swipe is often mistaken as
| scrolling.
| numpad0 wrote:
| That had existed in even in some Android 4 phones from 2013,
| but you have to turn it on and off all the time and rather
| clunky.
| cutemonster wrote:
| > To return to the full screen, tap the upper half of the
| screen.
|
| Great.
|
| Otherwise looks nice, thanks for the link
| vampirical wrote:
| You can also do the reverse gesture, a small swipe up from
| the bottom of the screen, to return to full screen.
| maupin wrote:
| Well, today I learned something. I've gotten my phone stuck
| in this mode (half of the screen hidden below the bottom
| edge) and just assumed it was an iOS bug.
| westurner wrote:
| Pixar in a Box > Unit 2: The art of storytelling:
| https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/pixar/storytelling
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36265807 ; Pizza Planet
|
| From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23945928
|
| > _The William Golding, Jung, and Joseph Campbell books on
| screenwriting, archetypes, and the hero 's journey monomyth_
|
| Hero's journey > Campbell's seventeen stages:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey#Campbell's_se...
|
| Storytelling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling
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