8 ms·

How To Succeed Like Apple

49 points by macco 16y ago

dotcoma 16y ago
great post, even if it goes against what he outlines as Apple's own guidelines. Too long. The first 5 or 6 point are all he needed to make his point, imho.
faramarz 16y ago
Those are nice and all, but i'm going with the primary factor being the vision of Steve Jobs. His character, his etiquette, his leadership, his mind and soul. The possibilities are endless when someone like him is paired with investor money and enough decision making power to create things. You will find a lot of similarities between Jobs and James Dyson. Both are obsessive, borderline compulsive personalities because they focus on one thing, and one thing only: building something that exceeds your expectation. Everything listed in the article is a by-product of that, not the reason for.
- todayiamme 16y ago
  Mr. Jobs' vision aside the biggest thing that they have going for them is that they don't try to succeed like someone else. Google has unique strengths and weaknesses inherent to its culture and leadership. Microsoft is exactly the same. So is any startup. However, for some reason people talk about success in a prescription sort of way. It is true that common strains will exist between companies who have achieved some measurable amount of success, but what works for one of them will not necessarily work for the other. The interesting thing about Microsoft is that they fail whenever they walk outside of their strengths. Moreover they loose resources, time and mind share each time they do something like that. Some may call it a lack of focus, but they seem to aim at mimicking other people's success, and the saddest bit is that they aren't alone. I read about people who want to be Steve Jobs and companies that want to be like Apple. I wish I could explain to them that you can't do that. You simply can't. Apple was unique. Steve Jobs is unique and so are you. So, why don't you focus on what makes you unique? People fall down more often when they are pretending to be someone else. I don't know why but in the lure of the siren of success they kill the very bits of them that ensure their success. What I am trying to say is that perhaps we spend too much time reading into other people's success than to see what is in ourselves. Perhaps that just sets us up for inevitable failure down the road. I can't base my life on the question; "what would Steve Jobs do?". I can't base a company on that either. P.S. - Awesome article.
- demallien 16y ago
  Yes, the soul of products made by Dyson definitely share that same sense of magic as those from Apple. The "fan" they put out a little while back is a perfect example - absolutely minimalist, not a single extraneous feature. But also like Apple, the products have an underlying technical prowess that just doesn't exist in their competitors. That fan - it's absolutely insane, there are no moving parts as seen from the exterior. It's like magic - does that remind you of another product? I think products like this can only be created when it's a product person that heads the company. It's only when the product is the CEO's baby that enough passion is put into the product to make that magic. Of course, it also needs a bunch of money behind the CEO, because it's only with money that you can make decisions without having to worry about the bottom line during the design phase. Apple couldn't have done what they did without first starting with the Apple I/II. Those weren't magical products, they were just "good enough" to permit the bootstrapping of the Mac.
jdale27 16y ago
You are not Apple. Adopting some superficial Apple-like guidelines will not make you succeed like Apple.
- astrange 16y ago
  Well, consider what would happen if you did the opposite of each one. "Keep your number of products high" might work in some market, but "have an inconsistent and unpolished user interface"? I don't see what you'd get out of that one.
  - access_denied 16y ago
    You could offer an 'Ultimate'-version of your product which would disable "inconsistent and unpolished user interface" and unlock the 'polished' one.
  - doron 16y ago
    You get Sony?
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Yup. Some of these items represent sound advice and not just superficiality. To be fair, putting together an excellent company that can compete at the top of one of the biggest industries on Earth is not an easy task, no matter how much good advice you have to work with. However, becoming a better company by taking lessons from the best is something well in the realm of feasibility for many organizations.
- api 16y ago
  Why is it that Hacker News linked blog posts and comments and such are so full of "you are not X" and "don't try to be as good as X because you are not, take the safe route and be safely mediocre" type stuff? You guys are harshing my mellow. Seriously though... no, adopting some superficial Apple-like guidelines will not make you Apple. But understanding at a conceptual level how Apple does what it does might help. I think the root of these kinds of comments is what I've come to call "success mysticism" in business. It's the idea that the successful have some mystical thing called "what it takes" that is opaque and cannot be understood. You either have it or you don't. This is bullshit. Success comes from experience, intelligence, hard work, dedication, and a little bit of luck. Only the latter item is at all mystical. Business is really different from science, engineering, and hacker culture in that it's really really superstitious. People usually refuse to examine the black boxes of success, and when they try they usually draw superstitious and superficial conclusions.
pramit 16y ago
This is also useful How To Be Remarkable #76: Learn from Steve Jobs (for busness savvy) http://bighow.com/news/how-to-be-remarkable-76-learn-from-steve-jobs-for-busness-savvy http://bighow.com/news/how-to-be-remarkable-76-learn-from-st...
MarkBook 16y ago
"Have a Clearly Defined Leader: Everyone knows ... Tony Hsieh is the leader of Zappos" I'm not sure but I may have heard of Zappos, I don't know what it does and I certainly never heard of Tony Hsieh.
- api 16y ago
  I think there's a part II to that piece of advice. The full version would be: Have a clearly defined leader that is not an idiot. Having a clearly defined leader that is an idiot has the opposite effect. The order of excellence in companies goes: brilliant leader, well managed group, idiot-narcissist in charge (in decreasing order of successfulness).
api 16y ago
"Don’t Design By Committee: Another interesting tidbit from the most recent D Conference was Steve Jobs’ comment that Apple was the largest startup on the planet and that there were no committee. Apple puts the company first and foremost, not individual people. No one person, even Steve himself, is above Apple." This paragraph directly contradicts itself. Committees are what you get from "no I in team" corporate collectivist ideology. Apple has I's in its team: Steve Jobs, and I'm sure a number of their best designers and engineers as well. Apple can make good well-designed un-cluttermongered products because these people have the ability and the courage to say "no, bad idea." Great things are usually the product of one integrating mind. Committees roll balls of junk. There is no doubt in my mind that when Steve is gone Apple will suck. I'm sure the investors will put some ivy-league MBA apparatchik in charge, and he'll form committees and be very proactive at leveraging their core competencies.
- Hagelin 16y ago
  I don't think it's contradictory, but it is perhaps mixing together two separate points, that Jobs or someone else ultimately accepts or rejects ideas and designs, and that Jobs claims these judgements are made based on the merits of the idea, not who came up with it.
- ThomPete 16y ago
  Design by committee means that your design decisions is based on negotiation. Design is a decisions, decisions that are negotiated are rarely if ever crisp and consistent but rather a trade-off between different opposing views. That is the point more than whether there is a team. If the team thinks the same way, you don't need to do the trade-off. Nobody ever built a statue of a committee.
  - jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
    I wanted to go into how Ideo does design here. It's actually one of the few case studies that were useful to me in undergrad. It's a selfless organization where the best ideas win and I feel there has to be some correlation between ideo + apple doing this and their success in the design world.
tom_ilsinszki 16y ago
How To Succeed Like [the currently hot company]: Don't copy them. Google didn't copy Yahoo when they created a new search algorithm and a minimalistic search page. Apple didn't copy Microsoft when they focused on design, marketing and on producing most things themselves. You shouldn't copy others either (only learn from them). Look at, what the big guys are missing instead.
- ianlevesque 16y ago
  Agreed, but the principles articulated about Apple can be applied to any field. You may not be able to out-apple Apple in computer hardware, but you could certainly use that strategy elsewhere.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  One of my favorite quotes comes from someone I randomly met: Everyone tries to be Apple, no one tries to beat Apple. It's as of everyone has to follow them instead of trying to do their own thing.
- macco 16y ago
  That is so true. Maybe it is the reason why so many companies fail when they approach a new market: We need something like ... Twitter (lookin' at you, buzz)
c00p3r 16y ago
Find and invest in another NeXT?
emehrkay 16y ago
'Evolutionary “Porsche like” improvements' is why, in my design-eye, love BMW *disclaimer, I drive one
- antidaily 16y ago
  That photo of the 911s is impressive. When you compare it to say Corvettes from 50 years ago, you really get the picture.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  BMWs are great cars. They've kept the kidney grille for eternity. Some of the other cues have disappeared though.
rbanffy 16y ago
In order to succeed like Apple you have to fail like Apple. You have to do your Apple III, your Lisa, your Newton and your Quicktake. And, sometimes, your NeXT. When you experiment a lot, when you don't compromise, risks are higher. Expect some of your ideas to fail. When they fail, learn from them and try again with a better one, not a toned down, safer one. Rinse and repeat.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  Hmm, this just gave me an inspiration for another article: Apple's failures and why. How To Fail Like Apple.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  Best of all is to fail in a non-public way: I can't find the quote right now, but Jobs has said (roughly) that he's as proud of the things they've developed and then haven't shipped as the things they have. Presumably some really good products that just weren't right at the time for Apple to bring to market. The example that comes to mind for me is Microsoft's recent Kin phones: because of the sunk-cost fallacy, they apparently felt like they had to bring something to market, even though everybody apparently knew the product wasn't good. So they made a few bucks back (not many!) from Kin sales, but got a ton of harder-to-quantify negative publicity from this very public failure. If they'd have just killed the project the day before public reveal and done something internally with the lessons learned, they'd be far better off.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    What I felt out of the Kin thing is that they knew it would be a spectacular flop, but nobody had the nerve to write it down and actually say it sucked as bad as it did.

49 points by macco 16y ago

great post, even if it goes against what he outlines as Apple's own guidelines. Too long. The first 5 or 6 point are all he needed to make his point, imho.

faramarz 16y ago

Those are nice and all, but i'm going with the primary factor being the vision of Steve Jobs. His character, his etiquette, his leadership, his mind and soul. The possibilities are endless when someone like him is paired with investor money and enough decision making power to create things. You will find a lot of similarities between Jobs and James Dyson. Both are obsessive, borderline compulsive personalities because they focus on one thing, and one thing only: building something that exceeds your expectation. Everything listed in the article is a by-product of that, not the reason for.

todayiamme 16y ago
Mr. Jobs' vision aside the biggest thing that they have going for them is that they don't try to succeed like someone else. Google has unique strengths and weaknesses inherent to its culture and leadership. Microsoft is exactly the same. So is any startup. However, for some reason people talk about success in a prescription sort of way. It is true that common strains will exist between companies who have achieved some measurable amount of success, but what works for one of them will not necessarily work for the other. The interesting thing about Microsoft is that they fail whenever they walk outside of their strengths. Moreover they loose resources, time and mind share each time they do something like that. Some may call it a lack of focus, but they seem to aim at mimicking other people's success, and the saddest bit is that they aren't alone. I read about people who want to be Steve Jobs and companies that want to be like Apple. I wish I could explain to them that you can't do that. You simply can't. Apple was unique. Steve Jobs is unique and so are you. So, why don't you focus on what makes you unique? People fall down more often when they are pretending to be someone else. I don't know why but in the lure of the siren of success they kill the very bits of them that ensure their success. What I am trying to say is that perhaps we spend too much time reading into other people's success than to see what is in ourselves. Perhaps that just sets us up for inevitable failure down the road. I can't base my life on the question; "what would Steve Jobs do?". I can't base a company on that either. P.S. - Awesome article.
demallien 16y ago
Yes, the soul of products made by Dyson definitely share that same sense of magic as those from Apple. The "fan" they put out a little while back is a perfect example - absolutely minimalist, not a single extraneous feature. But also like Apple, the products have an underlying technical prowess that just doesn't exist in their competitors. That fan - it's absolutely insane, there are no moving parts as seen from the exterior. It's like magic - does that remind you of another product? I think products like this can only be created when it's a product person that heads the company. It's only when the product is the CEO's baby that enough passion is put into the product to make that magic. Of course, it also needs a bunch of money behind the CEO, because it's only with money that you can make decisions without having to worry about the bottom line during the design phase. Apple couldn't have done what they did without first starting with the Apple I/II. Those weren't magical products, they were just "good enough" to permit the bootstrapping of the Mac.

jdale27 16y ago

You are not Apple. Adopting some superficial Apple-like guidelines will not make you succeed like Apple.

astrange 16y ago
Well, consider what would happen if you did the opposite of each one. "Keep your number of products high" might work in some market, but "have an inconsistent and unpolished user interface"? I don't see what you'd get out of that one.
- access_denied 16y ago
  You could offer an 'Ultimate'-version of your product which would disable "inconsistent and unpolished user interface" and unlock the 'polished' one.
- doron 16y ago
  You get Sony?
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Yup. Some of these items represent sound advice and not just superficiality. To be fair, putting together an excellent company that can compete at the top of one of the biggest industries on Earth is not an easy task, no matter how much good advice you have to work with. However, becoming a better company by taking lessons from the best is something well in the realm of feasibility for many organizations.
api 16y ago
Why is it that Hacker News linked blog posts and comments and such are so full of "you are not X" and "don't try to be as good as X because you are not, take the safe route and be safely mediocre" type stuff? You guys are harshing my mellow. Seriously though... no, adopting some superficial Apple-like guidelines will not make you Apple. But understanding at a conceptual level how Apple does what it does might help. I think the root of these kinds of comments is what I've come to call "success mysticism" in business. It's the idea that the successful have some mystical thing called "what it takes" that is opaque and cannot be understood. You either have it or you don't. This is bullshit. Success comes from experience, intelligence, hard work, dedication, and a little bit of luck. Only the latter item is at all mystical. Business is really different from science, engineering, and hacker culture in that it's really really superstitious. People usually refuse to examine the black boxes of success, and when they try they usually draw superstitious and superficial conclusions.

pramit 16y ago

This is also useful How To Be Remarkable #76: Learn from Steve Jobs (for busness savvy) http://bighow.com/news/how-to-be-remarkable-76-learn-from-steve-jobs-for-busness-savvy http://bighow.com/news/how-to-be-remarkable-76-learn-from-st...

MarkBook 16y ago

"Have a Clearly Defined Leader: Everyone knows ... Tony Hsieh is the leader of Zappos" I'm not sure but I may have heard of Zappos, I don't know what it does and I certainly never heard of Tony Hsieh.

api 16y ago
I think there's a part II to that piece of advice. The full version would be: Have a clearly defined leader that is not an idiot. Having a clearly defined leader that is an idiot has the opposite effect. The order of excellence in companies goes: brilliant leader, well managed group, idiot-narcissist in charge (in decreasing order of successfulness).

api 16y ago

"Don’t Design By Committee: Another interesting tidbit from the most recent D Conference was Steve Jobs’ comment that Apple was the largest startup on the planet and that there were no committee. Apple puts the company first and foremost, not individual people. No one person, even Steve himself, is above Apple." This paragraph directly contradicts itself. Committees are what you get from "no I in team" corporate collectivist ideology. Apple has I's in its team: Steve Jobs, and I'm sure a number of their best designers and engineers as well. Apple can make good well-designed un-cluttermongered products because these people have the ability and the courage to say "no, bad idea." Great things are usually the product of one integrating mind. Committees roll balls of junk. There is no doubt in my mind that when Steve is gone Apple will suck. I'm sure the investors will put some ivy-league MBA apparatchik in charge, and he'll form committees and be very proactive at leveraging their core competencies.

Hagelin 16y ago
I don't think it's contradictory, but it is perhaps mixing together two separate points, that Jobs or someone else ultimately accepts or rejects ideas and designs, and that Jobs claims these judgements are made based on the merits of the idea, not who came up with it.
ThomPete 16y ago
Design by committee means that your design decisions is based on negotiation. Design is a decisions, decisions that are negotiated are rarely if ever crisp and consistent but rather a trade-off between different opposing views. That is the point more than whether there is a team. If the team thinks the same way, you don't need to do the trade-off. Nobody ever built a statue of a committee.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  I wanted to go into how Ideo does design here. It's actually one of the few case studies that were useful to me in undergrad. It's a selfless organization where the best ideas win and I feel there has to be some correlation between ideo + apple doing this and their success in the design world.

tom_ilsinszki 16y ago

How To Succeed Like [the currently hot company]: Don't copy them. Google didn't copy Yahoo when they created a new search algorithm and a minimalistic search page. Apple didn't copy Microsoft when they focused on design, marketing and on producing most things themselves. You shouldn't copy others either (only learn from them). Look at, what the big guys are missing instead.

ianlevesque 16y ago
Agreed, but the principles articulated about Apple can be applied to any field. You may not be able to out-apple Apple in computer hardware, but you could certainly use that strategy elsewhere.
jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
One of my favorite quotes comes from someone I randomly met: Everyone tries to be Apple, no one tries to beat Apple. It's as of everyone has to follow them instead of trying to do their own thing.
macco 16y ago
That is so true. Maybe it is the reason why so many companies fail when they approach a new market: We need something like ... Twitter (lookin' at you, buzz)

c00p3r 16y ago

Find and invest in another NeXT?

emehrkay 16y ago

'Evolutionary “Porsche like” improvements' is why, in my design-eye, love BMW *disclaimer, I drive one

antidaily 16y ago
That photo of the 911s is impressive. When you compare it to say Corvettes from 50 years ago, you really get the picture.
jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
BMWs are great cars. They've kept the kidney grille for eternity. Some of the other cues have disappeared though.

rbanffy 16y ago

In order to succeed like Apple you have to fail like Apple. You have to do your Apple III, your Lisa, your Newton and your Quicktake. And, sometimes, your NeXT. When you experiment a lot, when you don't compromise, risks are higher. Expect some of your ideas to fail. When they fail, learn from them and try again with a better one, not a toned down, safer one. Rinse and repeat.

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
Hmm, this just gave me an inspiration for another article: Apple's failures and why. How To Fail Like Apple.
glhaynes 16y ago
Best of all is to fail in a non-public way: I can't find the quote right now, but Jobs has said (roughly) that he's as proud of the things they've developed and then haven't shipped as the things they have. Presumably some really good products that just weren't right at the time for Apple to bring to market. The example that comes to mind for me is Microsoft's recent Kin phones: because of the sunk-cost fallacy, they apparently felt like they had to bring something to market, even though everybody apparently knew the product wasn't good. So they made a few bucks back (not many!) from Kin sales, but got a ton of harder-to-quantify negative publicity from this very public failure. If they'd have just killed the project the day before public reveal and done something internally with the lessons learned, they'd be far better off.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  What I felt out of the Kin thing is that they knew it would be a spectacular flop, but nobody had the nerve to write it down and actually say it sucked as bad as it did.