VS Notes

The Ipod

I'm going to tell you two stories today, one about how fundamental to my life reading about what happened is. The other about the creation of the IPod. It's that simple.

Growing Up In The World

I think about Steve Jobs often. Books about him have been instrumental in my life, starting with Insanely Great - a book I started reading on a freezing train ride during high school. The Walter Isaacson biography was fundamental in shaping my life, what I thought I could do, what I was interested in and how I could get it. They both thought me that I care about design more than I can about computers. The first one took me on a path to creating software. The second one towards calligraphy, typography, architecture, industrial design and the simple adage I tie my career with

design is how it works.

Becoming ICEO

Now I picked up Becoming Steve and I'm glad it gives focus to the things that were glossed over in the other two.

Specifically the ICEO era, when Steve went back to Apple. He's implemented the radical quadrant† strategy, focusing the sinking company. But 3 years later sales are slumping again. The company seems to have done everything right and the market isn't rewarding them. Yet they persist with the belief that building good products is what they should do. It's what they care about and it's Steve's persistent belief - with all evidence to the contrary - that consumers will see and appreciate it.

Faith Against Reality

Put another way, they had faith in their approach. That faith led them to expand their offering, trusting that consumers would know the difference between shit and genius. They had a hit with the release of ITunes, a free download that was infinitely better than anything on the market. Simpler and better designed than the competition. But it had space for a physical device that would simplify listening to the music it organized.

Enter the IPod, a revolutionary user experience that let you intuitively search through 1000 songs, play them in random order and display them organized as on ITunes. It's standard today to sort music by artist, genre and album - this is why. But sales were still reluctant, since it started at $400. They slashed the price by $100 and created a new model with an even better - touch sensitive scroll wheel and twice the memory. Sales took off and this simple device saved the compny.

Behind The Curtain

But getting here wasn't just a design problem. It was an everything problem. The Apple "whole widget" approach is the most difficult way to create a product. The team had to:

The hardest of all was an impossible feat. Negotiate with all the music companies to clear sales of individual songs for 99 cents. But it gets even more impressive.

That Could Never Work Again

The deal was initially only for the Mac, but they quickly reached ITunes saturation on the platform. So they wanted to make a Windows version, their very first sojourn to hell with a ice water. So he went back again, with milions of sales on the Mac and convinced them all to agree to a Windows version. Truly spectacular.

This is exactly the kind of faith I'm building towards my work. Having confidence that doing the best job you can will lead to success. Eventually.