

How Steve Jobs handles trolls (WWDC 1997) - ryannielsen
http://garry.posterous.com/how-steve-jobs-handles-trolls-wwdc-1997

======
stiff
Context: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc#Cancellation>

This guy is not necessary a troll, of course this is just speculation, but if
a project he was working on for a few years got cancelled, I could pretty well
understand his frustration, even if the decision to cancel turned out valid in
the end from a business point of view. I don't think it is valid to stick
labels on people (both on the "troll" and on Steve Jobs) without knowing the
whole story.

~~~
silencio
I'm not sure which part of WWDC this might have been from, but long ago there
used to be sessions with Q&A, feedback forums, and even sessions where you
could talk to the VPs. What this guy did could even be labeled as perfectly
reasonable in the right circumstances.

Nowadays of course, only the very rare session even has a 5 minute Q&A, and
"Ask the VPs" went the way of Jamba Juice and Mac Pro LAN party funtimes. I
was there for the butt end of Apple that cared about face-to-face group
feedback at WWDC and I rather miss it. 1-on-1 in labs, dev forums, twitter,
and personally knowing Apple engineers doesn't really make up for the
educational/entertainment factor of putting engineers on the spot in front of
a large crowd with a controversial question.

~~~
duck
_"Ask the VPs" went the way of Jamba Juice_

Jamba Juice is still around.

~~~
aculver
Yeah, and I go there everyday when I'm in L.A. :D What gives?

~~~
silencio
I meant Jamba Juice at WWDC, for sure. Nowadays and for the last few years, it
has just been Odwalla bottles during the morning and then they go lock it up
so I have to lug around a few bottles to last me the entire day. The food
seems to stay about the same, but drink-wise quality seems to be going down :)
I miss my Jamba Juice and espresso bar.

------
redthrowaway
I'd hardly call the guy a troll. He was a developer who had sunk time and
money into developing with a technology (OpenDoc) that Apple had just killed.
He wasn't polite, but he was justifiably upset and dismissing him as a troll
is both inaccurate and unfair.

~~~
Natsu
"Troll" has been watered down by some people to the point where it is used on
everyone who disagrees with them.

~~~
wccrawford
"Troll" still means someone whose goal is to make someone look bad.

In this case, the guy asked a question that he already knew the answer to in
an attempt to make Jobs look bad by being the messenger.

Jobs evaded the question, instead of answering it, which was the only way to
save face. With trolls, this is almost always the case, because they set up
their question in such a way that there's no good answer to it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _"Troll" still means someone whose goal is to make someone look bad._ //

I've always considered it as someone who is trying to push your buttons, get
an emotional response from you, make you mad. Making someone look bad is not
necessarily trollish, they may well be bad and the comment is attempting to
reveal the persons true nature.

------
tomstuart
The "inaudible" part of the question is: "I would like, for example, for you
to express in clear terms how, say, Java, in any of its incarnations,
addresses the ideas _embodied in OpenDoc_."

~~~
atomicdog
What does he say at the start?

>Mr. Jobs, you're a bridesmaid(?)....

>Here it comes...

~~~
AlexMuir
"Mr Jobs, you are a bright and influential man."

------
jmtame
Kind of reminds me of this story: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/08/kno-
raises-46-million-more-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/08/kno-
raises-46-million-more-to-build-most-powerful-tablet-anyone-has-ever-made/)

I know one of the early engineers who wrote the low-level software for that
device. He was one of the more arrogant engineers I've known and basically
dismissed the iPad because it didn't have enough "power." When he showed me
the Kno tablet, I said "I couldn't even fit that thing in my backpack, let
alone on any desk. You're never going to sell this thing to people." He
insisted that power was more important.

And it turns out he was wrong because he was thinking like an engineer. Kno
scrapped that idea and decided to build exclusively for the iPad.
[http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/08/kno-bails-
hardware-30-milli...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/08/kno-bails-
hardware-30-million/). Good on them.

------
acangiano
The "trolling" (hardly) aspect is a non-story. What's brilliant about this
video is the message of starting with the customer experience, and then pick
the technologies to serve the customer best.

Should you develop web, desktop, or mobile apps for your next startup? Watch
the video. Find a problem, then pick the technology stack that provides the
best solution and experience for your customers.

------
chuinard
This was really interesting, because lately I've been asking myself how to
improve my design ability by starting with the technology or starting with the
customer.

I will read through the App Engine docs every day or so to figure out what
cool thing I can make out of the APIs provided. Maybe I should forget that and
just think to myself 'what would I want to use?'.

~~~
maurycy
I recommend reading:

[http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/human-
centered_design_considered_h...](http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/human-
centered_design_considered_harmful.html)
<http://pragprog.com/book/lmuse/designed-for-use>

------
spiralganglion
There's another part of the talk (not included in the linked clip) where
someone asks Steve what things they'll do differently than the rest of the
industry. Steve responds that being different isn't important; what's
important is being better. The two have a back and forth on this issue — it's
hilarious in hindsight given the perfectionist nature that Apple has come to
embody.

And for what it's worth, the market seems to have proven Steve right.
Nowadays, we can see some of Apple's competitors resorting to "different" in
an attempt to gain traction. Doesn't seem to be working for them, either.

~~~
revorad
That is also a great example of how often Steve Jobs contradicted himself.
After saying he didn't care about being different or spending money on TV ads,
he started his talk at the next WWDC with the "Think Different" TV ad.

~~~
nolanw
Perhaps Apple thinks different by being better, not just different for the
sake of being different. I think maybe you're giving evidence for, not
against, the post you replied to.

------
kevin_morrill
It's helpful to watch the preface video at:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=udyy2gQyNso#)!

This is a lesson Microsoft needs and has never really learned, neither under
Gates nor Ballmer. The bizarre approach in Windows 8 that has all kinds of UI
doing the same thing with no clarity around development platform sounds
exactly like what Jobs talks about with people going in 18 different
directions.

~~~
acqq
It also contains some really great words from Jobs like:

"You think about focusing, you think focusing is about saying "yes?" No.
Focusing is about saying no. And you've got to say "no," "no," "no." And you
know you're going to piss off people. and they go talk to the San Jose Mercury
and they write a shitty article about you. And it's really a pisser. Because
you wanna be nice, you don't wanna to tell the San Jose Mercury the person who
is telling you this was just asked to leave, or this or that. So you take the
lumps, and Apple's been taking their share of lumps for the last six months.
In a very unfair way. And it's been taking them like an adult and I'm proud of
that. And there's more to come, I'm sure. There'll be stories like that, they
come and go, but focus is about saying no. And the result of that focus is
going to be some really great products. Where the total is much greater than
the sum of the parts."

You can also see why the guy questions (in OP video) Jobs: "And when you're
finished with that, perhaps you could tell us what you personally have been
doing for the last 7 years." -- Jobs mentions that some of the guys who "tell
stories" haven't been doing anything last seven years.

~~~
mironathetin
Thanks for writing this down. That is a really great talk.

------
__david__
"Mistakes will be made, but that's _good_ because it means decisions are being
made."

What a great insight, it's really striking a chord with me right now.

------
ssharp
"And, one of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the
customer experience and work backwards..."

This is such a common idea in business strategy that I have a hard time
believing that most large companies don't, at least at the top, understand it.
However, it also seems like a principal that is very hard to stay focused on
as a product or service flows down throughout the company. There has to be a
very good reason why this strategy flows through Apple's veins, yet gets lost
in the mix of many of its competitors.

~~~
Yhippa
This is not an easy thing to do. Customers sometimes don't know what they want
or how to articulate it.

If you keep having focus groups with customers and continually implement what
they ask for you might end up with something like MS Office where you have a
kludge of actions buried within and across multiple menu items.

As a contrast to that look at Windows Phone 7. If you've ever used it it's
rather elegant. I feel that they looked beyond the "comments box" and dug
deeper. It truly feels like they made sure the devices it runs on are
communication devices (making calls and texting) first and layered in modern
smartphone functionality (applications and cloud storage).

~~~
jimfl
Working backwards from the customer isn't necessarily giving the customer what
they're asking you for, but defining a product which will, in fact make
something easier, more fun, or scratch an itch to the extent that they will
give you money and convince their friends to do the same.

~~~
ssharp
Exactly. Customer outcomes don't have to be described or defined directly by
the customer.

~~~
wallflower
And you have that famous quote from Henry Ford that may or may not have been
spoken by him:

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

[http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/08/henry_ford_never_said_the_fa...](http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/08/henry_ford_never_said_the_fast.html)

------
aoporto
Two great things to note about this video: 1\. Jobs puts a good amount of time
thinking about what he is going to say. Many presenters would just start
speaking, some would ramble, even just a little. Pauses can be a good thing in
a presentation for both the speaker and the audience. 2\. Start with the
customer experience. Absolutely.

~~~
tspiteri
Yes, he does spend time to think. Even when he's saying that you can please
some people some of the time, you can tell that that is not the real answer,
he's still thinking. I think that's his method, say some fluff to fill the
time while thinking about the real answer. I saw this another time recently,
and I quote from the article in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2924987>
:

 _The first part of his answer I've completely forgotten because it seemed to
be a canned spiel that he had used before. It had something to do with Apple's
products or mission. I started losing interest because it sounded like
something I might have even heard Steve say before at a keynote. I felt a bit
disappointed that my one chance to learn something new and unique about Steve
was probably about to end.

But then, as if to try again at my question, he added a second part to his
answer._

------
tmsh
His response is almost as great as jean patches. Man, that probably makes me
sound like a troll. Oh well.

Here's to one of the greatest capitalist visionaries of our lifetime though.
In jean patches no less.

~~~
robjohnson
That was the first thing I noticed too. What's up with that?

~~~
ja2ke
I think huge jean patches are valid 90s style. Maybe not as late as 1997, but
they undeniably pair pretty well with the huge teal "Developers" jotted script
marquee behind him. It was a different time.

~~~
rdouble
Valid for Theo Huxtable, maybe. Not sure it was working for Steve.

~~~
ja2ke
He looks ridiculous, sure, but you can't look at that image with the huge
stage decoration and the jean patches and think its any time but the 90s.

------
d_r
This is a great video. For one, it showcases SJ's confidence in deprecating
technologies for the benefit of newer and better things.

It also underscores the importance of being able to translate tech "pieces"
into compelling products. I'm an app developer. When reading documentation for
the latest release of iOS or Lion SDKs, and seeing all of the new APIs, I feel
like a kid with a brand-new box of Legos. The challenge (and art) is in
combining these technologies to build something actually catchy.

------
Mithrandir
Direct link to YouTube: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE>

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RyanMcGreal
> I would like, for example, for you to express in clear terms how, say java,
> in any of it’s incarnations, addresses the idea (inaudible).

I believe the (inaudible) part is "embodied in OpenDoc".

------
skrebbel
Only in America could "what have you been doing the last 7 years?" be
considered an insult.

I consider it an interesting and spot-on question with, in fact, a very nice
answer, too.

Someone who can't deal with questions like that probably should never dream of
becoming CEO of any company at all.

