

Guy Kawasaki: What I learned from Steve Jobs - dm8
https://plus.google.com/112374836634096795698/posts/8cfpr9k5v6t

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imjk
I usually find a lot of fluff in Guy Kawasaki's rhetoric, but a lot of this
content was actually meaningful. For once I think Guy's not so concerned of
his reputation as an iconoclast or coming up with an ostensibly unconventional
opinion that this comes off as somewhat genuine.

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ilamont
I was skeptical.

Customers don't know what they need? You can't go wrong with big fonts and big
graphics? Experts don't know what they are talking about?

These lessons may work sometimes, but to generalize them across all people,
companies and scenarios can lead to major mistakes.

~~~
frossie
_Customers don't know what they need?_

Not usually, no. The customers know what needs they have that are not being
met - that's not the same.

See also:

 _The customer lacks the imagination to ask for what they really need. This is
often encapsulated in Henry Ford's apocryphal quote: "If I had asked people
what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Now this is not to say
the customer is stupid; it just means that everybody wanted to get from A to B
faster, but since they only can imagine doing so on a horse, that is what they
ask for. And, had they talked to a horse breeder, that is what he would
promise them; and when they got their 10% faster horse, they would have been
happy. The "project" would have been a success. But would you rather manage
the horse breeding project or the Model T?_

[http://geekherding.blogspot.com/2010/07/requirements-dont-
gr...](http://geekherding.blogspot.com/2010/07/requirements-dont-grow-on-
trees.html)

~~~
palish
Henry Ford never actually said that. Strange but true.

~~~
revorad
Were you there when he didn't say it?

</joke>

~~~
palish
Yeah. Me 'n Hen used to throw rocks at people on horses while we blazed by 'em
in his new hotrod, etc.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2747106>

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SODaniel
FTFY; 'Guy Kawasaki: What I learned from Steve Jobs one more time, because
there is nothing sad about 100k more page-views'

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arank
The video has a lot of good stuff in addition to the lessons he learned -
[http://video.svb.com/video/12-Lessons-Steve-Jobs-Taught-
Gu#c...](http://video.svb.com/video/12-Lessons-Steve-Jobs-Taught-
Gu#c=K6047X335R9Y3XJG&t=12)

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fredDouglass
> Which would you rather be: Apple or Xerox PARC?

wow. i would much rather 'be' xerox parc. i think that they brought infinitely
more value to the human race and probably had a lot more fun doing it. the
author is nuts.

~~~
podperson
"infinitely"?

Xerox PARC's biggest legacy was refining ideas from other people (Douglas
Englebart, the folks who created Simula, et al) and then _not shipping them_.
Sure, PARC prototyped the iPad but it was really invented by Stanley Kubrick
or one of his production designers wasn't it?

If you're in the "Apple stole everything from someone else" camp then at least
trace back the origins of everything to Maxwell and Faraday and Ada Lovelace
and the medieval monks who invented logic and Euclid and don't just go one
step back.

We _all_ stand on giants' shoulders. Not all of us help popularize the
personal computer, the graphical user interface, object-oriented programming,
computer animation, digital music players that fit in your pocket and hold
your entire music library, and pocket-sized always-connected touch-screen
computers.

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iconfinder
I think this advice is the best:

"Customers cannot tell you what they need."

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robot
this is a summarized transcript of his talk here:

[http://video.svb.com/video/12-Lessons-Steve-Jobs-Taught-
Gu#c...](http://video.svb.com/video/12-Lessons-Steve-Jobs-Taught-
Gu#c=K6047X335R9Y3XJG&t=12) Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Guy Kawasaki

I think the reason it reads bland is that it is a short summary. I found his
talk amusing and better presented than what he listed here.

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vilda
"Which would you rather be: Apple or Xerox PARC?"

Am I the only one who would rather be in Xerox PARC than Apple? :)

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giardini
I had javascript disabled and got a blank screen when I first navigated to the
URL above. Just had to laugh!8-))

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vertr
This is a repost. I once respected Kawasaki, however he has turned into a huge
social media spammer and baiter.

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Goladus
The first post was killed for some unknown reason. Are Kawasaki articles
banned from Hacker News?

Also, the ad hominem seems out of place. Is he wrong or uninteresting in this
case?

~~~
chl
Is there a way to find out whether a story was killed (besides noticing a
sudden drop in the ranking)?

~~~
Goladus
In this case, the only way I know is that I had the comments page of the old
thread loaded. When I refreshed the page, [dead] appeared in the title and
replying was disabled. Now, I'm unable to find it, so I'm not sure, and the
comments that were there are not here.

~~~
chl
Ah! HN doesn't display [dead] when you're the submitter of the story. Now I
only wonder _why_ it was killed ...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3088810>

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diamondhead
All of these lessons can be learned in any McDonalds store. Just act like
you're getting inspiration from Steve Jobs instead of a random guy. The lesson
a person with almost 60 years of life experience may not learn is, how does
this opportunist self promotion look.

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diamondhead
bullshit

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nikcub
I took tip 1 and stopped reading

