
Steve Jobs on why Xerox failed - tosh
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rXqD6M614
======
skilled
I do believe this is what's happening at Blizzard at the moment. The company
has completely derailed in the last year. [1] And the fan response over
several core franchises has been _very_ vocal. Activision is literally ripping
the soul out of these guys in order to justify crap like microtransactions; a
concept that wasn't very Blizzard-like up until recently.

1: [https://kotaku.com/with-activisions-influence-growing-
blizza...](https://kotaku.com/with-activisions-influence-growing-blizzard-is-
cutting-1831263741)

~~~
ABCLAW
I had a few conversations with Blizzard devs during the now infamous panels.

They have no idea why people are angry with them. None. But that's not
surprising, because they have no idea why their company was loved in the first
place. They view users that balk at the imposition of exploitive business
models as entitled internet trolls (nevermind that their most famous and
successful product owner is literally a famous and successful internet troll).

How could they be so disconnected? Well, it seems there's a massive normative
shift following WoW. Most of the staff I spoke with date to after the MMO's
massive money-spewing success. They're in their mid-twenties and didn't really
play early Blizz titles at the time they came out. The few greybeard OG nerds
I spoke with that were there still _got it_ but didn't _care_. The ones that
cared left, the ones that didn't stayed.

Maybe they got tired of fighting back against the suits when Titan failed to
become WoW2.0? I don't know.

Morhaime's departure, and his replacement, are emblematic of this this shift
to post-WoW money inurement.

This is the first year I'm considering skipping my annual visit to Blizzcon.

------
andregumieri
This interview in it’s full form lives on Netflix. It’s great from begging to
end.

"Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview"

[https://www.netflix.com/title/70243590?s=i&trkid=13752289](https://www.netflix.com/title/70243590?s=i&trkid=13752289)

~~~
jason_slack
+1 this was my whole reason for commenting on this thread.

------
reasonablemann
The Touch Bar is the perfect example of marketing people hijacking the product
to push sales without helping customers.

~~~
lgrebe
I tend to disagree. It’s effectively still doing the same thing by offering
functions of the current application with a single direkt input.

Previously as F1-12 Buttons they were overloaded with OS functions such as
brightness and audio controls, moving the application Functions to the fn+
combo key.

With the Touch Bar not only are buttons only available when applicable, they
also allow for custom inputs such as a range instead of a binary click and
their meaning is a lot more explicit with icons and text as opposed to F1-12

I actually think it’s more of a application support problem. If more
applications offered better touchbar support I’d be happy about forgetting a
series of hot key keystrokes.

~~~
dolessdrugs
"It's not our niche technology, it's the damn developers not supporting it!"

------
beautifulfreak
I remember that back then it was very hard to figure out which Apple computer
to buy. Model names had proliferated, thanks to the marketing department, and
you needed a spreadsheet to figure out the differences between them. One of
the best things Steve ever did was to reduce the offerings to just "four great
products."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkVs4ZqWgN8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkVs4ZqWgN8)

~~~
intsunny
Ironically it has become too confusing to know which Iphone to buy. The X*
naming convention isn't helping one bit either.

~~~
Redoubts
How is it hard to discern X vs XS compared to 7 and 7S?

~~~
washadjeffmad
Is X the newest? I don't really Apple, but I feel like models of the 8 or 9
came after the X.

I assume X means 10 like 'OS X', so I would assume it's the 10th gen iPhone,
but I don't know.

~~~
jki275
the X models are the newest. There is no 9, the 8 is the last "non-X" model.

~~~
swampthinker
So whats the difference between the XR, XS, X max (is that a thing? Feel like
I've heard that). Which iPhone has a notch? Which one has a home button still?

These are questions I've heard over the holidays from friends and family,
questions that were unthinkable when Jobs ran Apple.

~~~
Redoubts
> XR, XS, X max... Which iPhone has a notch?

All of them.

> Which one has a home button still?

None of them.

> So whats the difference

<>S is the refresh, same as it's been for years. Max is the physically larger
size, what used to be called the "Plus".

> These are questions I've heard over the holidays from friends and family,
> questions that were unthinkable when Jobs ran Apple.

I mean, Max/Plus is annoying, but I think Jobs was alive when iPhones
refreshed with an S so this seems like a silly statement.

~~~
swampthinker
There are now 4 phones consumers are supposed to be aware of. On top of the
naming scheme being confusing, most people who asked me during the holidays
think Xs is just a smaller version of the X.

Frankly X was just a dumb name.

~~~
Redoubts
Sounds like the people you know don't want to do entry level reading on a
$1000 purchase.

~~~
washadjeffmad
I don't know, would you intuit the model called the X or the XS (read:
"excess") as being the bigger, better phone? How many others might have
thought it was "Xtra Small"?

And even if you knew the XS was the refresh, would guess the XR preceeded or
succeeded it? R comes before S, so maybe S is the newest?

Personally, the X naming feels like kind of a gaff.

------
ulfw
It happens to a majority of companies when they grow. Product innovation
seizes to exist as market share grows ('don't mess things up! don't be too
risky!') and Sales takes ownership.

~~~
libertine
Well isn't it something like: in times of wealth sales & marketing take over
to promote growth (like a CMO becomes the CEO); in rough times it's finances
that take over to cut costs and prevent losses (like a CFO becomes the CEO)...

The thing is, for some big companies Product is under the wing of marketing in
some way... even if product releases are from a selected internal catalog to
fill local market needs.

------
bjoko
For Tim Cook it would be a good idea to take a closer look at this video...

~~~
bagsvaerd70
I'm not a big Apple fan. I've bought some of their laptops after the
transition to Intel, but slowly switched away when macOS became less of a
priority.

That said, I think Apple is sitting on top of another blockbuster, similar to
the iPhone in terms of impact, if they know how to play it well. I'm referring
to the Apple Watch _equipped with_ a non-invasive glucose sensor.

I realize that they have a bit of a regulatory battle to fight before
releasing it. But the potential is immense. It will change how people eat, not
just diabetics. It's pretty well established science now that if we reduce the
area under the glucose curve (read minimize glucose spikes), we will age more
slowly and we will reduce metabolic disease enormously.

~~~
saurik
> I'm referring to the Apple Watch equipped with a non-invasive glucose
> sensor.

As someone who has dated someone that is diabetic and now works with someone
who is diabetic--someone who likes to sit at the cutting edge of technology
and is even using hacked equipment to improve his experience--I don't think we
have that technology yet.

~~~
jf-
We don’t, the latest commercial technology consists of disposable sensors that
require a probe to penetrate the skin. Whoever brings something non-invasive
(and reusable) to market will be raking it in whether they’re apple or not.

~~~
bagsvaerd70
PKVitality has a sensor array that is pretty much non-invasive:
[https://www.pkvitality.com/ktrack-
glucose/](https://www.pkvitality.com/ktrack-glucose/)

There's also an alternative using radiofrequency:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4641327/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4641327/)

~~~
fabricexpert
> PKVitality

That product doesn't exist yet, the video on the home page is 18 months old so
it's probably not feasible / accurate.

------
krn
Steve Jobs essentially described what was later coined "The Innovator's
Dilemma"[1], but in a more general way.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma)

~~~
scarface74
Actually he didn’t.

The Innovators Dilemma is about making a product that “overserves” the market
and for companies being afraid to introduce a cheaper “good enough” product.

Also the author of the Innovators Dilemma was laughably wrong about the
iPhone.

[https://medium.com/@jakewheadon/why-i-think-clay-
christensen...](https://medium.com/@jakewheadon/why-i-think-clay-christensen-
missed-the-iphone-and-what-it-means-for-wearables-befaf6c682bb)

~~~
bergie
> The Innovators Dilemma is about making a product that “overserves” the
> market and for companies being afraid to introduce a cheaper “good enough”
> product.

Isn't that essentially the problem Apple now has with:

* The high-end iPhones going up in price because of more expensive components, but not providing features users would be excited to upgrade for

* Not bringing a mid-range phone to the market

~~~
scarface74
Whether that’s Apple’s problem or not is tangential to whether or not Jobs was
describing the Innovators Dilemma.

But Apple’s main problem is not the high cost of phones. Apple’s problem are:

* The iPhone is good enough for most people and the upgrade cycle is lengthening. The iPhone 6s from 2015 is faster than midrange new Android phones and is actually still faster than even high end Android Phones in single core performance. No one is going to upgrade to a mid range phone. The iPhone 6s is still getting OS updates and probably will for at least two more years.

* the average selling price of an Android phone in $265 - $315 depending on which source you believe ([https://www.cnet.com/news/why-your-iphone-and-android-will-c...](https://www.cnet.com/news/why-your-iphone-and-android-will-cost-more-in-2019/)). Even the low end iPhone SE was selling for more than that.

The 7 is a midrange Phone by iPhone standards and it is $475. If they dropped
the price to $350, it would still be more than the average Android user would
be willing to pay.

Yes the $329 iPad is proof that they could make a profitable iPhone that was
good enough for most people. They charge an extra $130 for cellular and GPS
but the chip couldn’t cost anymore than $30.

* I doubt that Apple could make a phone that was cheap enough to lure Chinese buyers and still be a decent phone.

------
ashelmire
Wow. This applies to so many large tech companies today that have monopolies
on their primary product and have repeatedly failed to really innovate since.

------
sys_64738
I try to consume anything Steve says in these types of video. He might have
been a terrible person sometimes but he is the greatest business man ever.

~~~
mabbo
I think the important question we all need to ask ourselves is whether he was
successful _because_ he was an asshole, or whether he was successful _despite_
being an asshole?

A lot of people seem to think that 'asshole' is a stepping stone to success.
With no evidence to support it either way, I try to live presuming that it was
'despite'. That Apple could have been ever greater had he managed to be
assertive and strong without being abusive.

~~~
perfmode
I vote “despite”.

I’ve seen this a lot. People are assholes when young and then they mature and
manage to maintain their effectiveness while inflicting less damage.

------
bdz
It's from Triumph of the Nerds, worth watching the whole thing (3 hours long)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Nerds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Nerds)

~~~
cenal
It’s on Amazon if you want to watch it: [https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-of-
the-Nerds/dp/B01N0KK5JQ](https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-of-the-
Nerds/dp/B01N0KK5JQ)

------
austincheney
Reminds me of the online travel industry. I did some time with Travelocity,
Orbitz, and Expedia. Now its all Expedia. Expedia was always better, but not
because they had a better product, but because they were better at finance and
relationships. Travelocity had the best two products in the industry: travel
packages and branded white labels.

I remember in each of these companies there were easily more than 10x product
development people as marketing and merchandising people, but marketing people
ran the companies. They had no idea about craftsmanship. Many of their ideas
were in opposition to product quality would ultimately kill Travelocity as a
slow poison.

My timing into all of this was interesting. I got into this in late 2007. At
that exact moment Travelocity concluded industry growth in North America was
finished. People had finally come online and organic growth was done. Now the
only growth remaining was competition. Within a year all the executives left.

When Travelocity started its internal collapse in 2013 (I was in Afghanistan
at the time) their superior products still had strong value even as the
company quickly lost marketshare and employees. On top of that Travelocity had
the strongest brand of the online travel companies, which was the thing they
really wanted. In 2014 the company was diced up. Orbitz got the white label
partnership business and Expedia got the Travelocity brand. In 2015 Expedia
put in an offer to purchase Orbitz. A third of Orbitz's value was that partner
business it got from Travelocity, because it would provide growth potential to
Expedia it couldn't build from its brand alone. Now Travelocity is about a 50
person marketing team of Expedia, but it accounts for about a third of
Expedia's core online revenue. At its high in 2012 Travelocity was about a
3500 employee company under Sabre.

The interesting thing about being at all 3 is the similarities in marketing
driven goals and the similarities in technology. The technologies, the front
end and the Java webapp middleware, were nearly identical. Same sorts of
bloat. Same sorts of shifting positions on frameworks. Same sorts of aged
archaic code that continued to live on 15 years later.

EDIT:

This is why the two products I mentioned were the industry's best. Vacation
packages (flight + hotel + other things) by far had the highest margin. When
you go to an online travel agency they are always pushing you to purchase a
hotel, because hotels have substantially higher margin than flights, (like $50
compared to $7), but vacations packages could be worth anywhere from 1.5x to
4x hotel margin. Travelocity figured this out the best and were able to offer
the cheapest packages at the highest margin rates. That was a big deal.

When all things retail fail, as they eventually always will, contracted
partnerships will continue to pay. In additional to financial security they
provide access to industries, data, and financial schemes otherwise not
available. If you are a growth strategist this is what you want.

~~~
krisroadruck
A buddy of mine in the SEO space kept quitting Expedia to go work for the
competition and finding himself back on the Expedia team via acquisitions.
After the 3rd or so time he got so frustrated he quit the travel industry
entirely lol.

------
mromanuk
Its kind of funny how Steve Jobs, dismiss all his analysis on the final
sentence with “but anyway, it’s all ancient history now, doesn’t matter any
more”

~~~
DSingularity
I thought so originally. But honestly, I think part of him is genuinely sad
that Xerox failed the way it did.

------
pettersolberg
He is Apple's Hari Seldon.

------
GnwbZHiU
That's why Apple is failing

