

Jobs on the importance of saying "no" - brennannovak
http://blogs.forbes.com/carminegallo/2011/05/16/steve-jobs-get-rid-of-the-crappy-stuff/

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sivers
Seems it's a career-long motto of his. Here's my little story from when he
told that to a room of record labels in 2003:
[http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/08/say_no_by_defa...](http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/08/say_no_by_default.html)

==

In June of 2003, Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes
Music Store to some independent record label people.

My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying,
"Does it do ___(x)___?", "Do you plan to add ___(y)___?".

Finally Jobs said, "Wait wait - put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a
thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes _could_ have. So do we. But we
don’t want a thousand features. That would be ugly.

Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all
but the most crucial features."

~~~
cemregr
Funny that you mention iTunes, it's presumably completely off Steve's radar
now. Just try right clicking on a song, see how clunky it is.

~~~
Steko
I guess you could say making iTunes less clunky was presumably one of the 1000
ideas he said no to so he could focus on the iPhone/iPad.

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aridiculous
Almost all company leaders are aware of the importance of design, simplicity,
and usability. The problem isn't lack of information. They know about Apple
products. They want to be Apple. But most of them never end up with a product
or service that is like what they say.

I really do think good product design is all about the courage to follow
through on obvious good ideas (like the article said). It's the thing business
execs need to get through their skulls. The hard part isn't thinking of good
ideas or innovating, it's discipline and courage. They all say they want
simplicity and good design, but inevitably cave to deadlines, politics, and
short-term financial decisions.

It's unbearably frustrating to watch in my company.

~~~
martincmartin
_They all say they want simplicity and good design, but inevitably cave to
deadlines, politics, and short-term financial decisions._

This means their incentives aren't aligned with what's best for the business.

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bluekeybox
Reminds me of this quote by the sculptor Rodin: "I choose a block of marble
and chop off whatever I don't need."

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bumbledraven
"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But
that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good
ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. _I’m actually as proud of
the things we haven’t done as the things I have done._ ”

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wattsbaat
I remember reading a similar article about Linus Torvalds (saying no to the
inclusion of much code in the Linux kernel codebase). The gist of the article
was that he spends much more time rejecting new code than he spends actually
coding. I can't seem to find the article now though...

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CoffeeDregs
Me on the importance of not guiding your business thinking with buzz phrases.
Apple's business is much more complicated than this saying 'no' bit (they and
Dell built incredible supply chains).

As a counterpoint, there are tons of businesses who've said "yes" lots and
have had great success: SalesForce, Oracle, IBM, GE, Microsoft, Google, Nike
(yes, even if they though what Jobs said was smart).

I appreciate the article's highlighting of a particular management
orientation, but this particular orientation is far from unique or broadly
suitable. Know your product, know your market, know your team, know your
capabilities and think deeply about how to compose all of those things into an
ongoing, growing business concern. Then in 20 years, you'll be giving an
interview about how you did it by focusing on the important of telling jokes
or something.

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dorian-graph
Reading this reminded me of some words from Henry David Thoreau:

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to leave
alone."

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joelthelion
That's just one business model. Crap sells as well, with a lower margin but a
higher volume.

~~~
crikli
We know it most commonly as the music business.

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alastairpat
The title should read "Jobs on the importance of saying 'no'" - the apostrophe
is incorrect.

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gdilla
People seem to think St. Steve never makes mistakes... see Rockr phone, and
Ping. Why didn't he say no? Or wait, it sucks.

~~~
vacri
Or the 'no radio' thing in ipods. One of my colleagues is convinced that a
radio got into an ipod only because Jobs got really sick at the time and some
sane, brave engineer just slipped it in while no-one was looking...

~~~
vacri
Actually, come to think of it, there's a distinct irony in Apple products.
They hate cables, so everything is as wireless as possible... yet they don't
do wireless things very well. They selected a bad telecom to launch their
phone; by the time they were able to get a good vendor, they screwed the
antenna; the ipods never had radio - the one 'wireless' that's been around for
a century; the Airports really suck as access points... :)

~~~
edge17
the rf stuff is pretty complex from what I understand. I think the iphone has
around 7 antennas in it (wifi, edge, 3g, gsm, etc). I somehow doubt 'just
adding' another antenna is a trivial matter, an expert would probably be able
to tell you better what it takes to balance quality/interference with so many
radios in close proximity. From what I know about how they work, I'm guessing
they've tried out all kinds of stuff including putting in a radio, and
probably decided to cut it.

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kleiba
This is the $n-th iteration of that same article I've read.

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espeed
Jobs is right.

Lately too much relatively "crappy stuff" has been coming out of Google, and
it's part of the reason Apple's brand just surpassed Google's, where it had
been number one for the last 4 years.

Seth Godin warned Google about this 5 years ago, right when its brand was
reaching the number one spot.

He said, "If you blow it too many times in a row, they won't care about Google
anymore, and you'll be back to that slot"
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294#)).

Hopefully Page will reinvigorate things now that he's back at the helm.

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tobylane
Jobs only puts one slide of words on the screen, and we always know what it
is, "One more thing".

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tybris
Except to record companies.

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zyfo
If this "essentialism" were to be consistent, I would assume there would be
only one iPhone rather than what, five?

It's a model with merit, but it's not a holy thing that it sometimes is made
out to be. It's still, rather obvious perhaps, subordinate to making profits.

~~~
arkitaip
Apple currently markets iPhone 4 and iPhone 3G. Compared to their competitors,
some which have hundreds of available cell phone models, Apple's product
lineup is extremely lean.

It's a way of doing business that's proven to be exceptionally successful. Not
only in terms of profit but also creating products that ignite passion in
consumers.

~~~
5teev
Another key aspect is that even major software updates tend to work reasonably
well on previous generations of their devices. For instance, an iPhone 3GS can
run the latest version of iOS, and Apple's one-year OS development cycle isn't
obstructed by a carrier's two-year contract cycle.

