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> We always knew better than our customers. Eventually, they realized that. Pretty sure I've read quotes from Steve Jobs that follow that line of thinking actu

> We always knew better than our customers. Eventually, they realized that. Pretty sure I've read quotes from Steve Jobs that follow that line of thinking actually.

mgkimsal 15y ago
Sadly, I know a few entrepreneurs that also think this way. They're not having much success, but cling to the notion that the world will 'wake up' and see things their way, eventually, some day, if they could just talk to enough people (and they usually cite Apple as their inspiration for this approach). The Steve Jobs / Apple approach is more the exception that proves the rule, and even then, they've had their Newton moments too. What that proves is that with a successful enough company you can have a few failures. When you've only got the one product, you can't afford the luxury of your own Newton.
- sjwright 15y ago
  The first thing Steve Jobs did when he returned to Apple was kill off the Newton. There's been the occasional slip, but nothing too ghastly (except the flower power iMacs).
  - gcb 15y ago
    why did he return to apple? everyone forget this, because he couldn't have the same luck at his second company. also apple would have forwarded the osx success a couple years if the acquired beos instead of next. so that was steves luck acting again
    - kanamekun 15y ago
      How do you explain the success of Pixar, the company that Steve bought and eventually made him a billionaire?
      - gcb 15y ago
        This is like saying carl icahn is genius for making motorola mobile a success and making him a billionaire. apple was a success because of woz. Jobs was good at milking it, that i will give him. jobs wasted all his apple-money on next. Pixar was more proof that even he never thought apple would be the hit it is today. i don't think they had a single mac there until 5yrs ago.
        sjwright 15y ago
        > Pixar was more proof that even he never thought apple would be the hit it is today. The facts don't align with that theory. Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985. Toy Story was released in 1995. There wasn't any plausible path for Steve to return to Apple until 1996.
    - eropple 15y ago
      I'm no huge fan of the NeXT underpinnings of OS X, but the idea that using BeOS as an underlying operating system "would have forwarded the osx success a couple years" is silly. Aside from the still-continuing claims of Be adherents and their Haiku descendants, BeOS was so very much Nothing Special and I find it highly unlikely the Magic BeOS Fairy Powder would have materially improved OS X.
      - pstuart 15y ago
        But it demo'd so well!
      - gcb 15y ago
        it had an amazing multimedia framework. it had even patents for hardware stuff that put the later firewire to shame. and it had the best os api I've ever had to deal with. it had everything that os8 lacked, and that later was added on osx only. except objectivec... but there were even compilers for that later on. but thats not even my point. to downvote me above, first answer: how many clients next had?
        sjwright 15y ago
        BeOS was interesting on the surface and had a couple of neat ideas, but wasn't a substantial system underneath. Heck, it didn't even have the concept of user accounts and file ownership! Anyone who laments the outcome of the Be/NeXT decision clearly knows little about just how much rock solid foundation came along with NeXT -- most notably the development tools and developer ecosystem. The Mac ecosystem has experienced a consumer renaissance through iDevices/iOS, but also a geek renaissance through Mac OS X's UNIX underpinnings. Classic Mac OS was derided as a toy (and in many technical respects it was), and BeOS would have done nothing long term to shed the Mac's toy image. Today, few people call OS X a toy.
        alain94040 15y ago
        Correct. NeXT and BeOS were respectively an over-engineered and under-engineered OS with a really good looking UI on top.
    - Steko 15y ago
      "Why did he return to Apple?" Because it was falling apart without him and that's the company he really wanted to run? Think what you will about Steve Jobs but the idea that he's some hack who's milked an incredible streak of good luck is not going to win many people over.
- matwood 15y ago
  I think people take the ignoring customers as an on or off thing, but no company ignores what their customers want (including Apple). What a good company does is never listen to only a single customer. What a good company does is listen to all customers and take that knowledge and solve the over arcing problem. Each individual customer is likely only seeing part of the problem and thus only asking for partial solutions. The problem is that they simply do not have the visibility to know the entire problem, and that's where a good 3rd party business comes into play.
nknight 15y ago
I think the quote I've heard is that they don't bother with outside market research. That's different from simply ignoring customers. Any sane company will tell you feedback is important, what can differ is where the feedback comes from, how it's interpreted, and whether customers have as much knowledge of what is or isn't possible/economical as the people at the company. It's also important to note that companies like Apple are always trying new things, building strange prototypes, etc.. If a customer screams for Widget X, a company might try building a Widget X prototype, and discover it doesn't work so well in practice.
- sjwright 15y ago
  > If a customer screams for Widget X, a company might try building a Widget X prototype, and discover it doesn't work so well in practice. _This._ It's a lesson I learned early on in my developer career: when customers ask for Widget X, it's often a symptom of an underlying problem that customers are trying to solve. Your role as a product developer is to understand the customer's underlying problem. Discover what the problem is, and you might discover that they don't need a Widget X; maybe they need a Feature X or a Gadget X. Maybe it reveals holes in your training processes. Maybe they just revealed a seemingly trivial bug with existing stuff. Or maybe you realise you never understood why clients ever used your product until now.
jamesaguilar 15y ago
Another one to add: "I am as good as Steve Jobs." ;)

> We always knew better than our customers. Eventually, they realized that. Pretty sure I've read quotes from Steve Jobs that follow that line of thinking actually.

mgkimsal 15y ago

Sadly, I know a few entrepreneurs that also think this way. They're not having much success, but cling to the notion that the world will 'wake up' and see things their way, eventually, some day, if they could just talk to enough people (and they usually cite Apple as their inspiration for this approach). The Steve Jobs / Apple approach is more the exception that proves the rule, and even then, they've had their Newton moments too. What that proves is that with a successful enough company you can have a few failures. When you've only got the one product, you can't afford the luxury of your own Newton.

sjwright 15y ago
The first thing Steve Jobs did when he returned to Apple was kill off the Newton. There's been the occasional slip, but nothing too ghastly (except the flower power iMacs).
- gcb 15y ago
  why did he return to apple? everyone forget this, because he couldn't have the same luck at his second company. also apple would have forwarded the osx success a couple years if the acquired beos instead of next. so that was steves luck acting again
  - kanamekun 15y ago
    How do you explain the success of Pixar, the company that Steve bought and eventually made him a billionaire?
    - gcb 15y ago
      This is like saying carl icahn is genius for making motorola mobile a success and making him a billionaire. apple was a success because of woz. Jobs was good at milking it, that i will give him. jobs wasted all his apple-money on next. Pixar was more proof that even he never thought apple would be the hit it is today. i don't think they had a single mac there until 5yrs ago.
      - sjwright 15y ago
        > Pixar was more proof that even he never thought apple would be the hit it is today. The facts don't align with that theory. Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985. Toy Story was released in 1995. There wasn't any plausible path for Steve to return to Apple until 1996.
  - eropple 15y ago
    I'm no huge fan of the NeXT underpinnings of OS X, but the idea that using BeOS as an underlying operating system "would have forwarded the osx success a couple years" is silly. Aside from the still-continuing claims of Be adherents and their Haiku descendants, BeOS was so very much Nothing Special and I find it highly unlikely the Magic BeOS Fairy Powder would have materially improved OS X.
    - pstuart 15y ago
      But it demo'd so well!
    - gcb 15y ago
      it had an amazing multimedia framework. it had even patents for hardware stuff that put the later firewire to shame. and it had the best os api I've ever had to deal with. it had everything that os8 lacked, and that later was added on osx only. except objectivec... but there were even compilers for that later on. but thats not even my point. to downvote me above, first answer: how many clients next had?
      - sjwright 15y ago
        BeOS was interesting on the surface and had a couple of neat ideas, but wasn't a substantial system underneath. Heck, it didn't even have the concept of user accounts and file ownership! Anyone who laments the outcome of the Be/NeXT decision clearly knows little about just how much rock solid foundation came along with NeXT -- most notably the development tools and developer ecosystem. The Mac ecosystem has experienced a consumer renaissance through iDevices/iOS, but also a geek renaissance through Mac OS X's UNIX underpinnings. Classic Mac OS was derided as a toy (and in many technical respects it was), and BeOS would have done nothing long term to shed the Mac's toy image. Today, few people call OS X a toy.
        alain94040 15y ago
        Correct. NeXT and BeOS were respectively an over-engineered and under-engineered OS with a really good looking UI on top.
  - Steko 15y ago
    "Why did he return to Apple?" Because it was falling apart without him and that's the company he really wanted to run? Think what you will about Steve Jobs but the idea that he's some hack who's milked an incredible streak of good luck is not going to win many people over.
matwood 15y ago
I think people take the ignoring customers as an on or off thing, but no company ignores what their customers want (including Apple). What a good company does is never listen to only a single customer. What a good company does is listen to all customers and take that knowledge and solve the over arcing problem. Each individual customer is likely only seeing part of the problem and thus only asking for partial solutions. The problem is that they simply do not have the visibility to know the entire problem, and that's where a good 3rd party business comes into play.

nknight 15y ago

I think the quote I've heard is that they don't bother with outside market research. That's different from simply ignoring customers. Any sane company will tell you feedback is important, what can differ is where the feedback comes from, how it's interpreted, and whether customers have as much knowledge of what is or isn't possible/economical as the people at the company. It's also important to note that companies like Apple are always trying new things, building strange prototypes, etc.. If a customer screams for Widget X, a company might try building a Widget X prototype, and discover it doesn't work so well in practice.

sjwright 15y ago
> If a customer screams for Widget X, a company might try building a Widget X prototype, and discover it doesn't work so well in practice. _This._ It's a lesson I learned early on in my developer career: when customers ask for Widget X, it's often a symptom of an underlying problem that customers are trying to solve. Your role as a product developer is to understand the customer's underlying problem. Discover what the problem is, and you might discover that they don't need a Widget X; maybe they need a Feature X or a Gadget X. Maybe it reveals holes in your training processes. Maybe they just revealed a seemingly trivial bug with existing stuff. Or maybe you realise you never understood why clients ever used your product until now.

jamesaguilar 15y ago

Another one to add: "I am as good as Steve Jobs." ;)