What Can Steve 1obs Still Teach Us?

By CliII Kuang
Apple's Leader has died at the age oI 56, having recently stepped down
as Apple's CEO. He wasn't trained as a designer or an engineer. But he
was one oI the greatest users oI technology ever. That was his secret
asset.

Paul Chinn/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbisn
IN THE WAKE OF STEVE 1OBS'S RESIGNATION ED. AO1E:
AAD AOW, DEA1H( LET'S consider the greatest decision he ever
made. It didn't happen in a garage in Cupertino, CaliIornia, sweating
with Steve Wozniak as they dreamed up a computer Ior the common
man. Or in a conIerence room, as managers told him that no one would
ever pay $400 Ior a portable music player. Or in another conIerence
room, as new managers told him no one would ever pay $400 Ior a cell
phone. Rather it was in an almost Iorgotten annex on the Apple campus.
Jobs had recently come back to the company aIter a 12-year hiatus
working Ior two oI his own startups: NeXT, which made ultra-high-end
computers, and Pixar. He was taking a tour oI Apple, becoming
reacquainted with what the company had become since he'd leIt. It must
have been a sobering, even ugly, sight--Apple was dying at the hands oI
MicrosoIt, IBM, Dell, and other competitors that were doing what Apple
did, only cheaper and with Iaster processors.
In a dusty basement across the road Irom Apple's main building, Jobs
Iound a solitary designer who was ready to quit, languishing amid a
stack oI prototypes. Among them was a monolithic monitor with a
teardrop swoop, which integrated all oI a computer's guts into a single
package. And in that room, Jobs saw what middle managers did not. He
saw the Iuture. Almost immediately, he told the designer, Jonathan Ive,
that Irom here on out they'd be working side by side on a new line oI
computers.

Jobs was ahead oI his time: he saw usability as way more important than
speed and tech specs.
Jobs may not be the greatest technologist or engineer oI his generation.
But he is perhaps the greatest user oI technology to ever live, and it was
to Apple's great Iortune that he also happened to be the company's
Iounder.
Those computers that Ive and Jobs worked on became, oI course, the
iMac--a piece oI hardware designed with an unprecedented user Iocus,
all the way to the handle on top, which made it easy to pull out oI the
box. ("That's the great thing about handles," Ive told Fast Company in
1999. "You know what they're used Ior.") That single moment in the
basement with Ive says a great deal about what made Jobs the most
inIluential innovator oI our time. It shows an ability to see a company
Irom the outside, rather than inside as a line manager. He didn't see the
proto iMac as a liability or a curiosity. He saw something that was
simply better than what had preceded it, and he was willing to bet on
that instinct. That required an ability to think Iirst and Ioremost as
someone who lives with technology rather than produces it.
!EO!LE OFTEN SAY that Jobs is a great explainer oI technology--a
charismatic, plainspoken salesman who is able to bend those around him
into a "reality distortion Iield." But his plainspokenness had Iorce
because he always talked about how wondrous it would be to :se
something, to actually live with it and hold it in your hands. II you listen
to Jobs's presentations over the years, he comes across not as the creator
oI a product so much as its very Iirst Ian--the Iirst person to digest its
possibilities.
It's when Jobs has Iancied himselI the chieI creator, rather than Iirst Ian,
that Apple has stumbled. His much ballyhooed Apple Cube, which was
in Iact a successor to the NeXT cube he'd developed, was an $1,800 dud.
Even beIore his hiatus Irom Apple, in 1985, his meddling and
micromanagement had gotten out oI control. But the years away
reportedly helped him begin ceding more responsibilities to others. He
became less enamored oI tech Ior tech's sake. He blossomed into a user-
experience savant. A reporter who asked Jobs about the market research
that went into the iPad was Iamously told, "None. It's not the consumers'
job to know what they want." It's not that Jobs doesn't think like a
consumer--he just thinks like one standing in the near Iuture, not in the
recent past. He is a Iocus group oI one, the ideal Apple customer, two
years out. As he told Inc. magazine in 1989, "You can't just ask
customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time
you get it built, they'll want something new."
Jobs has been criticized Ior exhibiting a ruthless and arbitrary
perIectionism, scrapping a product because it didn't Ieel right, because
some minor Ieature like a power button or a home screen seemed
unresolved. (He notoriously tore through three prototypes oI the iPhone
in 2007 beIore Iinally giving the okay; he berated Ive over the details oI
the USB port in the Iirst iMac.) But that interpretation is unsophisticated.
A myopic Iocus on details can destroy as much value as it creates.
(Think about how oIten you've sat through a meeting with a boss who
harped on details, killing an idea beIore you had a chance to explain
what it .o:/ be.) Jobs certainly did not destroy value. True, he killed Iar
more ideas than he let live--there are more than 300 patents under his
name covering everything Irom packaging to user interIaces. But those
that survive outweigh all the rest. His Iocus was, continually, on what it
would be like to come at a product raw, with no coaching or presentation
but simply as a new, untested thing.
THE MOST OBVIOUS EXAM!LE OF THIS hides in plain sight and
is a Iundamental part oI every Apple product. From the 1970s to the
1990s, iI you opened up a new gadget, the Iirst thing you Iaced was
Iiguring out how the damn thing worked. You'd have to wade through
piles oI instruction manuals written in an engineer's alien English. But a
Iunny thing happened with the iMac: Every year, Apple's instruction
manuals grew thinner and thinner, until Iinally, today, there are no
instruction manuals at all. The assumption is that you'll be able to tear
open the box and immediately start playing with your new toy. Just
watch a 3-year-old with an iPad. You're seeing a toddler intuit the
workings oI one oI the most advanced pieces oI engineering on the
planet. At almost no time in history has that been possible. It certainly
wasn't when the Iirst home computers were introduced, or the Iirst TV
remote controls, or the Iirst radios. And it was something Jobs was
driving Ior his entire career. Again, Irom 1989, n.. asked him, "Do you
sometimes marvel at the eIIect you've had on people's lives?" Jobs said:
"There are some moments. I was in an elementary school just this
morning, and they still had a bunch oI Apple IIs, and I was kind oI
looking over their shoulders. Then I get letters Irom people about the
Mac, saying, 'I never thought I could use a computer beIore I tried this
one.'"
A decisive Iactor that aided Steve Jobs was Iortuitous timing. He came
oI age just in time to become a Iounding Iather oI the personal-computer
movement. And he was still young enough when he returned to Apple,
in 1997, that his own instinctive sense oI what a computer might become
could be brought to liIe. In the 1980s and 1990s, computers were sold on
their speed and technical capabilities. But by 2000, these Ieatures had
largely become commoditized--it no longer mattered how Iast a
computer was when basic issues oI usability and integration became
paramount. What did speed matter iI you didn't know what all the menus
meant, or iI you were hit with pop-up errors every time you clicked your
mouse?
BeIore 1997, Jobs was ahead oI his time: The computers he made were
overpriced Ior the market, because he thought that usability was more
important than capability. But as computers reached maturity and
became a staple in every home, his obsessions became more relevant to
the market. Indeed, many oI Apple's recent signature products, such as
the iPad or the iPhone, were ideas Iirst conceived in the 1990s or even
the 1980s--they had to bide their time.
Jobs is ahead oI his time in other ways too: He has taught his entire
organization to play in the span oI product generations rather than
product introductions. Apple designers say that now, each design they
create has to be presented alongside a mock-up oI how that design might
evolve in the second or third generation. That should ensure Apple's
continued success Ior a long time, aided, oI course, by the tremendous
momentum that Jobs's leadership has provided the company.
IT'S NOT CLEAR that anyone else at Apple will possess Jobs's same
talent Ior looking at Apple's products Irom the outside view oI a user.
Tim Cook, his anointed successor, proved his worth by revamping
Apple's production processes and supply chain. That talent is vital to
running the business and has increased Apple's proIits by untold billions.
But being able to break apart the nuances oI sourcing is the exact
opposite oI being a usability genius: Cook's career has largely been
spent Iocusing on precisely those things the consumer never sees.
Does Cook have an in-house product critic who could stand in Jobs's
place? Will Cook have as close a working relationship with Ive as Jobs
did? Will Ive even stay? And did Jobs create an entire organization that
reIlects his balance oI concerns--Ior the back end, yes, but Ior usability
Iirst and Ioremost? The biggest risk is that Apple takes Ior granted that
its superior design will Iorever demand a price premium. That might lull
it into thinking that Apple itselI is great, rather than its products. But
Apple, all along, has only been as good as its last "insanely great" thing.
"What would Steve do?" has long been a mantra at Apple (albeit oIten
unspoken). No doubt his example and presence will persist in the
organization. The world's most valuable company has one man's vision
at its core, in roots that go back 30 years. The unanswered question Ior
Apple is: Who's dreaming its Iuture now?