Much has been made over the years of Steve Jobs not being a techie, code writer or programmer. How, then, did he become the biggest name in computers and create the outstanding products he did. James Lileks imagines Jobs’ modus operandi in his Bleat blog post today. It sounds very plausible to me:
Perhaps he did this: he gathered all the engineers together. He said “here’s what we’re going to do.”
He laid out a manilla envelop with 25 sheets of paper inside.
“I want a laptop that’s this thin. No thicker. The processor speed will be ten times as fast as our fastest machine now.”
He took out a deck of cards. Cut them in half.
“I want a mobile phone this thick. It will be operated by touch. It will play music, movies, do email, connect to the internet.”
He took out an Etch-A-Sketch.
“I want a tablet half as thin as this. Like the ones you’ve seen on Star Trek, right? Also touch-operated, and it will do everything the phone will, as well as other things like music composition, video editing, and reading virtual books.”
He patted the big CRT monitor sitting on top a Performa. “We’ll still make computers, but I want the screen to be huge, flat, and oh – no box to sit on. The screen is the computer.”
He took the other half of the playing cards. “I want a personal music player, and it can start out this size. But it should get around to this.” He put down a postage stamp. “Also touch-operated.”
“One more thing. All these devices will talk to each other and share information, and store data in offsite locations that can be accessed anywhere through the air. Everyone else will be there in 15 years. I think we can do it in ten. So work backwards from these ideas, and have your ideas on my desk tomorrow. Start with a new Mac. For God sakes, the ones we have now are just an embarrassment. How about colored plastic?”
