Why is it said that Steve Jobs changed people’s lifestyles?

Jobs is a genius who made history. He not only created the history of the modern PC industry by founding Apple Computer, but also launched iPods in just 13 years after returning to Apple in 1997. , iPhone, IPad and other creative products have radically and successfully subverted the market structure of the four major industries of PC, music, movies and mobile phones, reshuffling them.

Last year, "Fortune" named Jobs the best CEO of the decade, believing that "if an entrepreneur can reshape any market, it can be regarded as a lifetime achievement, such as Henry Ford's reform of the automobile production process. However, he can Steve Jobs is the first person to change four major existing markets at the same time."

How did he do all this? What kind of wisdom does he use to continue to create the Apple legend?

Recently, Bloomberg TV aired a biography of Steve Jobs, and the famous foreign Apple information website Cult of Mac also conducted an exclusive interview with former Apple CEO John Sculley.

This is the first time John Scully has spoken publicly about Jobs since leaving Apple. The entire interview gave Jobs high praise and shared the secrets of Jobs’ creation of great products based on his own experience. He said It’s called “The Steve Jobs Methodology.” He admitted that during his tenure as Apple CEO, all design ideas came from Jobs. "All Apple products during my tenure were attributed to Steve Jobs."

Based on user experience

25 years ago When I first met Steve Jobs, he followed the same first principles, which I call "The Steve Jobs Methodology of How to Build Great Products." At that time, Steve Jobs always liked beautiful products, especially hardware. He is fascinated every time he comes to my house because I have a collection of special door locks. I once studied industrial design, and it was industrial design that connected me with Steve Jobs, not computers. I didn't know much about computers at that time, and few people in the world did. It was the beginning of the personal computer revolution, and both of us had faith in beautiful design. In particular, Jobs felt that design must start from the commanding heights of user experience.

He always looks at things from the perspective of user experience. Most product marketers today go out and do consumer surveys, asking passers-by “what do you need?” Unlike them, Jobs didn't believe in this approach. "If people don't know what a graphics-based computer is, how can I ask them what kind of graphics-based computer they want? No one has ever seen a computer like this," he said. He believes in showing people a computer The computer doesn't help it imagine the future of computers. Because it would be a leap.

Steve insists that we should start with user experience, and industrial design is a very important part of user impression. He recruited me to join Apple because he believed computers would eventually become a consumer product, which was a ridiculous idea in the early 1980s, when people thought personal computers were just smaller versions of mainframe computers. IBM sees it this way too. Some people thought that the personal computer was more like a game console, and simple game consoles that simply connected to the TV were already available. But Steve had something entirely different on his mind. He felt that computers would change the world and become what he called "bicycles for the mind," providing people with amazing functions they had never thought of. This isn't a game console, or a large computer simply getting smaller...

I remember when Steve and I went to meet Edwin Land, the co-founder of the Polaroid Company. The Doctor is one of his idols. That's when Dr. Rand was eliminated from Polaroid. He has his own laboratory in Cambridge. It was a pleasant afternoon. We were sitting in the large conference room, and the conference table was empty. Dr. Rand and Steve stared at the center of the table throughout their conversation. Dr. Land said, "I could picture what a Polaroid camera would look like. It was so real, it was as if it were in front of me before I even made it." And then Jobs said, "Yeah, I have that feeling about the Macintosh, too." Feeling."

Both of them had a knack for discovering rather than inventing products. They all say that the product has always existed, but no one could discover it. Polaroid cameras have always been around, and Macintosh has always been around, it was just a matter of when they were discovered.

Pursuing the ultimate perfection

Jobs had great judgments about the future and also pursued precision in the details of every step. He works methodically, carefully and with perfection. The difference between Jobs' methodology and others is that he always believed that the most important decision you make is not what you want to do, but what you decide not to do. He is a minimalist.

I remember that Steve Jobs’ home had almost no furniture. There was only a portrait of Einstein, whom he admired very much, a Tiffany lamp, a bed and a chair. He does not advocate owning a lot of things, but once he chooses them, he takes good care of them. Just like how careful he is about apples. This is Jobs. Starting from the user experience, he believes that industrial design should give people the feeling of playing with jewelry, rather than the feeling of playing with technical products.

When the Macintosh first appeared in front of me, it was just a series of parts on a test circuit board, but Jobs had the ability to find the people he thought were the smartest people to support him. He was charismatic and could convince people to work with him and trust him even before he had a product. The Mac development team was small when I first met him, with an average age of 22. When I saw the Mac team again they had grown to 100 people.

These were people who had obviously never made a commercial product before, but they believed in Jobs and his vision. He can coordinate work on many levels. The first level among these levels is "changing the world"; the other level is actually making exquisite products, designing software, hardware, systems, and peripheral related accessories. For every development, he sourced the best talent he could find in the field and recruited the development team himself, never letting anyone else do the recruiting.

Another thing about Jobs is that he didn’t have a good impression of large organizations. He considered those organizations to be bureaucratic and inefficient. He refers to organizations he dislikes as "bozos." Steve Jobs had a principle that the Mac team would never exceed 100 people. Therefore, if new members are added, someone has to leave. This is typical Jobs: "I can't remember the names of more than 100 employees. I only want to interact with people I know. So if it exceeds 100 people, it becomes a different organizational form, and I I can't work. The way I like to work is that I can take care of all aspects." When I was working at Apple, he also divided departments like this. Steve might say, "The organization can get bigger, but the Mac team can't." The Macintosh team was founded as a product development department. Apple has a centralized sales department, centralized management and legal departments, and a centralized manufacturing department, but there is no actual department dedicated to developing a certain product.

This is true in the field of high-tech products, but it does not mean that many people are required to develop good products. Typically, you only see a handful of engineers working on an operating system. People may think that hundreds of people should work together to develop an operating system, but this is not the case. It was like an artist's studio, and Jobs was the master of the art, looking at and judging other people's work, and most of the time his judgment was veto.

I remember that we worked until 12 o'clock or 1 o'clock in the morning on countless nights, because engineers only showed up after lunch and then worked until late at night. An engineer would show Jobs the software code he had just written, and Jobs would look at it, throw it back to him, and say, "Not yet."

He kept pushing everyone to raise their own expectations, and among developers So he was able to create masterpieces beyond his imagination. The main reason was that on the one hand, Jobs used a high degree of charisma to inspire everyone and make them feel how great they were; on the other hand, he cruelly vetoed everyone's work until he thought the product had reached a sufficient level. The degree of perfection. That's what he asked for the Macintosh.

Steve is very organized. He always has a whiteboard in his office. He has no special talent for painting, but he has extraordinary taste.

This is what differentiates Steve Jobs from others, such as Bill Gates. Bill was also a genius, but he was never interested in good taste. He was always more interested in how to seize the market. Jobs never did that. Jobs pursued perfection and was willing to seize any opportunity to try products in new areas, but always from a designer's perspective.

There are many great CEOs, some of them are magical financial masters, some of them are clever deal negotiators, and some of them are inspiring motivators, but Jobs is an otherworldly designer. Everything about Apple can be interpreted through design.

Last year, a friend of mine went to Apple and Microsoft on the same day. He first entered Apple's conference room, and then Apple's designers also walked into the conference room. Everyone stopped talking, because designers are the most respected at Apple. Everyone knows that designers can represent Steve because they report directly to Steve. Only at Apple can designers report directly to the CEO.

After that, my friend also went to Microsoft. He walked into the Microsoft conference room. Everyone was talking. The meeting started, but no designers came in. All the technicians sit there and come up with their own ideas for product design. It was a disaster.

Microsoft employs the smartest people in the world. As everyone knows, Microsoft gives applicants quite challenging tests. But the problem is that being smart and talented isn’t the key. At Apple, designers are the highest-ranking people in the company and are led by Steve himself. But in other companies, designers aren’t at the top, buried beneath bureaucracy. The thing about bureaucracy is that many people only have the right to say "no" but not the right to say "yes." So the products produced are compromised. This goes against Steve Jobs's philosophy: The most important decision is what you decide not to do, not what you decide to do. This is his minimalist idea again.

Whether it is appearance design or user experience, or industrial design or system design, or even the placement of the motherboard, these must be beautiful in Jobs's eyes, even though he does not want users to damage the interior. As with anything, Macintosh users themselves can't take apart the case and see inside. The level of perfection he demanded was that everything had to be beautifully designed, even if it was impossible for the average customer to see.

Jobs’ obsession with design is well known. He once ran around the Apple parking lot, intently observing all the Mercedes-Benz cars. He observes typography, color and format like crazy.

Apple will go to great lengths to complete the details of every package - the "open me first" design, the design of the box, folding lines, paper and printing... Its products are like fashion. Products purchased from brand stores or top-end jewelry companies. At that time, we were looking for a design company to be responsible for the design of a product. We studied Italian designers. They would really study the design of the car and observe the accuracy, completeness, materials, colors, etc. of the car.

No one in Silicon Valley was like us at that time. To Silicon Valley in the 1980s this seemed the furthest thing from the past. Of course, it wasn't my idea, although my background had something to do with it, but it was completely driven by Steve Jobs.

I received a lot of criticism after I took over Apple. People say, "How can they put a guy in charge of a computer company who knows nothing about computers?" Most people don't understand that Apple is not just a computer company. It designs products, designs marketing, and positions the company.

Design is what makes Apple unique. The glass stairs in Apple stores are made of special glass. This is a typical way of thinking for Steve Jobs. Everyone around him knew he was a unique person. He sets a completely different set of standards than other CEOs. He is a minimalist, constantly reducing the burden to the simplest level - not simply simple, but streamlined. Steve is a systems designer who makes complex things simple.

If you don't pay attention to these things, then you can only achieve simple results. For example, Microsoft's Zune. After Microsoft released Zune, almost no one took a look at it, and it just died. I'm sure they (Microsoft) are smart people, they just have different principles. Microsoft never makes a mistake until the third time. Its principle is to introduce it to the market first and then gradually improve it later.

Jobs would never do this. He makes sure everything is perfect before launching the product into the market.

Focus on systems thinking

The company that Jobs admired was Sony. We once went to Japan to visit Mr. Akio Morita, the founder of Sony. Like Steve Jobs, he has the same high-end standards and advocates beautiful products. Mr. Akio Morita is obviously one of Steve's idols.

I remember Akio Morita gave Jobs and me each a first-generation Sony Walkman. We had never seen anything like it because there was nothing quite like it at the time. Jobs was deeply attracted by this Walkman. The first thing he did was to take apart his machine and look at every part, studying how it was installed, made and polished.

Jobs was also fascinated by Sony's factories. In Sony's factories, workers wear uniforms of different colors - green, blue... depending on their function. These details were well thought out and impeccable, which left a deep impression on Jobs.

The same goes for Mac factories. Although the workers inside do not have colorful uniforms, every detail of the factory is as exquisite as the Sony factory we have seen. Steve really wanted to be like Sony. He didn't want to learn from IBM or Microsoft. He wanted to be Sony.

Jobs studied Prahalad's book "Digital Future". Japanese companies all started with parts market share. Some dominate the sensor market, others control the memory market, and still others dominate the hard drive market. Then they will use parts to improve their market competitiveness, and then slowly move to end products. Whoever controls the price of key components will have an advantage, but this does not apply to all digital electronic products.

Today we can see that with the rise of the consumer electronics industry, Sony has had big problems for at least the past 15 years. Their departments have fully formed a "pipeline" organization. People in the software department do not communicate with employees in the hardware department, people in the hardware department do not communicate with the parts department, and the parts department does not communicate with the design department. Arguments often arise between organizational units, who are all arrogant and legalistic.

Sony could have made the iPod, but they didn't. Apple did. The iPod is a perfect example of Steve Jobs's methodology. Jobs always used end-to-end systems. He was not a designer, but he was a great systems thinker. Other companies generally focus on getting their own work done and then outsource the rest. The iPod's supply chain is as mature as the design of the product itself. In addition to user design, the challenges faced by the supply chain also include unified perfection standards. This is completely innovative.

Jobs thinks about design from a systems perspective and insists on managing and controlling the entire system. He believes that if the system is opened, there will be artificial changes, and these changes will greatly compromise the user experience. Jobs will not launch products with compromised user experience.

Jobs’ design methodology is very correct. Even 25 years ago, his primary design philosophy was focused on a few points: only focus on Apple’s system, never make compromises, and only work with the most exquisite jewelry. Compare, never to other products. All these standards no one could have imagined. Others simply go through the evolution of a product.

Jobs believed that he had to control the entire system and make every decision. All this is for user experience, which runs through the entire end-to-end system. Whether it is the computer desktop or iTunes, it is part of the end-to-end system.

Ideas create reality

The reason why Steve Jobs asked me to join him was not because I knew about computers, but because I had both a design background and product marketing experience. It took Steve and me several months of getting to know each other before I joined Apple. Steve had no experience in marketing, but if he felt some information was important, he would get as much as he could. This was typical of Steve.

He was fascinated by one thing: I described to him how by changing people's ideas, Pepsi-Cola became a symbol for consumers to shape their own image, so that its sales performance greatly exceeded that of Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola has always focused on Coca-Cola itself. And Pepsi-Cola values ??the Coke drinkers themselves. We show people that people who ride bikes, sledding, fly kites or hang-gliding, do different things end up drinking Pepsi. Pepsi was the first company to engage in lifestyle marketing.

We started doing TV commercials after the advent of color televisions and 19-inch televisions. We didn't go to a TV advertising agency because they were all making ads for black and white TV on the small screen. We went to Hollywood and found the best movie actors to make a 60-second lifestyle movie for us.

Of course, the purpose of doing this is to create a concept: Pepsi is number one. Because you can't be number one unless your concept says you are number one. You have to act like number one. Jobs was fascinated by this phenomenon. We talked about how perceptions guide reality - if you're going to create a reality, you create the perceptions. Steve liked the idea.

A lot of what we did and our marketing at that time was focused on when we would bring the Mac to market. He created a high level of expectation and made people want to know what the product could do. The Mac didn't have many features at first, and all the technology was used to improve the user experience. Some people actually reported that it was like a toy and couldn't do anything. But as technology continues to grow, Macs will eventually be able to do a lot of things.

Steve’s talent lies in his ability to understand new discoveries and find ways to integrate them into his design approach, all centered around design. When I was at Apple, Steve never changed his first principles, he just kept improving and improving them. Steve Jobs once asked me: "How did Pepsi come up with such a good advertisement?" He asked if Pepsi had chosen a good advertising company. I told him the truth. First, we had to have an exciting product so we could have a chance to present it in bold advertising.

Good advertising comes from good advertisers. The most creative advertisers want to work with the best clients. If you’re not grateful for a job well done, aren’t willing to take risks, try new things, and aren’t excited about creative things, then you’re not the best customer.

Many large companies have people specifically responsible for this. CEOs rarely understand the company's advertising until it is completed. That wasn't the case at Pepsi and Apple, and I'm sure it won't be the case with Steve now. He was always doggedly involved in advertising, design and everything else.

Another example of his talent is the Apple retail store. Jobs found Mickey Drexler, a retail guru at the time and director of The Gap, to join Apple's board of directors and learn retail from him. As a result, Jobs not only learned retail, but also designed the best retail stores in the world. I have never seen a better store than Apple's retail store. Not only is it the highest-grossing store in the world in terms of revenue per square foot, it also provides customers with an exceptional shopping experience.

Apple retail stores are always crowded. In contrast, Sony Center and Nokia stores are always deserted. Other stores only display products, but in an Apple store, you can touch and feel the products, and there are many people shopping around you like you. It shows that people who own Apple products live an enviable lifestyle.

The experience of using a product does not entirely lie in the user experience, but also in how the advertisement presents the product and product design. Jobs's installation and appearance requirements for products are also legendary. Only a true designer will pay attention to minute details such as dividing lines and baffles.

Even if others don't see any problems, Jobs will veto plans that he is not satisfied with.

Precisely because he has such high standards, people will sigh like this: "How did Apple do it? How did Apple produce such miraculous products?"

Source: "Green Company" Magazine

It seems that 2L’s occasional knowledge is too short-sighted