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Steve Wozniak suggests the Apple II became successful because he's a perfectionist. He talks about throwing out almost-finished designs because he thought of a

by tabtab 7y ago

Steve Wozniak suggests the Apple II became successful because he's a perfectionist. He talks about throwing out almost-finished designs because he thought of a more streamlined approach while implementing the existing one. Then again, Steve Jobs has suggested that "Woz" spent so much time fiddling with Apple II hardware that he never got around to adding floating point math to Apple BASIC. (They probably should have hired somebody else to work on BASIC if Woz seemed more hardware-oriented.)

cm2012 7y ago
Perfectionism is great when you know exactly what the customer wants (like a custom made shoe). It wastes too much time when you're experimenting to find out what the market wants.
- jdsully 7y ago
  The part I’ve always had trouble with is you need a certain amount of polish before the idea is acceptable. The quality of delivery heavily influences people’s perceptions. So this is a very fine balance.
  - cm2012 7y ago
    Quality is local optimization, Market Fit is global optimization. As the saying goes, if you're not embarrassed by v1 you waited too long to launch.
    - piker 7y ago
      But consider results in consumer technology: Palm versus Blackberry versus iPhone.
      - AstralStorm 7y ago
        Quality and polish do sell in long term while even brands fade away. So how many mechanical watches do you folks recognize? ;)
      - glennpratt 7y ago
        Did you use the first iPhone? It had a ton of gaps, even in the market at the time. I believe they would have hamstrung it if not addressed in subsequent versions. I personally have never viewed iPhone as an example of perfectionism in product delivery. To me it's a whole bunch of solid execution over a very long time scale, before and after introduction.
        rchaud 7y ago
        Consumers and the press were much more forgiving of the iPhone's shortcomings than they were with anybody else. The 2007 iPhone was 2G only (when 3G on Nokia, Samsung, and Blackberry phones was standard), and it constantly dropped calls on AT&T in the US. Steve Jobs was in full reality distortion mode thanks to several successful iPod/Mac releases, and people loved the showmanship. Loyalty to Apple wasn't purely about the quality of the product. The Blackberry Storm was released in 2008 to compete with the iPhone and was completely trashed by critics, despite doing the basics extremely well (call reliability, high quality capacitive touchscreen). I had one at the time and apart from the fact that BBOS 6 wasn't 100% touch-optimized, it was very usable. Unfortunately its app store was lacking, whereas the iOS app store had plenty of flashy, gimmicky apps that better served as a showcase for the iPhone's capabilities (gyroscope, motion sensor, etc) rather than useful functionality.
        jdsully 7y ago
        The polish was in the fluidity of the interface. To make touch easy the interface couldn’t jump around just as you touched the screen. Its not that the iPhone was fast - but when it couldn’t render it showed a square pattern and still scrolled roughly in tune with your finger. None of the other players thought that was important.
        rchaud 7y ago
        Wow, that took me back...I remember the little mosaic graphic to display parts of the web page that the browser hadn't loaded. Feels like a lifetime ago, but it makes sense to have that little bit of UX improvement, since back then all we had were full-fat desktop websites.
      - gowld 7y ago
        What's to consider? Palm never had the mass market engine behind it that Apple had coming from Mac; Blackberry got lazy and sat on irs laurels; Apple was the first big company with a big budget to launch a full screen high-resolution capacitive touchscreen in USA.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - jrumbut 7y ago
    One of the recent entrepreneurial posts here mentioned a question like "do your users know how much they are suffering for lack of your product right now?" and I think that related to polish. If you have a machine that cures baldness you don't need polish. The knobs can be any color you want and give the user little electric shocks it doesn't matter. Nothing like this exists and potential users really know they want it.
    - jdsully 7y ago
      Consider a hypothetical low quality situation with this product. A guy running up to you on the street offering yellow colored baldness pills in a baggie. Sure they might work, but you’re not going to be the one to find out. The inventor, after many failed sales, may erroneously conclude there's no market for this product.
      - bluGill 7y ago
        If you told someone from 1700 about any modern surgery they would think you are nuts for risking it - the little yellow pill is is less risky to them. I wouldn't be the first to try your yellow pills on the street, but I know some people who would be. If they found it worked they would tell everybody, so things would quickly spread. (I'll ignore the FDA though government is a factor in the real world) In a few years people would be asking me why I haven't gone for those yellow pills yet...
        jdsully 7y ago
        There is continuum and a point where the low quality of the product/presentation makes it extremely unlikely you will find market fit. A needed investor may see that only 1 in 1,000 of people talked to will buy it and conclude the market is too small. To give another anecdote: people had an immediate need to not die from infection after surgery but it still took over 50 years for doctors to wash their hands because it was originally perceived as an attack on the doctors cleanliness. A bit of polish on the presentation would have went a long way.
- cryptica 7y ago
  I think that a big part of the problem is that the economy fundamentally doesn't make any sense anymore so it's impossible for entrepreneurs to predict what the market wants. Nowadays, the market wants products made by companies whose founders have raised a lot of VC money and which are heavily advertised. If you're working on a product and you don't have good business connections, then you should make your product as perfect as possible because otherwise you don't stand the slightest chance in this economy. It used to be that your product had to be 10x better than the competition in order to make any impact, nowadays, 10x better is not enough to even be noticed; consumers just follow the capital.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Who you know always has and always will be more important than what you know. If you don't know everybody find that person who does. Remember, Jobs got richer than Woz, but Woz wouldn't have anything without Jobs: take what you can get and don't worry about someone else getting more so long as you are not completely cheated.
duxup 7y ago
Probably helps to have a combo of such personality types. Woz: "Look we can do this better just give me some time." Steve: "Ok fine." -time- Woz: "Hey we can also-" Steve: "Damn it Woz no we need to sell a thing already!"
- JadeNB 7y ago
  This is how I get research papers done with a collaborator! You need the one who wants to generalise a little more, and the one who wants to get it published and out the door. It's OK if these roles switch over time, but having both is good.

by tabtab 7y ago

cm2012 7y ago

Perfectionism is great when you know exactly what the customer wants (like a custom made shoe). It wastes too much time when you're experimenting to find out what the market wants.

jdsully 7y ago
The part I’ve always had trouble with is you need a certain amount of polish before the idea is acceptable. The quality of delivery heavily influences people’s perceptions. So this is a very fine balance.
- cm2012 7y ago
  Quality is local optimization, Market Fit is global optimization. As the saying goes, if you're not embarrassed by v1 you waited too long to launch.
  - piker 7y ago
    But consider results in consumer technology: Palm versus Blackberry versus iPhone.
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      Quality and polish do sell in long term while even brands fade away. So how many mechanical watches do you folks recognize? ;)
    - glennpratt 7y ago
      Did you use the first iPhone? It had a ton of gaps, even in the market at the time. I believe they would have hamstrung it if not addressed in subsequent versions. I personally have never viewed iPhone as an example of perfectionism in product delivery. To me it's a whole bunch of solid execution over a very long time scale, before and after introduction.
      - rchaud 7y ago
        Consumers and the press were much more forgiving of the iPhone's shortcomings than they were with anybody else. The 2007 iPhone was 2G only (when 3G on Nokia, Samsung, and Blackberry phones was standard), and it constantly dropped calls on AT&T in the US. Steve Jobs was in full reality distortion mode thanks to several successful iPod/Mac releases, and people loved the showmanship. Loyalty to Apple wasn't purely about the quality of the product. The Blackberry Storm was released in 2008 to compete with the iPhone and was completely trashed by critics, despite doing the basics extremely well (call reliability, high quality capacitive touchscreen). I had one at the time and apart from the fact that BBOS 6 wasn't 100% touch-optimized, it was very usable. Unfortunately its app store was lacking, whereas the iOS app store had plenty of flashy, gimmicky apps that better served as a showcase for the iPhone's capabilities (gyroscope, motion sensor, etc) rather than useful functionality.
        jdsully 7y ago
        The polish was in the fluidity of the interface. To make touch easy the interface couldn’t jump around just as you touched the screen. Its not that the iPhone was fast - but when it couldn’t render it showed a square pattern and still scrolled roughly in tune with your finger. None of the other players thought that was important.
        rchaud 7y ago
        Wow, that took me back...I remember the little mosaic graphic to display parts of the web page that the browser hadn't loaded. Feels like a lifetime ago, but it makes sense to have that little bit of UX improvement, since back then all we had were full-fat desktop websites.
    - gowld 7y ago
      What's to consider? Palm never had the mass market engine behind it that Apple had coming from Mac; Blackberry got lazy and sat on irs laurels; Apple was the first big company with a big budget to launch a full screen high-resolution capacitive touchscreen in USA.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- jrumbut 7y ago
  One of the recent entrepreneurial posts here mentioned a question like "do your users know how much they are suffering for lack of your product right now?" and I think that related to polish. If you have a machine that cures baldness you don't need polish. The knobs can be any color you want and give the user little electric shocks it doesn't matter. Nothing like this exists and potential users really know they want it.
  - jdsully 7y ago
    Consider a hypothetical low quality situation with this product. A guy running up to you on the street offering yellow colored baldness pills in a baggie. Sure they might work, but you’re not going to be the one to find out. The inventor, after many failed sales, may erroneously conclude there's no market for this product.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      If you told someone from 1700 about any modern surgery they would think you are nuts for risking it - the little yellow pill is is less risky to them. I wouldn't be the first to try your yellow pills on the street, but I know some people who would be. If they found it worked they would tell everybody, so things would quickly spread. (I'll ignore the FDA though government is a factor in the real world) In a few years people would be asking me why I haven't gone for those yellow pills yet...
      - jdsully 7y ago
        There is continuum and a point where the low quality of the product/presentation makes it extremely unlikely you will find market fit. A needed investor may see that only 1 in 1,000 of people talked to will buy it and conclude the market is too small. To give another anecdote: people had an immediate need to not die from infection after surgery but it still took over 50 years for doctors to wash their hands because it was originally perceived as an attack on the doctors cleanliness. A bit of polish on the presentation would have went a long way.
cryptica 7y ago
I think that a big part of the problem is that the economy fundamentally doesn't make any sense anymore so it's impossible for entrepreneurs to predict what the market wants. Nowadays, the market wants products made by companies whose founders have raised a lot of VC money and which are heavily advertised. If you're working on a product and you don't have good business connections, then you should make your product as perfect as possible because otherwise you don't stand the slightest chance in this economy. It used to be that your product had to be 10x better than the competition in order to make any impact, nowadays, 10x better is not enough to even be noticed; consumers just follow the capital.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Who you know always has and always will be more important than what you know. If you don't know everybody find that person who does. Remember, Jobs got richer than Woz, but Woz wouldn't have anything without Jobs: take what you can get and don't worry about someone else getting more so long as you are not completely cheated.

duxup 7y ago

Probably helps to have a combo of such personality types. Woz: "Look we can do this better just give me some time." Steve: "Ok fine." -time- Woz: "Hey we can also-" Steve: "Damn it Woz no we need to sell a thing already!"

JadeNB 7y ago
This is how I get research papers done with a collaborator! You need the one who wants to generalise a little more, and the one who wants to get it published and out the door. It's OK if these roles switch over time, but having both is good.