Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs

by Ken Kocienda

Inspiration: Thinking big ideas and imagining what might be possible Collaboration: Working together well with other people and seeking to combine your complementary strengths Craft: Applying skill to achieve high-quality results and always striving to do better Diligence: Doing the necessary grunt work and never resorting to shortcuts or half measures Decisiveness: Making tough choices and refusing to delay or procrastinate

Taste: Developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole Empathy: Trying to see the world from other people’s perspectives and creating work that fits into their lives and adapts to their needs

The relation of Diplomacy decision to shipping software also shows how important demos were to us at Apple. Demos served as the primary means to turn ideas into software. The setup of these demo review meetings reveals how we went about making our software great.

This push for simplicity had a purpose. Even though he was a high-tech CEO, Steve could put himself in the

shoes of customers, people who cared nothing for the ins and outs of the software industry. He never wanted Apple software to overload people, especially when they might already be stretched by the bustle of their everyday lives.

This seemingly paradoxical corporate strategy had its roots with Richard Stallman, a renowned programmer and technology activist, a man who believed all software should be free. Stallman railed against companies like Microsoft and Apple, which sold software for money, but kept the source code, the software instructions written by programmers, as a proprietary trade secret. In Stallman’s idiosyncratic belief system, mixing computer code and the profit motive formed a toxic brew whose ill effects compelled companies to hoard the intellectual effort required to write programs and turned software development into a zero-sum game that impeded the advance of technology to the detriment of the human race. If you’re not a programmer, free software might echo with sixties-style hippie idealism.

In the same way, software demos need to be convincing enough to explore an idea, to communicate a step toward making a product, even though the demo is not the product itself. Like the movie, demos should be specifically choreographed, so it’s clear what must be included and what can be left out. Those things that aren’t the main focus of a demo, but are required to create the proper setting, must be realized at the correct level of detail so they contribute to the whole rather than detract from the vision.

When I make a demo, I think about the intended audience, and I make a specific decision about what features to include. I

draw a conceptual ring around those key details, and I use a thick imaginary marker to do it. The demo points inside the ring are the focus, and like the lamppost in the movie scene, I depict them with the highest fidelity. I leave outside the ring other less important details that will eventually have to be addressed, but not immediately. I pay them as little attention as possible. Like the inside of the hat shop, I omit them from the demo if I can get away with it. I take extra care at the boundary. Some elements are right on the thick imaginary line, details that need some attention, since they help to set the scene and get my audience to suspend their disbelief.

In deceptively brief terms, Edison tells us: “I make trial after trial until it comes.”

Hard work is hard. Inspiration does not pay off without diligence.

Going beyond the refined-like response leads me to my second aspect of taste: finding balance.