interfaces, and extensive efforts to cultivate a broad ecosystem of partners. But Jobs and Apple have shown us another path to platform leadership, and not just for a niche product segment: Design breakthrough products that set new standards for form, function, and aesthetics; market them creatively and aggressively, with some modest reductions in price over time; open them up gradually as industrywide platforms, and let the chips fall where they may. This strategy will be very hard to duplicate without a Steve Jobs at the helm. But it is more of a win-win scenario for the innovator (still lots of money to be made) and the user (we all end up with better products, not just platforms).

 

Raising the Bar

But beating Microsoft or Google at their own platform game is not what seems to have motivated Steve Jobs. He appears to have cared most about the impact that technology and innovation, delivered in their most cultivated forms, can have on people’s lives. For example, he is famous for a quip about Microsoft back in the mid-1990s that the company “has no taste” and did not bring the best of human culture into its products. Jobs cited the example of proportionally spaced fonts in the Macintosh, an idea he got from looking at beautiful books and the history of printing, and which Windows later copied.b By contrast, Bill Gates and Microsoft focused on software operating systems that led to cheap and powerful PCs as well as lots of applications but were b Public Broadcasting System, “Triumph of the Nerds,” The Television Program Transcript, Part III; http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part3.html.

Beating microsoft
or Google at their
own platform game
is not what seems
to have motivated
Steve Jobs.

relatively clumsy and difficult to use for the average consumer. Today’s PCs, digital media players, smartphones, and tablets based on Windows or even Android are as good as they are only because of how much Steve Jobs and Apple raised the bar—for everyone.

 

Charisma and Leadership

In the 1996 PBS documentary, “Tri-
umph of the Nerds,” Larry Tesler, who
used to work at Apple, discussed how
Steve Jobs was able to inspire people
to surpass what even they believed they
could accomplish. He would never
settle for anything less than someone’s
absolutely best effort, and then some.
That is how Jobs raised the bar for the
Macintosh project—whose competi-
tion was the character-based IBM PC
and compatibles—and many products
since then, most recently the iPad. Tes-
ler recalled: “When I wasn’t sure what
the word charisma meant, I met Steve
Jobs and then I knew.”c
Let’s be sure to give adequate credit
to Apple cofounder Steve Wozniack for
Apple’s early products as well as to Jona-
than Ive for being chief designer of the
iPod, iPhone, iPad, and several hit Ma-
cintosh desktop computers and laptops.
And to Scott Forstall, who headed iOS
software development. New CEO Tim
Cook, formerly the COO, has also been
a highly effective leader of sales and op-
erations since Jobs recruited him from
Compaq Computer in 1998. But it has
taken extraordinary charisma and lead-
ership skills to bring so many diverse
personalities together and channel their
considerable talents so productively.
This does not happen often or by chance.

 

c Public Broadcasting System, “Triumph of the Nerds,” The Television Program Transcript, Part III; http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part3.html.

It’s in the details

When Jobs and Wozniak cofounded Apple in 1976, they believed, along with Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who cofounded Microsoft in 1975, that the world would one day be full of personal computers. These entrepreneurs had something else in common: They all had the skills, in varying degrees, to build the products they dreamed of. Jobs needed Wozniak’s technical wizardry to shrink down the number of chips and construct the internals of Apple’s early computers. Gates and Allen were preeminent software programmers, especially Gates. But Jobs stands far above his peers for the degree to which he combined extremely astute technological vision with an ability to dive into the smallest details of his products, including hardware, software, industrial design, and marketing.

We have heard about the care Jobs took to design the Apple II case, with consumer electronics as his model, and how he tackled the many challenges posed by the Macintosh, ranging from reducing the price tag to the time it took to boot up. The users that bought these and other Apple products quickly came to love them—truly love their elegant look and feel in a way that seems unparalleled in any other competitor’s products.

Until recently, Jobs continued to be
deeply involved in the iPhone and iPad
designs, both of which have the same
look and feel about them that we first
marveled at in the original Macintosh.
I should not have been surprised to
learn from the recent reporting that
Jobs is listed as a coinventor of 313
patents, beginning with personal com-
puter cases but extending to internal
PC electronics and designs for lap-
tops, multimedia devices (the iPod),
smartphones (the iPhone), operating
systems (NeXT, iOS), keyboards, mice,
and Apple TV.d
I am also left with the thought that
great entrepreneurs do not really see
the future as much as they create the
future they envision. Steve Jobs knew
how to build and sell game-changing
products, down to the smallest details.

 

d Shan Carter, “Steve Jobs’ Patents,” The New York Times (Aug. 25, 2011); http://www.ny- times.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technol- ogy/ steve-jobs-patents.html?emc=eta1