4 ms·

It's also a story about how big ideas does not always start from big vision. It can start from something much less grand - like simply a revenge or an act of eg

It's also a story about how big ideas does not always start from big vision. It can start from something much less grand - like simply a revenge or an act of ego. And then you need other skills to evolve it, it is those evolving that makes small ideas big and big ideas real grand things. The tablet vision is from MS, Steve made it iPhone.

Someone 13y ago
Another example of an act of ego is Lamborghini. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini#Origin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini#Origin: "Lamborghini was fond of the Ferraris, but considered them too noisy and rough to be proper road cars, likening them to repurposed track cars.[20] When Lamborghini discovered that the clutch on his Ferrari was broken, and actually was the same clutch that he used on his tractors, Lamborghini went to Ferrari and asked for a better replacement. Ferrari responded, saying that he was just a tractor maker, and could not know anything about sports cars. Lamborghini decided to pursue an automobile manufacturing venture with the goal of bringing to life his vision of a perfect grand tourer."
glenra 13y ago
Saying "the tablet vision is from MS" is a bit of an overstatement. The party mentioned would have been in 2005. Apple had released the Newton in 1993 (after having worked on it for many years) and refined it over the next 5 years, inspiring a raft of competitors including Palm (whose first product was software for the Newton) and Microsoft. The Apple MessagePad 2000 (released in 1997) had an entirely tap-based interface with no dedicated hardware buttons - the whole interface was whatever you saw on the screen. The initial vision for the Newton was that it would be a tablet OS that could scale to a variety of sizes - "from a post-it pad to a whiteboard" - the actual sizes released were driven by market considerations at the time. So Microsoft's efforts might possibly have given Apple the kick in the pants it needed to try AGAIN at a tablet OS at that specific time, but the reason they could do it so quickly and effectively once the decision was made is that Apple had already iterated through the design issues and had stuff along those lines already working in the labs. Also, Jobs's 50th birthday party would have been in 2005, but the "Project Purple" team that worked in earnest to release iPhone was formed in 2004. And the iPhone took three years to develop (as dated from the formation of that team), not 6 months. So I don't think this story really works on any level. Maybe Steve remembered it wrong - it's more likely he was sitting on the knowledge of what his team had already done in secret and it was killing him not to say anything about it, making the moment especially memorable.
- pswenson 13y ago
  read again, it wasn't Jobs' birthday party. "One of the people who was building Microsoft's tablet was friendly with Jobs' wife, Laurene Powell. He asked Jobs and Powell to come to his fiftieth birthday party."
  - glenra 13y ago
    Doh! You're right, I misread that part. But I think the rest stands.

Someone 13y ago

Another example of an act of ego is Lamborghini. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini#Origin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini#Origin: "Lamborghini was fond of the Ferraris, but considered them too noisy and rough to be proper road cars, likening them to repurposed track cars.[20] When Lamborghini discovered that the clutch on his Ferrari was broken, and actually was the same clutch that he used on his tractors, Lamborghini went to Ferrari and asked for a better replacement. Ferrari responded, saying that he was just a tractor maker, and could not know anything about sports cars. Lamborghini decided to pursue an automobile manufacturing venture with the goal of bringing to life his vision of a perfect grand tourer."

glenra 13y ago

Saying "the tablet vision is from MS" is a bit of an overstatement. The party mentioned would have been in 2005. Apple had released the Newton in 1993 (after having worked on it for many years) and refined it over the next 5 years, inspiring a raft of competitors including Palm (whose first product was software for the Newton) and Microsoft. The Apple MessagePad 2000 (released in 1997) had an entirely tap-based interface with no dedicated hardware buttons - the whole interface was whatever you saw on the screen. The initial vision for the Newton was that it would be a tablet OS that could scale to a variety of sizes - "from a post-it pad to a whiteboard" - the actual sizes released were driven by market considerations at the time. So Microsoft's efforts might possibly have given Apple the kick in the pants it needed to try AGAIN at a tablet OS at that specific time, but the reason they could do it so quickly and effectively once the decision was made is that Apple had already iterated through the design issues and had stuff along those lines already working in the labs. Also, Jobs's 50th birthday party would have been in 2005, but the "Project Purple" team that worked in earnest to release iPhone was formed in 2004. And the iPhone took three years to develop (as dated from the formation of that team), not 6 months. So I don't think this story really works on any level. Maybe Steve remembered it wrong - it's more likely he was sitting on the knowledge of what his team had already done in secret and it was killing him not to say anything about it, making the moment especially memorable.

pswenson 13y ago
read again, it wasn't Jobs' birthday party. "One of the people who was building Microsoft's tablet was friendly with Jobs' wife, Laurene Powell. He asked Jobs and Powell to come to his fiftieth birthday party."
- glenra 13y ago
  Doh! You're right, I misread that part. But I think the rest stands.