
Steve Jobs "never had any designs. He has not designed a single project" - MikeTaylor
http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/steve-jobs-never-had-any-designs-he-has-not-designed-a-single-project/
======
aresant
Steve may not design the product, but he is the hard-grain sandpaper that gets
a design from prototype to best in market.

Ars says it best:

"On his own, Jobs could not create much of anything. But that's not his
superpower . .. He is Apple's übercritic: one man to pare a torrent of
creativity and expertise down to a handful of truly great products by picking
apart every prototype, challenging every idea, and finding the flaws that no
one else can see."

[http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2009/05/hypercritical.a...](http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2009/05/hypercritical.ars/2)

Further reading on this process in action - Steve's take on the Segway design:

[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2008/07/07/behind-the-scenes-
ste...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2008/07/07/behind-the-scenes-steve-jobs-
meets-the-segway/)

~~~
phjohnst
I actually had dinner with a well-known hedge fund manager a few months ago
and while talking about Blackberries and iPhones, he mentioned "that nobody
has ever got rich betting against Steve Jobs"

Sums it up for me pretty well.

~~~
NickPollard
Bill Gates rather puts the lie to that.

~~~
btilly
He does? How?

Microsoft was happy to place bets on every system they could. Bill Gates
didn't bet against anyone. He placed lots of bets on lots of systems, knowing
that one would work out. The IBM PC is what made their fortune. But the bets
they placed on other systems were already doing very well for them. Including
on Apple.

The Microsoft-Apple relationship began in 1977 with Microsoft introducing
Applesoft BASIC and later licensing it to Apple. Microsoft SoftCard followed
in 1980, enabling Apple machines to run to programs designed for the CP/M.
Sure, there was the infamous MS-DOS deal with IBM. But in the same time period
Steve Jobs visited Microsoft to demo early prototypes of the Macintosh, and
Microsoft was the first major company to develop programs for the Mac. In the
end Microsoft BASIC and Microsoft Multiplan were shipped simultaneously with
the introduction of the Macintosh, and Microsoft announced at the launch that
Word, Chart, and File would ship soon.

When I look back at the history, I see no sign that Bill Gates was betting
against Steve Jobs. His most successful bet was not on Steve Jobs. But he had
lots of bets on Jobs as well.

For more on the history, see
[http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.h...](http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm)

~~~
ericb
Early on, before a leader in the PC market was established, investors had the
choice of betting which horse would win--Bill Gates at Microsoft or Steve Jobs
at Apple.

Many people did get rich betting on Gates, so indirectly, yes, Bill Gates does
show that people have gotten rich betting against Jobs. The hyperbole is nice,
but only that--hyperbole.

~~~
cromulent
Isn't that choice a false dichotomy? A bet on Gates is not a bet against Jobs.

An investor who could only envisage one winner may be a little naive. It's not
a horse race.

~~~
WorkerBee
_A bet on Gates is not a bet against Jobs._

Yes it was.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh>

"The first Macintosh was introduced on January 24, 1984; it was the first
commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical
user interface rather than a command-line interface. The company continued to
have success through the second half of the 1980s, only to see it dissipate in
the 1990s as the personal computer market shifted towards IBM PC compatible
machines running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows."

~~~
cromulent
So, when Gates bought 150M of Apple stock in 97, was he betting against
himself? Worked out to be a winning bet for Gates.

As Jobs said at the time: "We have to let go of a few notions here. We have to
let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft needs to lose.”

~~~
WorkerBee
_So, when Gates bought 150M of Apple stock in 97, was he betting against
himself?_

Pretty much, yes. It made him seem like less of a monopolist.

 _Worked out to be a winning bet for Gates._

That's what happens when you bet on every horse in the race. It's something
that Microsoft does a lot.

------
philwelch
The fact is, the Macintosh was nowhere near completion when Jobs took it over
and shepherded it there himself. The whole Raskin/Jobs controversy smells like
30 year old corporate politics, nothing deeper than that.

Some potentially relevant folklore.org bits:
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=I_Invented_Burrell.txt&characters=Jef%20Raskin&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium)

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_Father_of_The_Macintosh.txt&characters=Jef%20Raskin&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Note that Jef Raskin actually disputes both those accounts himself in the
comments sections.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
Which just reinforces the "it's 30-year old corporate politics full of 'he-
said, she-said'" perception.

------
aswanson
Wozniak's all-planet engineering skill and user empathy is the cornerstone of
everything that came afterward. To this day I cannot understand why the
prototypical managerial leech that is Jobs, however good his taste, is
venerated over Woz. By technical folk, of all people.

~~~
sliverstorm
The figurehead gets the glory. As a RULE.

Lance Armstrong is the Man Who Went to the Moon. We remember him, Buzz Aldrin,
and the Presidents who got us there. Nobody else- not a one of the architects
and engineers or anybody else.

~~~
stevejohnson
I don't know how to tell you this, but...I think you meant Neil Armstrong.

~~~
sliverstorm
Wow, I feel stupid.

~~~
ohashi
It happens to us all, just laugh, smile and move on :)

------
tvon
FWIW, Paul Lutus is calling this accurate over on reddit:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/daabf/steve_job...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/daabf/steve_jobs_never_had_any_designs_he_has_not/c0yq1lf)

------
othello
Woz' interview in _Founders At Work_ seems to confirm that Jobs played a major
part in many design decisions on the initial Macintosh, especially the removal
of extension slots:

 _We had a real argument over slots. (...) Steve said, "All people really need
is a printer and a modem." And that was just false because he'd come from a
different world than I. (...) He wanted just one slot for a printer and one
for a modem(...), so I said, "If you want 2 slots, get another computer." That
was the only time we had a real argument._

<http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html>

------
ZeroGravitas
It would seem his opinion only got worse with time:

[http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/macintosh-project-genesis-
an...](http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/macintosh-project-genesis-and-
history-16-feb-1981/)

His mid-90s annotations retract things he thought politic to say in the 80s.

------
mkramlich
At the end of the article it was revealed that that Raskin quote was made 24
years ago. Whether it was true then or not, it's certainly possible that Jobs
has designed, or contributed to the design, of _something_ at Apple in the 24
years since. Just a wee bit of a possibility there.

~~~
MikeTaylor
Actually, that was revealed at the _beginning_ of the article: "It was
published in 1986".

------
audionerd
“[..] The next afternoon, instead of a new iteration of the calculator, Chris
unveiled his new approach, which he called "the Steve Jobs Roll Your Own
Calculator Construction Set". Every decision regarding graphical attributes of
the calculator were parameterized by pull-down menus. You could select line
thicknesses, button sizes, background patterns, etc.

Steve took a look at the new program, and immediately started fiddling with
the parameters. After trying out alternatives for ten minutes or so, he
settled on something that he liked. When I implemented the calculator UI (Donn
Denman did the math semantics) for real a few months later, I used Steve's
design, and it remained the standard calculator on the Macintosh for many
years, all the way up through OS 9.”

via:
[http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Calculator_Construction_Set.txt)

------
alanh
Title is hardly a surprise. What did you expect? Will we next learn he never
implemented a single NS_* class?

~~~
danilocampos
JOBS CREATED INTERFACE BUILDER IN 20,000 LINES OF ASSEMBLY HOW DARE YOU

He also wrote the entirety of the NeXTSTEP developer docs on scrolls in his
kitchen.

Despite the abstract level where Jobs usually lives, it's interesting to note
just what a hardon he had for OOP back in the day:

"With our technology, with objects, literally three people in a garage can
blow away what 200 people at Microsoft can do. Literally can blow it away.
Corporate America has a need that is so huge and can save them so much money,
or make them so much money, or cost them so much money if they miss it, that
they are going to fuel the object revolution."

<http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/jobs_rs1994/jobs.html>

With his usual flair, he almost implies in the quote that NeXT invented OOP
altogether.

Jobs seems to have a nose for the things that matter. Especially meaningful
stuff that would escape most traditional business guys.

~~~
ciupicri
According to Wikipedia[1] Inteface Builder was invented and developed by Jean-
Marie Hullot, originally _in Lisp_.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Builder#History>

~~~
jonhendry
Hell, it was probably originally _in French_ , too.

~~~
ciupicri
Only the functional specifications.

------
foobarfoofoofoo
"He has not designed a single project" is a bit of a strawman argument. What
Jobs does is focus a team of designers and engineers on creating a product
that is really satisfying to use. It doesn't sound like much, but if it's
easy, how come no company but Apple seems to be able to do it?

Anyway here is a Mac application that applies some of Jef Raskin's ideas to a
finder alternative: <http://www.raskinformac.com/>

~~~
euccastro
Raskin said that as a response to Jobs' claim that (quoting from memory) "I
feel I still have a couple good designs in me." It's unfortunate that the
article omits this bit of context from the original interview in Programmers
at Work.

He's not saying that Jobs is without merit, just that he steals credit from
those to whom it rightfully belongs.

------
masklinn
folklore.org paints a pretty interesting picture of Jef Raskin, and one which
indicates his words should be carefully weighted and not taken at any more
face value than those of Jobs.

For instance:

> Whatever idea that you came up with, Jef Raskin had a tendency to claim that
> he invented it at some earlier point.

folklore also shows Jobs's contribution very differently than Raskin's own
take:

> The plan of record for the Macintosh industrial design was still the one
> conceived by Jef Raskin, which chose a horizontally oriented, lunch-box type
> shape, with the keyboard folding up into the lid of the computer for easy
> transportability, kind of like the Osborne I, which we weren't aware of at
> the time. But Steve had a real passion for industrial design, and he never
> seriously considered following Jef's recommendations.

As well as complete and utter disagreement with what was apparently written by
Raskin, behold from ZeroGravitas's link:

> The elimination of slots had been dictated by Jobs, however I thought this
> would hamstring the product. Thus I invented the all-important bus
> diagnostic port discussed below

Whereas on folklore.org:

> But Jef Raskin had a very different point of view. He thought that slots
> were inherently complex, and were one of the obstacles holding back personal
> computers from reaching a wider audience. He thought that hardware
> expandability made it more difficult for third party software writers since
> they couldn't rely on the consistency of the underlying hardware. His
> Macintosh vision had Apple cranking out millions of identical, easy to use,
> low cost appliance computers and since hardware expandability would add
> significant cost and complexity it was therefore avoided.

> Apple's other co-founder, Steve Jobs, didn't agree with Jef about many
> things, but they both felt the same way about hardware expandability: it was
> a bug instead of a feature. Steve was reportedly against having slots in the
> Apple II back in the days of yore, and felt even stronger about slots for
> the Mac. He decreed that the Macintosh would remain perpetually bereft of
> slots, enclosed in a tightly sealed case, with only the limited
> expandability of the two serial ports.

> Mac hardware designer Burrell Smith and his assistant Brian Howard
> understood Steve's rationale, but they felt differently about the proper
> course of action. Burrell had already watched the Macintosh's hopelessly
> optimistic schedule start to slip indefinitely, and he was unable to predict
> when the Mac's pioneering software would be finished, if ever. He was afraid
> that Moore's Law would make his delayed hardware obsolete before it ever
> came to market. He thought it was prudent to build in as much flexibility as
> possible, as long as it didn't cost too much.

> Burrell decided to add a single, simple slot to his Macintosh design, which
> made the processor's bus accessible to peripherals, that wouldn't cost very
> much, especially if it wasn't used. He worked out the details and proposed
> it at the weekly staff meeting, but Steve immediately nixed his proposal,
> stating that there was no way that the Mac would even have a single slot.

~~~
phjohnst
Also good to note is Andy Hertzfeld's account of "Black Wednesday" in February
1981 when Raskin was fired and Hertzfeld given his desk.

The book was published in 1986, which would probably mean that the interview
was done after he was fired by Jobs. Certainly reinforces the warning to take
Raskin's word, too, with a grain of salt.

[http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Black_Wednesday.txt&sortOrder=Sort+by+Date)

------
joe_the_user
Steve Jobs having nothing to do with the original Macintosh doesn't imply that
Steve Jobs' aesthetic sense didn't result in Apple's resurgence.

It might imply that Jobs is not a nice guy but I think even a lot of Apple
fans are OK with Jobs being a not-nice-guy-who-gives-them the coolest stuff.

I am personally distributed by the cult-like-climate that Apple is described
as having but I am also appreciate that Apple is seen as where the best UIs
appear.

I think having single persons aesthetic control _is_ very important to and we
should think about why.

My suspicion is that one wouldn't necessarily have to have genius to do this,
just a willingness _not to accept the usual croft that infects just any large
engineering project_. Any _average user off the street_ can walk and say "I
don't want to do that in five steps, I want to do it in one". The only genius
it take here is a willingness to keep attitude even though a team of twenty
spent a year deciding that five steps made sense (and their _terrible_
decision happen because the logic of engineering process crept slowly and
insidiously into their aesthetic, their idea of what is "OK").

------
beefman
The Mac was an improved version of the Lisa, which was a copy of the Xerox
Alto, which was inspired by Englebart's NLS.

You can see what it would have been had Raskin carried out his plans, because
he did, to something called the Canon Cat: <http://tinyurl.com/47hj7m>

Raskin has a better claim to the iOS design, in that it is an "incredible
morphing computer".

~~~
jon_hendry
Ah, yes, the Canon Cat. A real world-changer, that.

~~~
beefman
Yes, too bad. It looks far superior to what I'm typing in now.

~~~
kragen
You know, if you wanted to implement a Canon Cat, you could probably do it
pretty easily and on a reasonable budget with a modern 16-bit or 32-bit
microcontroller, an SRAM chip, an SD card, an LCD, the keyboard of your
choice, and Lua instead of Forth. Or you could hack up Emacs or something to
support LEAP keys and whatnot (maybe you can relabel the Windows key on your
keyboard), although that wouldn't give you the instant-turn-on ability. Most
of the detailed specs were available on the web for a while under the name
"The Humane Environment".

------
rblion
Steve is the 'brave general' that sparked Apple, destroyed it, and rebuilt it
again. He may have been a sociopath artist in his 20's but he grew up to be
the world's greatest CEO in his 40's and 50's. Just look at the Apple 10 years
ago and look at them now.

~~~
joe_the_user
Hmm,

Does building Apple to the level it is now prove he stopped being a sociopath
or prove that he was the right sociopath for the right job?

~~~
rblion
Once a sociopath, always a sociopath. However, the Steve running the show
today is not the same as the Steve that got kicked out.

He certainly would not have been able to execute grand plans like the iPod,
iPhone, and iPad without having hundreds of brilliant people working with him
and being proud of their work.

~~~
masklinn
> However, the Steve running the show today is not the same as the Steve that
> got kicked out.

I really don't think that's true.

> He certainly would not have been able to execute grand plans like the iPod,
> iPhone, and iPad without having hundreds of brilliant people working with
> him and being proud of their work.

Most of the Macintosh team did seem proud enough under him (so much so that
some followed him to NeXT). He probably learned a lots of stuff inbetween, but
the biggest difference is the people he found to work around him. He doesn't
seem to have significantly changed himself,

~~~
rblion
What is your problem with the guy? What evil has he done to you or to Earth?

------
luckydev
Steve jobs need not do it. He provides the vision, his engineers design his
vision into a product and he sells it . period.

------
jasonspalace
regardless of the truth it appears it's never too late to change and get
better at what we do.

------
__bjoernd
Well, guess what. He finally had success, regardless of what happened decades
ago. ;)

