Founders - #178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

What I learned from reading Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Productsby Leander Kahney.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[4:43] Mike Ive influence on his son’s talent was purely nurturing. They were constantly keeping up a conversation about made-objects and hw they could be made better.[6:39] I came to realize that what was really important was the care that was put into it. What I really despise is when I sense some carelessness in a product.[9:24] Take big chances. Pursue a passion. Respect the work.[11:47] His designs were incredibly simple and elegant. They were usually rather surprising but made complete sense once you saw them. You wondered why we had never seen such a product like that before.[15:52] Grind it out. You can make something look like magic by going further than most reasonable people would go.[17:34] The more I learned about this cheeky, almost rebellious company (Apple) the more it appealed to me, as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry. Apple stood for something and had a reason for being that wasn’t just about making money.[24:06] He was completely interested in humanizing technology. What something should be was always the starting point for his designs.[33:29] Jony was very serious about his work. He had a ferocious intensity about it.[41:52] It is very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.[51:38] Jobs didn't want to compete in the broader market for personal computers. These companies competed on price, not features or ease of use. Jobs figured theirs was a race to the bottom. Instead, he argued, there was no reason that well-designed, well-made computers couldn’t command the same market share ad margins as a luxury automobile. A BMW might get you to where you are going in the same way a Chevy that costs half the price, but there will always be those who will pay for the better ride in the sexier car. Why not make only first class-products with high margins so that Apple could continue to develop even better first-class products?[1:19:25] A great prompt for your thinking: What is your product better than? Are you just making a cheap laptop? Or are you making an iPad? Netbooks accounted for 20% of the laptop market. But Apple never seriously considered making one. “Netbooks aren’t better than anything,” Steve Jobs said at the time. “They’re just cheap laptops.” Jony proposed that the tablets in his lab could be Apple’s answer to the netbook.[1:20:32] It’s great if you can find what you love to do. Finding it is one thing but then to be able to practice that and be preoccupied with it is another.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

I just wanted a soundbite, but he launched into a passionate 20-minute soliloquy about his latest work. I could barely get a word in edgewise. He couldn't help himself. Design is his passion. This one was really hard, he said. He began telling me how keeping things simple was the overall design philosophy for the machine. We wanted to get rid of anything other than what was absolutely essential. But you don't see that effort.

We kept going back to the beginning again and again. Do we need that part? Can we get it to perform the function of the other four parts? It became an exercise to reduce and reduce, but it makes it easier to build and easier for people to work with. Reduce and simplify. This wasn't typical tech industry happy talk. In releasing new products, companies tended to add more bells and whistles, not take them away. But here was Johnny saying the opposite.

Not that simplifying was a new approach. It's design school 101. But it didn't seem like the real world in 2003. Only later did I realize that on that June morning in San Francisco, Johnny Ive handed me a gigantic clue to the secret of Apple's innovation, to the underlying philosophy that would enable the company to achieve its breakthroughs and become one of the world's dominant corporations. Content to stand aside as Steve Jobs sold the public on their collaborations, including the iconic iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, Ives' way of thinking and design has led to immense

breakthroughs. As Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple, he has become an unequaled force in shaping our information-based society, redefining the ways in which we work, entertain ourselves, and communicate with one another. So how did an English art school grad with dyslexia become the world's leading technology innovator. And the pages that follow will meet a brilliant but unassuming man, obsessed with design, whose immense and influential insights have, no doubt, altered the pattern of your life. That was the introduction from this absolutely wonderful little book that I hold in my hand.

Johnny Ive, The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products. And it was written by Leander Connie. And this is another example of a book that I didn't even know existed. It was actually recommended to me by two misfits, Sager and Sid. So thank you very much for the recommendation. I actually love the book. On the back cover of the book, there's a headline that says exactly why this book is worth studying or reading. And it says, if you want to understand Apple, you have to understand Johnny Ive. And that's exactly what we're going to do today.

Okay, so I want to start in his early life. He becomes obsessed with design at a very young age. And a lot of it has to do with the really positive influence of his father, Mike. And so in a lot of these biographies with the really positive influence of his father, Mike. And so in a lot of these biographies that we're studying, there's unfortunately more, I would say it's more common to have bad parenting, examples of bad parenting than good parenting. So I want to spend some time talking about how Mike influenced his son's life in a very positive fashion. I think he's got a lot of good ideas that we can use. So it says, As a young boy, Johnny exhibited a curiosity about the workings of things. He became fascinated by how objects were put together,

carefully dismantling radios and cassette recorders, intrigued with how they were assembled and how the pieces fit. Mike Ive encouraged his son's interest, constantly engaging the youngster in conversation about design. This is a little background on to a little bit about Mike's background. He was among the distinguished teachers plucked from the daily teaching by the educational ministry and given the grand title of Her Majesty's Inspector. And so what does that mean?

It says he assumed responsibility for monitoring the quality of teaching at schools in his district, focusing specifically on design and technology. Mike Ive took what came to be called design technology, it's referred to in the book as DT by its initials DT, to a new level, establishing a place for the discipline as part of the core

curriculum in uk schools mike helped transform what was basically a goof-off class into a design tutorial and in doing so laid the groundwork for a generation of gifted british designers his son would be among them and this is where we get into some of his good tactics mike wasn't a pushy stage dad his the influence on his son's talent was purely nurturing he was constantly talking to jonathan about design if they were walking down the street together mike might point out different types of street lamps in various locations and ask jonathan why he thought they were different they were constantly keeping up a conversation about made objects and how they could be made better.

Mike was a person who had a quiet strength about him and was relentlessly good at his job. So that's how somebody else is describing Mike the father. A ton of people would describe Johnny the son the same exact way. He had a quiet strength about him and was relentlessly good at his job. Mike was a very gentle character, very knowledgeable, very generous and courteous. He was a classic English gentleman. These traits, of course, have also been ascribed to Johnny. His relationship, now going

back to Johnny, his relationship with his father continued to be a source of inspiration. My father was a very good craftsman. So this is another term. You're going to see Johnny talks about the same. He has a few ideas that he repeats over and over again about the importance of taking your work seriously, about his love of design, his passion of design, how he only wants to design. He's not interested in running. He runs a business, realizes he hates running a business. He just wants to design things all the time. He talks about the importance of when you're using a product that it's apparent that there's an actual human being behind the product, which is really fascinating. That's actually what drew him to Apple. So this is just, again, I'm going to repeat a lot of these ideas because I think he's really eliminated.

He has a few powerful ideas, and I think just focusing on that over and over again is really good. So he says, my father was a very good craftsman. He talks constantly about the importance of craftsmanship, how much work it takes to go from idea to actual finished product. Johnny remembered as an adult, he made furniture, he made silverware, and he had an incredible gift in terms of how you can make something yourself. Here's another quote from Johnny. I always understood the beauty of things made by hand i came to realize that was

really important was the care that was put into it what i really despise is when i sense some carelessness in a product he's a lot more when you read his words and he his thoughts on design and making products very similar to um steve jobs obviously steve jobs says the closest things he has to like a spiritual twin at Apple was Johnny. But Johnny's a lot more diplomatic in the words he uses. So he says, you know, what I really despise is when I sense some carelessness in a product. Steve Jobs would just say, hey, this is shit. So they're both expressing the same idea in vastly different ways.

Even though they share the same sense of design, they have completely different personalities. So now going back to Mike's influence on not only his son's development, but also what they refer to as a generation of British designers. He was a strong advocate of teaching empirically, which means making and testing, and of intuitive designing. He would say, get on and make it, and then refine as you go. In Mike's presentations, he would describe the act of drawing and sketching, talking and discussing. So I want to pause right there. I'm not even going to finish that sentence yet.

I just watched a 2014 interview with Johnny, and he's still talking about this. He was describing his design process, what they would do at Apple, and it's what he was taught by his father. This whole thing about drawing, he talks about he draws a lot, he sketches, they have discussions. He says they stand around tables. So the tables inside of an Apple store, that actually came from, there's a very, internally in Apple, the design group is extremely secretive. Not a lot of people are allowed in there.

I'll talk more about that later on. But he says that what it looks like is very similar to what you see in an Apple store. We would put out our sketches, our demos, our products. We'd stand around the table and talk about them. But I thought it was really interesting. Now rereading these highlights that this is something that he learned from his father at an extremely young age. And he's still using it you know 25 30 years later so it says the uh mike i've i've described the act of drawing and sketching talking and discussing as critical in the creative process and advocated

risk-taking and a conscious remember that that i'm just thinking about that again too i'm going to talk more about risk-taking this is mentioned over over and over again. Let me read the sentence before I keep interrupting myself. So he said, he described the act of drawing and sketching, talking and discussing as critical in the creative process and advocated risk-taking and a conscious acceptance of the notion that designers may not know it all, meaning know it all at the very beginning. Okay, so I'm going to fast forward in the story. want to talk about he's in design school at this point.

And I'm going to just read a few highlights that are spread across two pages. But you could really summarize it by take chances, pursue a passion and respect the work. Now they're describing other people are describing Johnny's designs at this point when he's a design student. He takes big chances instead of an evolutionary approach to design. If they had focus grouped his designs, they wouldn't have been a success. Now, this was a very interesting to compare and contrast the educational system in America and the one in Britain. So it says in the education system in America, they tended to teach students how to be an employee. British design students were more

likely to pursue a passion and build a team around them. And that's exactly what Johnny did. There was something about respecting the work, Johnny said, the idea that actually it was important. And if you didn't take the time to do it, why should anybody else? So again, summarize that. Take big chances, pursue a passion, and respect the work. Another main theme from the life and career of Johnny was that he just loved designing

and did not like administrative work. He just wanted to design. So it says when, he's still in design school at this point. When designing, he was clearly in love with what he was doing. He became so fixated on all of his tasks. Another main theme is not only should you try to work in a position where you can actually love what you're doing,

but then you get to focus on that. And so there's constant references in the book about his focus, that he was fixated, that he spent a lot more time and effort on the tiny, tiny details that most people just ignored. And you can't do that if you're not focused. So while he's in school, he is interning at a design firm called RWG. And something unique happens is one of his designs, they're so good, they actually go into production.

It actually becomes an actual product that is sold. The note I left myself on this page was surprising, but made perfect sense when you saw them. That's a description of his designs at this time in his career. I guess you could think about this in the very early days of his career. So it says, Johnny's TX2 pen went into production, something almost unheard of for an intern's design. It sold in large numbers in japan for many years now this is a colleague describing it he says his designs were incredibly simple and elegant they were usually usually rather surprising but made complete sense once

you saw them you wondered why we had never seen a product like that before and so something that he he honed in on was not you know everybody's supposed to be designing a pen. He's like, well, how does a customer actually use the pen? It's like, yeah, OK, a pen is primarily used for writing. But what are they actually doing with it? And he says he calls it something called a fiddle factor. How he noticed that most people played with pens in their hands. So his TX2 pen, terrible name, by the way, actually focused on it.

It encouraged you to play with it. And that's something that Johnny talks about all the time that that product, to make a product more inviting a physical object to make it more inviting, you have to invite humans to touch it. And that's why in the early days, early days, when he's designing computers, at Apple, a lot of them have handles on them. Because the previous generation of computers at the time, they were just like, you know, beige or black boxes. They look more like industrial furniture than something you'd put in your house.

He's like, well, no, people are scared of computers at this time. But if you put a handle on something and you make rounded corners, maybe, or if you make it in bright colors, it becomes much more friendly. People are more receptive to it. So in, I guess the reason I'm telling you this is in his design,

like ethos, you could tell that he understands humans as well. He observes them very carefully. So while he's still in school, he actually wins a bunch of design awards, something that continues his entire life. And at this time he's, he's being tasked with the product, uh, the project to say, Hey, this is a, he's designing a new phone, but this is like a landline, like a house phone. And what would you do? And I thought this was very interesting because it shows that he's inspired by just like the rest of us. He's inspired by and he's building on the ideas that came before us. So says his winning entry was one of the major college was one of his major college product projects, a futuristic concept for a telephone. The phone was a blue sky project, which is an exercise in

futuristic design assigned to get the students engaged in what if. So that's the prompt, just completely crazy thinking, right? What if thinking. Newcastle, that's the school he's at, put a heavy emphasis on emerging technology at the time, with technologies like the Sony Walkman altering existing modes of listening to music. And if you want to learn more about the design of Sony Walkman, altering existing modes of listening to music. And if you want to learn more about the design of Sony Walkman, I read the biography of the co-founder of Sony, Akio Morita. I think it's founders number 102, if I remember correctly. He's worthy of study. He influenced people. Steve Jobs talks at length about all the stuff he learned from studying Akio Morita. Jeff Bezos talks about what he learned from Akio Morito. He's one of the most important,

one of the most influential, especially in terms of technology sector, one of the most influential entrepreneurs to ever live. And the crazy, crazy story of how he founded Sony. This is right after World War II. Tokyo had been bombed. Like 300,000 people died from incendiary bombs. They started Sony in like a burned out old department store that had like holes in the roof from bombings it was just a crazy crazy um story so if you if you haven't already listened to that podcast i highly recommend uh going back and listening to it and the book is absolutely fantastic he's a really he was he's no longer with us but he was a brilliant brilliant entrepreneur uh so this is and going back to sony walkman um It was it talks in the in the book on, you know, Kio had to push for the design of that product against relentless criticism.

No one thought it was going to work out. And they sold for like 400 or 500 million of them. I mean, it was one of the most successful consumer products of all time. It was remarkable. Anyways, those early devices looked primitive today, but such portable technology was beginning to become a part of everyone's lives. Every student had to have a Walkman. And I forgot what book it was that I read about. It's somewhere on the podcast. I'm sure I talked about it in the past, but you could think about the iPod as just a further evolution, taking the Sony Walkman to the next step and taking like an analog. Yeah, it's an analog device and transforming it for the digital age. OK, so now we've got more. I want to describe more about Joni's approach to work, his working process.

Again, he's still in design school. And really, you can summarize a section by grind it out. You can make something look like magic by just going further than most reasonable people would go. And as an example of that, when he arrived, this is his friend coming to to to Johnny's apartment. When he arrived, he was amazed to find the apartment filled with more than 100 foam model prototypes of Johnny's project, his design discipline on display. When most students might build half a dozen models, Johnny had built a hundred. I had never seen anything like it. The sheer focus, there's that word again, to get it perfect. Building scores of models and prototypes would become another trademark in his career at

Apple. And now I want to skip ahead to where he first discovers Apple. There's an incredibly important insight here about about great products i think and it's that you know there is a real human behind it so he says through his school years he demonstrated no affinity whatsoever for computers he was convinced that he was technically inept he felt frustrated because computers were clearly becoming useful to tools in many aspects in many of life, a trend that seemed likely to gain momentum. Then towards the end of his time at college, Johnny met the Mac. Johnny was astounded at how much easier to use the Mac was than anything else he had previously tried.

The care, there's that word again, the care the machine's designers took to shape the whole user experience struck him. He felt an immediate connection to the machine and more important this entire paragraph, a few paragraphs. that I remember it so clearly, he said. There was a real sense of the people who made it. I started to learn more about Apple, how it had been founded, its values and its structure, Johnny later said. The more I learned about this cheeky, almost rebellious company,

the more it appealed to me as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry. Apple stood for something and had a reason for being that wasn't just about making money. Okay, so after design school, he goes to work for RWG. He not only did he intern them, but they also sponsored him, which is very rare. And so he did it. So at least it reads to me like partially out of obligation, but they make a massive, massive mistake. They let what some people consider the greatest industrial designer of our age get away.

And this is I'm going to tie this together with a lesson I learned from David Ogilvie about a lot of people focus on price instead of focusing on value. It's a giant mistake because that values were all the leverages. His confidence grew rapidly. And after just a few weeks at rwg he asked gray his boss for a substantial raise he was talented and felt he deserved it but he was also young just out of school and gray had to coach the young upstart on the reality of raises this is a terrible terrible mistake here i had to balance the interest of the business said gray i had i had to have a very difficult difficult discussion i had to explain that he was on a journey on a career path. There were others around him.

Everyone had various strengths and weaknesses. We had to balance the books in terms of making sure everyone got a fair opportunity. But if he's way more talented than everybody else, how is it fair to him for him to be underpaid? That fell upon me to do that. It wasn't a pleasant experience because one doesn't like to disappoint people. But we had a rational discussion. He went away. I think he felt he didn't get the best end of the deal. And the big mistake here is that David Ogilvie has these great aphorisms that reduce a lot of the lessons that he learned from his career into things that you can remember.

He says, pay peanuts and you get monkeys. And the way I think about this is, you know, how much what is the value that that Johnny Ive eventually added to to Apple? Right. A lot more than what he what he what he got compensated for, even though, you know, today he has a net worth a couple hundred million dollars where the case is. But his designs and his work with Steve Jobs added hundreds of billions of dollars to the market capitalization of Apple. The way I think about this is if you think about what Apple did in the late 90s, right, they bought next. Essentially, they paid almost a half a billion dollars to rehire Steve Jobs. Would anybody make the case that they overpaid given the state of the company where it was when he went back and where it was when he died? Of course not. And so the predictable, as you can imagine, the outcome here, you have somebody stupid talented. He's not getting compensated. He quit RWG. The first phase of his professional life was at an end. So he winds up

becoming a partner in a small design studio. There's a bunch of interesting ideas here about a young, fragile company run by a bunch of young kids. Johnny arrived at Tangerine as a third partner. He was just 23. Johnny worked on everything from power tools to combs and televisions to toilets. Their work was consistent, but not especially challenging or prestigious. Now here's a sales trick. To attract and keep clients, Tangerine designers worked to make the studio look busier than it was. They remembered a trick that RWG had used. When

executives from a car company came to visit, the firm's designers drove their own cars into the studio and put sheets over them, saying they were for a secret project. The trick worked and RWG had gotten the job. Taking RWG's cue, if a client came to visit their offices, Johnny and his partners would make sure the studio was stacked with all the prototypes and foam models they created on earlier projects. When the client left, the models would be put back in storage. So it talks about, you know, they're just a young struggling company. They have to take whatever design jobs they can get they wind up designing a um a comb and the budgets are small but they take the lesson here is they're really taking uh their job seriously like respecting the work as

as johnny says over and over again the job had a small budget but the designers gave it their full attention it was ultimately worth it the comb went on to win an award for the highly prestigious, some kind of German industry award, which burnished, which helped burnish the firm's reputation. Now moving. I'm still on. I'm still on the early days of this company. Know that myself was be careful with co-founders and with company finances. The four designers were equal, equal business partners in the venture. There were disagreements along the way, but they got through them. That's lucky that they did. A lot of,

a lot of companies don't. When you study the early days of a lot of companies, a big red flag is, is co-founder conflicts. You got to be really, really careful with that. The young business had to be careful with its finances. We were sensible people, so we never really pushed the finances too much. If we had a small overdraft or didn't have enough money at the end of the month to pay ourselves, we'd just take less and we'd try to be sensible. So not only does Johnny learn by doing, but he also reads all the time. Not a surprise. A voracious reader, Johnny's taste ran to books on design theory. The behaviorist B.F. Skinner in 19th century literature so it's just

saying he's reading all kinds of stuff it's really interesting um i just looked over my notes from poor charlie's almanac uh by grandpa charlie munger that's how i think of him he's like the wise grandfather i can always go to for for sound advice just by picking up his books but anyways it's interesting i for had forgotten he recommended reading this guy's biography bf skinner um johnny studied the work of eline aline maybe aline gray one of the 20th century's most influential furniture designers and architects he studied modern masters uh that fascinated him were among michelle de lucci who tried to make high-end objects easy to understand by making them gentle humane and a bit friendly so that's a that's a awesome way to describe johnny's designs he was

also fascinated by dito rams the legendary designer braun we were all inspired by dito rams said this is one of johnny's partners rams design principles were implanted into us in design school. Now, this is going to be a description of Johnny at this time, but it hits on all this. Not all, but a lot of the main themes that Johnny repeats over and over again is important to his work. He was completely interested in humanizing technology. What something should be was always the starting point of his design. He had the ability to remove or ignore how any product currently is or how an engineer might say it must be. So humanize technology, start with the optimal experience for the customer,

and think from first principles rather than by reasoning by analogy. Another way to learn is by seeing something done the wrong way. Johnny took an independent view. He was constantly questioning how things should be. He's doing now, let's see, he's mid-20s. This is exactly what him and his father engaged in when he was a child, right? Just looking at made objects and asking, could this be done better? Could it be done differently? He was constantly questioning how things should be. be he hated ugly black and tacky electronics

he hated computers having names like zx75 and numbers of megabytes he hated technology as it was in the 1990s johnny looked to find his own way so he starts to have a turning point in his life he starts to have some turning point in his life. He starts to have some bad experiences with clients. And he's just realizing I'm spending a lot of my time doing non-design stuff. All I want to do is design. This is going to eventually lead him to jumping to Apple. But I just, sitting here about to read this section to you, I was like, wait, he just,

I didn't make the connection earlier. So what's happening is he's working for a client that actually doesn't care at all. They're just about how fast can we get this done? How much money can we make? So I'm going to go back a few pages where he talked about what he loved about Apple. The last sentence, he says, Apple stood for something and had a reason for being that that wasn't just about making money. OK, so now he has a client years later that is just about that.

So it says he drove back to London dispirited. He was dejected and depressed. He had poured himself into working for people who didn't really care. Even though the dejected Johnny would continue the development of the design, the process felt wrong to him. The problem was that they wanted to productionalize it

and in doing so, meaning the product, tore out its heart and soul. So this is where he's coming to the realization, man, what I want to do in life and how I'm spending my time is not matching up. I need to fix this. Johnny didn't enjoy the fact that part of his job improved selling the firm. We were spending up to 90% of our time selling our services. Johnny wanted to devote all of his time to designing great stuff. Johnny gradually realized that he wasn't cut out for this. He loved to design, but found the concessions necessary to build the business difficult. Importantly, I worked, this is now

Johnny speaking. Importantly, I worked out what I was good at and what I was bad at. It became pretty clear what I wanted to do. I really, I was really only interested in design. I was neither interested nor good at building a business. And fortunate for Johnny is his work caught an eye with this guy working at Apple named Bob Brunner. He winds up trying to recruit Johnny like three different times before he succeeds. And eventually they hire Johnny's firm to do some work for Apple that causes Johnny to fly to California and to present to Apple. And this is the last time. This is actually the successful time that he recruits him because it's also coming at a time where he's like, man, I wish I could just be working

on design all the time. And he realized, well, if I come to Apple, I can just work on design. I don't have to work about selling Apple. They're already doing this. I should point out that Steve's not at the company at the time. So it says they like the vibe at Apple, but another one of their partners, this guy named Darby, found it clicky. Apple's a deep culture, he said. You have to want to belong to it.

It's almost to the point of being a cult and i have to say i find that kind of spooky it's almost a religion i can't deal with that and the reason i include that part because i do think there is some overlap between some of the greatest most beloved brands in the world and what we describe as like a cultish behavior there's fanatics of like say walt disney uh the disney world like they're obsessed with it um tesla has fanatics apple has fanatics you see this over and over again so it says um after the presentation as they were packing up to go uh brunner pulled johnny to the side to speak to him privately he told johnny that if he really wanted to create something radical he should come

work for apple full time now brunner's talking. He's like, this wasn't some secret thing. Like I want, I made my, I made it obvious that I wanted him. It was more along the lines of me mentioning that the opportunity still exists and him saying that's pretty interesting, but let me think about it. Johnny did think about it.

Back in London, he agonized over the decision. He enjoyed working with Apple, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to leave both his homeland and his work at Tangerine. He also wasn't sure whether his wife would want to move to the States. But the project for Apple had opened a new window for Johnny, even though I keep wanting when I see his name, I keep wanting to say Joni. So I don't know if I've made that mistake, but his name is it's pronounced Johnny. If I if you hear me mispronounce a Joni, it's just because I can't pronounce any word correctly, even though I had gone. Now this is him describing this,

this process. And the reason I always want to bring this to your attention every time, because it happens almost in every single one of these books that we're covering. There's this time in your life where you have a gigantic decision. You're just a fork in the road and you have to figure out what you're going to do. Like, what is the alternate history of Johnny's life? If he says no, and he never goes to Apple what you're going to do. Like, what is the alternate history of Johnny's life if he says no and he never goes to Apple? This book is never written. We most likely never know his name.

Even though I had done a lot of interesting work up to that time, the issues I encountered at Apple were unlike anything I'd ever dealt with before. The principal challenge to give personality and meaning to a technology that was still being treated as though it were anonymous, interested me a lot. Also important was the fact that Apple offers a supportive environment.

It's the kind of place where a designer can focus less on day-to-day business and more on design as a craft. As he remembered, through some, the quote from him, through some sort of reckless sense of faith, he got to yes. That is a great description because this is, again, a key turning point in his life. And sometimes it takes a reckless sense of faith. That is perfect use of language there. Okay, so he's working at Apple.

This is still pre the return of Jobs. This is really interesting because he winds up the first version of the project. This is a Newton. And it's funny because it's one of the first things that Jobs is actually going to kill when he comes back. But anyways, the first version was rushed and flawed. The second was saved by Johnny. And I want to I want to point out some highlights about this because I think there's some good lessons in here for us. The first Newton hadn't hadn't yet been released, but the design team already hated it. Thanks to a rushed production schedule, the first model had some serious flaws that Apple's executives as well as designers were eager to fix. Just before the Newton was shipped, Apple discovered that the planned lid to protect its delicate glass screen wouldn't clear the expansion cards, which had to be inserted into a slot at the top of the product. The design group was charged with developing some quickie carrying cases,

including a sample slip case, and off it went into the marketplace. So, you know, just a poor solution to a fundamental problem. Before, where I'm reading this section to you is because I found it really fascinating what Johnny did. Where did he start on the solution?

To get a grip on the project, he began with its design story. That is, by asking himself, what is the story of this product? Scully, the CEO at the time, called it a PDA. But for Johnny, that definition was too slippery. The problem with the first Newton was that it didn't relate to people's everyday lives, Johnny said. So I want to go back to the idea of like, even didn't relate to people's everyday lives, Johnny said. So I want to go back to the idea of like even the simple idea of, well, what do people do with pens? Yes, they write, but what else are they doing? They're fidgeting with it.

They're touching it. They're pressing it up and down. They're twirling it between their fingers. So this idea is like how does this product actually use in their everyday lives? It didn't offer a metaphor that users could grasp, he said. He said about fixing that. To most people, a lid is just a lid. But Johnny gave it special attention.

It's the first thing you see and the first thing you interact with, he said. Before you can turn the product on, you must first open the lid. I wanted that moment to be special so i'm going to skip over some of the details of this but i want to get to how he talks about this this is why remember at the very beginning of the book talks about i just wanted a soundbite this goes guy gives me a 20 minute talk about how passionate he is and how much he loves this product those are the people you want to buy the products from from right johnny pushed himself to create something special to do the best design

you have to live and breathe the product it becomes like a love affair the process is exhilarating and exhausting and it was a hit he winds up winning a ton of design awards I want to skip ahead though because I want to point out I have a lot of highlights how he works with Steve Jobs. So I got to get there before I get there again. I want I have to repeat this because it's it's obviously important to him because he repeats it all the time. Johnny was very serious about his work. He had a ferocious intensity about it. He was calm, but deep. He was very serious, but also really nice guy.

He led in a quiet way now remember rwg made a mistake they didn't give him they didn't compensate him to the level of his talent so he leaves he's right before jobs comes back he wants to leave this is many many years he's worked there and it's because of how slow and bureaucratic the company became and this is something that steve talks about jeff talks about over and over again the company became. And this is something that Steve talks about, Jeff talks about over and over again, the importance of speed. I was just rereading my notes from Herb Keller, the founder of Southwest Airlines.

You know, it's the only profitable American airline for 40 years uninterrupted or some crazy stat like that. Read that book. I think it's founders number 56. It talks about speed over and over again. Okay, so let's go back to this. At every step, they faced resistance from the engineers, meaning the designers at Apple.

There were layers and layers and layers of middle managers. Many would come from Dell or HP and didn't understand the design-driven approach. So Apple at this point is just copying what other technology companies like HP, Dell, and the rest are doing, and that's an engineer-driven approach. This is going to be reversed. And design is going to be put above everything else when jobs comes back. They were accustomed to slapping a cheap metal skin on a product, because that's the way they did it at Dell. And Dell sold a lot of computers. They didn't really believe in what we were doing. And the senior management of the company at the time didn't step in. So that made for a fight. This is

I'm skipping over vast parts of this book like every other book obviously read it if you want to learn more but the story that's happening on here they're trying to build you're trying to build a product it is three plus years i know i left myself on this page and it was actually wrong three plus years to launch a product the ipod was done in a few months this actually takes four years so next, it was more than four years since they had written their conceptual conceptual brief, four years, and the product's still not done. And so as a result of this process, they start losing good people. Brunner, the guy that recruited I've I've to, to Apple, he winds up believing and he talks about this, why he quit. He's like, I was spending more

and more time in management meetings, where I would be there for eight hours and only really needed to be there for 30 minutes. You feel like you're atrophying, that you're wasting away. The note of myself is this paraphrase of a quote that Jeff Bezos says, I forgot. You're going to lose good people if you don't move fast. And that's exactly this example of exactly that. It's like, why am I going to give this company seven and a half more hours of my time than it needs? That's seven and a half more hours that I'll never get back. Seven and a half more hours that I could be doing something productive and actually doing good work.

And you just have me sitting here wasting away. More about the person they lost. Brunner became a partner in the san francisco design firm he worked with amazon on the kindle he worked with nike uh he helped create beats by dre which funny enough apple buys for what like three billion dollars uh he's won a ton of awards his work has been included in permanent collections remember this is who they lost because they just had him sitting in a meeting all day uh permanent collectionsent collections in the Museum of Modern Art in both New York and San Francisco. But this was funny.

Brunner likes to joke that the only thing he'll be remembered for is bringing Johnny to Apple. When I die, my tombstone is going to say, the guy who hired Jonathan Ive. More about this terrible process that was happening inside Apple before Jobs comes back. It's no wonder Jobs comes back and says that Apple suffered from a Bozo explosion, because this is how Bozos, this is a description of how Bozos like to work. Apple had become an experiment in extreme democracy. There had to be consensus on every decision involving all the interested parties. So consensus, steering committees would be set up to guide new products to market. I love one of the greatest quotes, if not the greatest quote of all time, about the uselessness of committees.

It comes from, again, I want to quote Ogilvy because I love his wit and his brevity. It says, search all the parks in your cities. You'll find no statues for committees. So they now have a committee for this and a committee for that. Everybody has to agree. A lot of people considered Steve Jobs' approach previously tyrannical. Funneling an entire project through one person resulted in

lopsided... How stupid do these people sound? This is them talking about why they... Steve Jobs' approach to making products sucks. So this is why we're not going to funnel it through one person. Are you crazy? We're going to funnel it through a bunch of committees. A lot well, Steve Jobs' approach to making products sucks, so this is why we're not going to funnel it through one person. Are you crazy? We're going to funnel it through a bunch of committees. A lot of people consider Jobs' approach tyrannical.

Funneling an entire project through one person resulted in lopsided products that exhibited all the strengths and weaknesses of its creator. Yeah, that's the point. Instead, the steering committee approach brought every discipline involved in a project together. So it talks about all the people they're bringing together. Engineering, software, marketing, product design, industrial design, manufacturing, and required discussion and consensus at every stage of the development. That's not something to brag about, dude. Product development by consensus proved extremely bureaucratic. Whenever a new product was proposed, remember, they just, four years, they've been trying to build a simple product for four years and still not at the door. That should tell you

something's wrong with your process. Whenever a new product was proposed, three documents had to be drawn up. A marketing requirement document, an engineering requirement document, and a user experience document. What the hell is going on here? The three documents would then be sent up to be reviewed by another committee. The businessman, now this is Brunner describing the process, the business wants to create something for everyone, which leads to products that are middle of the road. That's an exact description of what's happening at Apple. It becomes about consensus, and that is why you rarely see the spark of genius the reason when i read stuff like this i get induced into a state of rage is because they're one third of our time of the limited time we have to experience life is going to be spent working and these incompetent people waste trillions of hours of precious lifetime due to their incompetence okay so now we've gotten to the part where oh i need to read this section

first only a few months after being put in charge of the design group because the other guy left, Johnny was also thinking of quitting. It was a company that certainly wasn't innovating, Johnny said at the time. We'd lost our identity and looked to competition for leadership. Customer obsession, not competitor obsession, is the hallmark of great companies. When Enzo Ferrari was building, Enzo Ferrari will go down as the greatest car manufacturer in history, in history, right? He didn't look around like, oh, okay, well, I can build another Model T or I can build another Dodge. Instead, he said, no, I'm going to build the best car that ever, that ever existed. It's going to be handmade by Italian artisans. Every detail down to the steering wheel, handcrafted using

some of the same methods used to make Roman suits of armor and royal carriages of the ancient kingdom. That is a completely different approach than just gazing over what your competitor is doing. Yeah, I'll copy that. Before Johnny could quit, John Rubenstein, his new boss, talked him out of it. He was just recruited as Apple's head of hardware. It's the same job he had when he worked for Steve Jobs and X. Rubenstein gave Johnny a raise and told him going forward that things would be different. We told him that we were going to struggle to get through where the

company was then, and that once we turned the company around, we were going to make history. These facts, those were the terms we used to keep him at Apple. And also that henceforth, design was going to be really valued at the company. Rubenstein's promise would be fulfilled. The era during which it took three years to get out of the products out the door did end. In the coming years, the rate at which new products and new designs were adopted, many of them from Johnny's fertile brain, fertile brain would be nothing less than remarkable. And they had to move fast. I mean, we didn't know at this time, let's see, this is what, 97, I think we're in. Steve dies in 2011. Look at all the products they made.

And they fit multiple careers in a short amount of time. So now we're going to talk about how they were able to do that. Some of the ideas they had. They're just, you got to buy this book. I'm telling you, it's fantastic. You're not going to regret it. So at the beginning of all these chapters, there's a lot of quotes from Johnny and from other people. But this one's from Johnny. I really liked. He says, the thing is, it's very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.

All right. So this is, this is fantastic. I have a ton of highlights in this section. So this is where Steve comes back and he's just, he given a talk to the to the to the company. Right. And Johnny's sitting in the audience. The products suck. There's no sex in them anymore. Now, think about what he's saying. He's obviously correct at this point, right? They're doing terribly financially. Their products are not selling. Their management's bloated. Is that any surprise? Go back to what we just spent a few minutes talking about, how the bureaucratic process, the layer of committee after committee, extreme democracy, the way they design the products, the way they manufacture them.

It is a mediocre company full of mediocre people and mediocre processes. And so Jobs is like, well, you can't have a good company without a good product, right? So we're going to have to fix the products first. And by fixing the product first, then the company will be fixed. So Johnny talks about that. He was surprised by, you know, he agrees with with Steve's realization there because he's like, listen, if you're about to go bankrupt, most people would focus on the purely on finances, which obviously Steve did both. Right. You can't. He had to fire a lot of people, had to reduce overhead, get rid of inventory. I'm going to talk to you about all this stuff anyways. But he realized, he empathized. That's not even the right word. He agreed with what Steve was saying, that the products suck.

And the only thing that's going to save us is making great products that customers actually want to buy. And then the rest of the problems will take care of themselves. Johnny was in the room sitting towards the back. He wanted to quit. But as he sat there thinking about returning to England, Jobs said something that gave him pause. Jobs told the group that Apple would be returning to its roots. I remember very clearly Steve announcing that our goal is not just to make money, but to make great products. The decisions you make based on that philosophy are fundamentally different from the ones we had been making at Apple. And so this continues.

This is one of my favorite ideas that Jobs ever, and I think it applies to so many businesses, narrow your focus, but up your intensity. Narrow your focus, but up your intensity. You'll see what I mean here. It says product matrix, which is talked over and over again. I brought up on a bunch of podcasts, but it's again worth revisiting over and over again. So you don't forget it. Much is about to change about how Apple's run beginning with the product lineup. When jobs returned, the company had 40 products on the market to appreciate the baffling nature of Apple's kitchen sink strategy at the time. Consider the company's computer lineup.

There were four main lines, the Quadra, the Power Mac, the Performa, and the PowerBook. Each was split into a dozen different models, which were then delineated from one another with confusing product names. For example, the Performa 5200CD, the Performa 5210CD, the Performa 5215CD. Who the hell is naming these products? The Performa 5220 cd and that was just computers apple had branched out into wide-ranging product portfolio selling everything from printers scanners and monitors to newton handhelds to jobs this made no sense and this is where i just love his clarity of thought i say i recently i think i've said in the past that i i've never felt or

never encountered anybody else that thought as clearly as Steve Jobs did. I've been rereading Jeff Bezos shareholder shareholder letters recently. And I have to include him in there, too, because his clarity of thought is just amazing how much thinking they put into such efficiency of words. It's it's something I aspire to. I want to study the master communicators because i just think that that's where the leverage is if you can communicate ideas to other people like you can increase the value that you give to people right but this is this is what i mean about just his clarity of thought this is not rocket science right just like um you're

going to see there's going to be a podcast that's going to be coming out as a bonus episode i'm about to go real deep into multiple part series on Jeff Bezos. It's called Working Backwards. It's one of those parts. And really, in that book, it talks about, you know, just focus. Jeff talks about, you know, what's the easiest way for your business to create value for the customer? Start with the customer. Work backwards.

It's not rocket science, right? We're seeing this with steve jobs i get so excited i want to stand up and oh okay i gotta calm down to jobs this made no sense again this is not rocket science i know i'm repeating myself but this is so i just love that he's like it's so simple i guess the reason i think it's important the reason i'm blabbering on here and doing the opposite of effective communication is because you just say, look at it from the customer's perspective. I just wish every business did this. And it's, it's just a simple idea that almost no one uses. It boggles my mind. I, this is jobs.

I started, he said, it was amazing. I started to ask people now, why would I recommend a 3,400 over a 4,400? When should somebody jump up to a 6,500, but not the 7,300? And after three weeks, I couldn't figure this out. And if I couldn't figure it out, how would our customers figure it out? So Jobs realized, okay, well, this is such an important insight. He goes, if our products are like this, this is our customer facing, right? This is how we're communicating with customers. If they're confusing, I bet you everything else about our company is confusing as well. And he was dead right. He looked at everything, product design, marketing, the supply chain. Jobs started a thorough product review. He set up a large conference room and called in the product teams, one at a time. The teams,

often numbering 20 or 30 people, would present their products and take questions from Jobs. At first, they wanted to give PowerPoint presentations, but Jobs quickly banned them. He saw PowerPoint as rambling and nonsensical. Now, how do humans communicate? We've been communicating by talking with one another since the invention of language, for God's sake. Go back to that. It's clearly a useful way to communicate with humans. Right. If it's lasted that long. So it says he saw PowerPoints as rambling and nonsensical. And this is where we're going to get to one of the most exciting ideas. And one of the ideas I think is just, again, narrow the focus, up the intensity. After several weeks of this, Jobs has had enough. Stop, he screamed. This is crazy. He jumped up and went to the whiteboard. He drew a simple chart

of Apple's annual revenues. The chart showed a sharp decline from $12 billion to $10 billion, then $7 billion. Jobs explained that Apple couldn't be a profitable $12 billion company or a profitable $10 billion company, but it could be a profitable $6 billion company. That meant radically simplifying Apple's product pipeline. How? Jobs erased the whiteboard and drew a very simple two-by-two grid in its place. Across the top, he wrote consumer and professional. And down the side, he wrote portable and desktop. This is the Apple product matrix. If you want to see a visual from our visual photo of this or an image of this, just Google Apple product matrix, and you'll see it. Welcome to Apple's new product strategy. He said Apple would

sell only four machines. Two would be notebooks. The other two desktops, two machines aimed at pros, two machines aimed at consumers. It was a radical move, cutting the company to the bone under Emilio. This is the CEO right before his name's Gil Emilio. I've mentioned him in the other. He's a character in a bunch of other jobs, biographies. He's a clown. But anyways, that's what they're referencing. Under Gil Amelio, the plan had been to offer more and more products. Jobs proposed the opposite.

In a single stroke, Jobs doomed dozens of software projects and eliminated almost every product from Apple's hardware lineup. Over the next 18 months, more than 4,200 full-time staff were laid off. By 1998, Apple had shrunk to only 6,600 employees, half of the employees that they had in 1995. But the balance sheet was brought back into control. And then he has, again, we're going to go back to this idea, you focus on value, not on price. Before I read this to you, I don't even know what happened here. Why did I leave this note to myself uh there's a there's a story that's interesting though i guess i'll bring it up i'm not sure the context of how it relates to what i'm talking

about right now but um right before he came back as as ceo of apple he was thinking about decision because you know he he was running pixar at the time he's ceo of pixar he was spending more time with his family he'd already become a billionaire for the first time. Pixar actually made him a billionaire more than, was it actually the company made him a billionaire, not Apple. But he wasn't sure he could be a CEO of two public companies. He didn't know if that was even legal. So he had all these doubts, like, do I really want it?

Like, what if I fail? So he's mulling this over. He's talking to a bunch of people he respects, but he calls Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel at the time, and he calls him early one Saturday morning and he's asking for advice on if he should return to Apple. And he's talking to him and Andy interrupts him and he says, Steve, I don't give a shit about Apple. And then he hung up on him. And Steve thought for me, he goes, I do give a shit about Apple. And he's like, that's when I knew I had, even if at the risk of failure and disrupting my life, I knew I cared about it. I had to try to do this. So maybe what I'm about to read to you connects in some way, but I'm not sure why that note's on that page. Anyways, going back to the idea of I'm not making cheap computers.

I'm making the best computers. Jobs didn't want to compete in the broader market for personal computers which is dominated by companies making generic machines for Microsoft these companies competed on price not features or ease of use Jobs figured that was a race to the bottom instead he argued there was no reason that a well-designed well-made computer couldn't command the same market share and margins of a luxury automobile a BMW might get get you to where you're going in the same market share and margins of a luxury automobile. A BMW might get you to where you're going in the same way that a Chevy that costs half the price, but there will always be those who will pay for the better ride in a sexier car. Rather than competing with commodity

PC makers, Dell, Compaq, the rest of these people, why not make only first class products with high margins so that Apple could continue to develop even better first class products? The company could make bigger profits from selling a $3,000 machine, even if they sold fewer of them. Why not then just concentrate on making the best $3,000 machine around? This just hit me too, because think about what Warren Buffett says about what was the influence that Charlie Munger had on the blueprint of Berkshire Hathaway, right? The influence that he had on Warren Buffett,

because Warren Buffett would just focus on price. You know, he's a quote unquote value investor, but his whole like cigar butt, you know, value investing strategy that he used in the early part of his career, influenced by his mentor, Ben Graham. But there's a quote in one of his shareholder letters. I have it here on my phone. I always keep it. Let me pull it up real quick. So this is Warren Buffett explaining the impact Charlie Munger had on his thinking. I think this ties into what Steve Jobs just said. Let me read it to you. Hopefully this makes sense. From my perspective, though, Charlie's most

important architectural feat was the design of today's Berkshire. The blueprint he gave me was simple. Forget what you know about buying fair businesses at wonderful prices, to his ML beforehand, instead buy wonderful businesses at fair prices. Altering my behavior is not an easy task. Just ask my family. I enjoyed reasonable success without Charlie's input. So why should I listen to a lawyer who had never spent a day in business school when I had attended three? But Charlie never tired, and he's obviously being, you know, funny there, but Charlie never tired, and he's obviously being, you know, funny there. But Charlie never tired of repeating his maxims about business and investing to me. And his logic was irrefutable. Consequently, Berkshire has been built to Charlie's blueprint.

My role has been that of general contractor with the CEOs of Berkshire subsidiaries doing the real work as subcontractors. So what he's saying is like, okay, I went from focusing on getting fair businesses at wonderful prices, right? There's a limit to how far you can grow with that. subcontractors. So what he's saying is like, okay, I went from focusing on getting fair businesses at wonderful prices, right? There's a limit to how far you can grow with that. I'm sure the computers by Dell, I had them back in the day, Dell and Compaq are fine. What's the market value of Dell and Compaq compared to Apple today? What is the better strategy? What is the market cap of Berkshire Hathaway or the financial success enjoyed by Berkshire Hathaway when they made this switch compared to what it was before then? So, again, by wonderful businesses at fair prices. And so what is he saying?

He's like, I'm not building another $500 computer. There's a million people doing that. I am building the best computer. And if I build the best computer, there's always a market for more. Again, let me go back. This is going to be weird. It's not even weird. Let me take that back.

It's not weird. Because I constantly reread over the highlights because I want to remember the stuff that we're learning here right and i was one of the most influential people in my personal thinking and i just love his like his his attitude that he brings to his writing and his interviews is yvonne schnart the founder of patagonia it's like listen if i'm going to be in business i have to do it my way i i'm not wasting my life it's got got to be fun. I got to do it the way I think it should be built. And, you know, his way, he has a book that has, that gives his ideas. It's called Let My People Go Surfing. And it works. He's privately owned. He's a, I don't know. I think now his family, his family owns a hundred percent of Patagonia. It's a multi, multi-billion dollar

company. You know, guy spends half his year fishing and hunting and stuff so anyways uh well i was rereading the highlights and i was like he was talking about patagonia started as a way because he was a mountain climber and um i think they're called pit pittance piton pittance it's like what mountain climbers screw into or tap into mountains to like hard to use harnesses so like literally their life depends on the quality of this right and he didn't like the cheap junk that other people were making so he winds up making he's a blacksmith by trade so he winds up making that's his first product was these pittance and he what happened was uh the the note on with yvonne is that focus on making the best product not the cheapest you could buy pittance for 20 cents yvonne's p focus on making the best product, not the cheapest. You could buy pittance

for 20 cents. Yvonne's pittance cost $1.50. And yet he took 75% of that market. So again, what Warren's saying, focus on being only associated with the very best businesses. Yvonne's saying build the very best product you can. And Steve Jobs is saying the same thing. It's like, I don't want to make a $500 computer. I want to make the best computer. And if it costs six times as much, well, there's always a market for people that want the best. Going back to this,

the potential merits of Jobs' strategy for the company's finances were clear. Fewer products meant less inventory, which could have an immediate effect on the bottom line. In fact, Jobs was able to save Apple $300 million in inventory in just one year and avoided having warehouses full of unsold machines that might have needed to be written off if they failed to sell. So the same approach that he's using for the product line, he's using for the people he's

working with. And the shorthand he uses to describe this is the A-team. And now something that's really fascinating, something that will also be coming up in the future, is he gets this idea for having an entire, he's's like what if you build an entire company of just a players right apple previously had a bozo explosion you got a bunch of mediocre c people you see see that as well the way they structured company the products they build i have no desire to to work with those people that's what that's what um that's what steve is basically saying with with his actions and again let me go back to this is also something that David Ogilvie realized. And he says in Confessions of an Advertising Man, he said, do not tolerate incompetence.

Professionals don't like to work alongside incompetent amateurs. So Jobs realized, he's like, Pixar is an entire company full of A players. And they're the most successful animation studio since Disney. They have a multi-billion dollar market cap. Every single one of their movies they're making are winning Oscars and doing really well at the box office. Why don't I do the same thing for Apple?

And then he also read a book on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the guy put in charge of the Manhattan Project. So anyways, and he realized that's what he did. When he went around recruiting the scientists that work for Manhattan Project, he only settled for the best of the Manhattan Project. So anyways, and he realized that's what he did. When he went around recruiting the scientists that work for Manhattan Project, he only settled for the best of the best, right? So anyways, I have a few books on J. Robert Oppenheimer. At least one will pop up as a future episode of Founders because again, if Steve Jobs is learning from him, then we clearly need to

do the same, okay? So this is A Player's Jobs Plan for Switching Up the Teams at Apple Upon His Return, which just as straightforward as his notions for simplifying the product portfolio. He would cut back so that his A team, the company's best designers, engineers, programmers, and marketers, could concentrate on making innovative products. Again, think about that as narrow the focus, up the intensity. Everything just got simpler. That's been one of my mantras, focus and simplicity, Jobs said.

He specifically emphasized getting back to meeting the needs of their core customers and said that Apple had lost ground in the market because they were trying to be everything to everybody. Think about the few minutes we just spent talking about that experiment in extreme democracy. They're trying to be everything to everybody instead of focusing on the real needs of their customers. So now Steve going through cutting all the fat goes down to the design studio and this is where he meets Johnny. He's like, oh, wait a minute. This guy's good. When Jobs finally took a tour of Apple's design studio, he was bowled over by the creativity and rigor he saw. The studio was full of eye-catching mock-ups. Think about how crazy this is.

The design studio is full of innovative products and their product line isn't. That tells you about how ineffective bureaucracy can be. The studio was full of eye-catching mock-ups and the previous regime had been too timid to consider. He bonded with the soft-spoken Johnny, who would later say that he and Jobs saw eye-to-eye immediately. Johnny said, we were on the same wavelength. I suddenly understood why I love the company. Johnny and Jobs began having lunch together. He would come over all the time.

He'd come mostly to see Johnny, but he'd also come to see what we were working on. In time, Jobs became a fixture there. So now they go into the development of all these different products, iMac, everything else. I want to focus on iMac because it's not just for the iMac. It's the thinking behind it. And the note, I'm just going to read this. The note is simple.

Johnny nails it. Later, Johnny explained his thinking. The computer industry is an industry that has become incredibly conservative from a design perspective. It's an industry where there's an obsession about product attributes that you can measure empirically. How fast is it? How big is a hard drive? How fast is a CD? That is a very comfortable space to compete in because you can say 8 is better than 6. But Johnny offered a key insight it is also very inhuman and very cold because of the industry's obsession with absolutes there has

been a tendency to ignore product attributes that are difficult to measure or talk about humans scorn the abstract he's hitting right on this this, this is all, this is a quote from him. In that sense, the industry has missed out on the more emotive, less tangible product attributes. He's talking about the human being behind it. But to me, that is why I bought an Apple computer in the first place. That is why I came to work for Apple. It's because I've always sensed that Apple had a desire to do more than the bare minimum. Go back to, I'm going to interrupt this quote again. Steve Jobs saying, yeah, everybody, you know what the bare minimum is? When I came back to Apple, a $500 computer running Microsoft Windows.

I'm not doing that. I'm not interested in the bare minimum. I'm not going to spend one third of my life working on the bare minimum. In the, going back to um this quote it wasn't just going to do what was functionally and empirically necessary in the early stuff meaning early stuff of apple i got a sense that care was taken even on the details hard and soft that people may never discover so now they're going to go into okay we okay, we're of like minds on design. The company's running out of money.

We got to move fast. We can't take four years to launch a product. The iMac had to be on the market in a matter of months or Apple would go out of business. So they start realizing, hey, not only do we have to make better products, we have to redesign the actual process used to make better products. This is going to remind you of a few weeks ago when I did that book on the early days of SpaceX. Read that book. It's fantastic. It's called Liftoff. Because what Jobs is doing here, Elon did similarly.

I'll explain how you can connect the two in a minute. When Jobs returned to Apple, he and Johnny turned the product development process on its head. They found the answer. So it talks about how can you – they're obsessed with making demos and models because they want to see it. Like how can you make that process go faster and then get that into production as soon as possible? They found the answer in Alias Wavefront, a 3D graphics package used in aerospace, automotive,

and the fledgling computer animation industry. How did they figure this out? Pixar. Steve's other company, Pixar, had used it for some special effects in Toy Story. Apple was producing designs, and this is a result of using something. So he takes an idea from Pixar, applies it to Apple, I guess is my point here. And this is the result.

Apple was producing designs much more complicated than any of our rivals. We're not doing the bare minimum here. The surfaces on the iMac were more akin to the aerospace and automotive industries than the computer industry. We were pushing the envelope. With this new workflow arrangement, Johnny consolidated the model shop into the design shop. So they were separate, right? Now, remember, I got to tie this to the lift off before I turn the page. At one point, Elon decided, hey, his engineers have have an idea they send it to an outside machine shop then there's like this whole

communication back and forth that you know may take a day may take a week may take a month i need to go fast that's that's head down plow the line is spacex's mantra right so elon buys the machine shop brings the machine shop in-househouse, and then sits them right next to the engineers. So they're working hand-in-hand next to each other. That's exactly what Apple's doing with making the models and making the designs next to each other. The model shop gave the design guys a first look and feel at the product design. They were creating one-off models of what products might look like. They really had the product design. They were creating one-off models of what products might look like. They really had the coolest stuff. The modeling guys were essential to the product process at

Apple, just like the machinists are essential to the engineering and development of rockets at SpaceX. It's the same idea applied in different domains. I want to tie another idea used by somebody that's been long dead by the time this is happening, David Olgerve. He says, no creative organization, no creative. Remember, not doing commodity business, not doing what everybody else can do. They're trying to do something new. No creative organization will produce great work unless it is led by a formidable individual. Apple is now, at this point in the story, is now being led by a formidable individual.

This is an example of that. When we took it to the engineers, they came up with 38 reasons they couldn't do it steve recalled and i said no we're doing this and they said well why and i said and i said because i'm the ceo and i think it can be done and they did it what steve brought to the table was no compromise he focused on what the product was supposed to be so they wind up getting the iMac out on time I'm going to skip over in the early days of founders I always had this section called critics don't know shit every single one of these examples of biographies a reason it's important to to read them and to empathize and with the experience of people that came before you is because like people going to tell you, no, you can't do that.

No, that's a stupid idea. No, you're going to fail. Everybody runs into this. It's inevitable. And knowing that if you're experiencing it, it's not unique to yourself. And so critics, same thing. They're saying iMac's going to flop. It's too radical.

Break from the past. There's no floppy drive. It costs too much. It isn't compatible with Windows. Well, a person that actually has skin in the game this is the the ceo of comp usa who actually makes a living selling computers he says well we'll sell lots of them this is the sexiest computer i've ever seen interesting he used that word because what did job say when he came back the products suck there's no sex in them anymore right well so everybody's saying no floppy job or floppy job

no floppy drive cost too much not going to work right the reaction from consumers not critics was unmistakable it sold almost 300,000 units in its first six weeks it would sell 800,000 by the end of the year making it the fastest selling computer inistory i really do hope the story that story and stories like this do motivate encourage you in the future critics up and down not going to work not going to work not going to work edward and edward land say it's always easier to uh sell directly to a private consumer than an entrenched uh professional like he tried it was trying to sell his inventions to the auto industry and he's like on an individual basis these were smart men in a group they were idiots he said something like that um and he's like i just from

then on he learned he's like i'm just gonna go direct to the consumer and that's when he when he invents an instant photography he doesn't go and try to sell it to to large businesses he goes right he does a product demonstration for reporters so the consumers can see it and once they sell it they're like okay yep i want it and again there's 300,000 people that bought it in the first six weeks, the 800,000 people that bought it in the first year. They didn't care what the critics said. They saw the design and was like, this is wonderful. This is the best computer I've ever seen.

Johnny was the one that led the design for the iMac. So he says the iMac was also Johnny's coming out party, the first product that gained him public attention. Overnight, he was celebrated as one of the world's most daring and original designers. And this is him. I love Johnny has a lot of smart things that he says in this book. There's an example of that in a company that was born to innovate. The risk is not is in not innovating.

Johnny said the real risk is to think it's safe to play it safe. Steve has a clear vision of what it's going to take to get back to the company's roots. What it would take to get back to the essence of Apple. What it takes to structure the company to be something that can design and make new things. Let's go back to the importance of speed. Now they're redesigning and adding to and constantly improving the AMAC. Johnny was amazed at the speed with which Jobs gave him approval to the new colors. In most places, that decision would have taken months, Johnny said.

Steve did it in a half hour. Now it talks about what they're getting so powerful. It says what made Intel so powerful when it was led by gordon moore robert noyce and andy grove was that it was that it was a company that learned how to learn and i was i think it was an intel trinity the book i did a long long time ago but anyways you're seeing apple's the same things happening apple they're learning how to learn for four years the imac launch and continuing development divine define the game plan that apple would use to such devastating effect with later products like the iPod.

They created a breakthrough product, then quickly and relentlessly polished it with rapid new releases. One sentence on the next page, Apple is a very fast company. There's a section that's going to be coming up in this bonus episode, working backwards. And it's the way Jeff communicates with his employees.

You're going to see the same thing that Steve is doing here. And the way I think about it is it's one thing to be, you know, you don't want to be embarrassed in front of your peers and your coworkers or your boss, whatever the case is. But it comes down to do you have professional pride or not? In the rush to build it, there was a color mismatch between the doors on the front and the rest of the case. Jobs didn't like it. Satsker pushed back saying there wasn't time to fix it. Steve said simply, don't you think you owe it to yourself and to me to do better? I said yes, and we went back and did it again.

And it was better. It was always better. So what Steve is just saying is like, do you have professional pride or not? Do you give a shit about what you're working on? This is Joni on no focus groups, which again is something that Jobs talks about at length. We don't do focus groups. That's the job of the designer. It's unfair to ask people who don't have a sense of the opportunity of tomorrow

from the context of today to design. And that's something he mentioned in that interview. I think it was in 2014, the interview I mentioned, I was watching earlier. So listen, our design team's not big, just a small people of constant, constantly collaborating, making demos and communicating and using our best taste to decide the direction of the product. This is another example of Steve Jobs' relentless march to make Apple a company of A players. I already mentioned this earlier, but the note talks about he was inspired by Pixar and by J. Robert Oppenheimer. So this relentless march to make Apple a company of A players will have casualties. There was a lot of turnover.

We more or less replaced the entire mechanical engineering group. A lot of old timers quit. They couldn't take the pace. We reduced product development from three years to nine months and made it one of the fastest companies in tech. Another great quote by Johnny here. The decisive factor is fanatical care beyond the obvious stuff. The obsessive attention to details that are often overlooked. More on Johnny's leadership skills. He's obviously the head of the design group, second in command at Apple. Steve has a quote in the book saying that the only person that can tell Johnny what to do in the company is me. So it says, Johnny's a very good leader.

His team respects him. He's very protective of his design team. He'll take the blame personally for screw-ups. There's a great book by Jocko Willink called Extreme Ownership that's all about that. And when you read the book, you'll see that most people don't do that. They don't take ownership. They for screw-ups he'll fall on the sword for the weakest part of the design if something's not up to snuff he'll personally say it was his fault he never threw any other uh members of the design team under the bus and again as a result his team loved him for it he does get into a fight he obviously has a big ego um he gets into fights with other people including the guy that hired him or Or not hired him, kept him, Rubenstein. Kept him at, helped keep him at Apple.

And eventually Jobs has to choose between Rubenstein and Johnny. And he chose Johnny. So there is, you know, he's not a perfect person. If humans are working together, there are definitely going to be some level of conflict and fighting. More on how fast Apple, this is the development of the ipod and how fast they um how fast they move so there's uh i think this is actually is this rubenstein yeah ruby's in a meeting uh i think with toshiba so it says they showed him a new hard drive that was only 1.8 inches in diameter it was tiny but it had five gigabytes of data storage enough to hold

an astounding 1000 cds they didn't know what to make with so they're showing it to him to him like, what can we do with this? He went straight back to his hotel and told Steve Jobs that he knew how to build Apple's mp3 player. All he needed was a $10 million check. Jobs told him to go for it. But he was catch. He wanted the new device delivered by Christmas that year. Ruby had six months to come up with Apple's first mp3 player. So there's a great I always talk about spend most of my time studying entrepreneurs in the past. There are a few that are still operating today that I try to listen to. And like I read the books they recommend, I want to listen to them talk. One of them is the founder of Stripe, Patrick Collison. He has a fantastic personal website, patrickcollison.com. One of the, on that, you can also go to patrickcollison.com forward slash fast. And he,

he collects, again, one of the, all the best founders are historians, right? He collects examples of people doing ambitious things quickly in the past. So it says, some examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together. He includes the iPod on this. I want to read it to you. I'm looking for it right now. I know it's on here. Okay.

Paragraph from Patrick Caulson's website. Tony Fidel was hired to create the iPod in late january 2001 steve jobs greenlit the project in march 2001 okay so march 2001 they said go they hired a contract manufacturer in april 2001 that's the next month they announced the product in october 2001 and shipped the first product production ipod to customers in november 2001 this is his patrick writing here 290 days after getting started that's how fast you took three or four years we're gonna take 290 days and we're gonna sell tens of millions of these things this is uh jobs first reaction to seeing the ipod plus critics plus knowing why your company exists oh my god job said this is going to be so cool. Jobs had asked only a few dozen journalists to a

product unveiling. The invite said simply, hint, it's not a Mac. When Jobs pulled the iPod from his jeans pocket, the reaction from the audience was muted. It didn't seem that exciting, especially when the audience learned of its price. $499? Nearly $500 for an MP3 player? And the one that only worked on a Mac, not Windows, seemed unrealistically high. Early reviewers were just as skeptical, with one saying that the iPod stood for, idiots price our devices. The iPod sold only modestly at first and didn't take off until two years later, when it was made fully compatible with Windows. Still seeds of the ipod success were soon were sown with the first device and johnny was confident in the new product looking back on the process jobs believed the creation of the ipod was quintessential apple so this is

this is a section about what i referenced earlier knowing why your company exists if there was ever a product that catalyzed apple's reason for being. It's this, he said, because it combines Apple's incredible technology base with Apple's legendary ease of use with Apple's awesome design. Those three things came together in this. And it's like, that's what we do. So if anybody was wondering why Apple's on the earth, I would hold this up as a good example. Okay, so now they're talking about the development of the iPhone.

There's like a one-paragraph description of Jobs. They realize Johnny's integral in this is like, we can't make the iPhone with a plastic cup. It has to be glass. They couldn't find the right glass. They eventually find stuff called like Gorilla Glass. They rename it to something else. But anyways, there's a story in this book of jobs talking about talking to the ceo of the glass

company like getting him to do what he wants right and he's got it's good advice that's for more than just iphone glass i'm going to read um there's a longer uh there's a longer description of this in the biography of Steve Jobs. And I have my highlights saved. And this is coming from the Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. And it says, Jobs described the kind of glass Apple wanted for the iPhone. And Weeks, that's the CEO, told him that the chemical... I'm going to skip over the chemical exchange. I want to give you just the main idea here.

The glass was incredibly strong, but it never found a market, so they had quit making it. Jobs said he doubted it was good enough and then started explaining to Weeks how glass was made. This amused Weeks, who of course knew more than Jobs about that topic. Can you shut up? Weeks interjected. And let me teach you some science. Jobs was taken ab back and fell silent

we went to the whiteboard and gave a tutorial on the chemistry uh i'll skip over this part this turned jobs around and he said he wanted as much gorilla glass as he could make within six months we don't have that capacity weeks replied none of our plants can make the make the none of our plants make the glass now this is fantastic fantastic advice. This is why I'm reading this section. Don't be afraid, Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was good-humored and confident, but not used to Jobs' reality distortion field. He tried to explain the false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering challenges,

but that was a premise that Jobs had repeatedly shown he didn't accept. This is the advice. I'm going to finish this here, but before I read this to you, this is good advice in life for more to finish this here. But before I read this to you, this is good advice in life for more than just iPhone glass. So he said he could not overcome engineering challenges, a premise that Jobs repeatedly shows he didn't accept. He stared at Weeks unblinking. Yes, you can do it, he said. Get your mind around it. That's the piece of advice. Get your mind around it. You can do it. As Weeks retold the story, he shook his head in astonishment. We did it in under six months.

We produced a glass that had never been made. And I just like reducing that down to a maximum that we can carry with us. Get your mind around it. You can do it. Get your mind around it. It's really interesting language to me. The book goes into greater detail about the development of the iPhone. Really, I just want to read one sentence to you because, again, you have these alternate histories, the alternate futures, maybe the right way to describe it. They almost quit. It says, this is Joni.

Or Joni. There, I said it again. This is Joni. We nearly shelved the phone because we thought there were fundamental problems that we couldn't solve. Okay, so I'm moving ahead. This throwaway comment is actually a great prompt for thinking. What is your product better than? Are you just making a cheap laptop? Do you want to spend your time making a cheap laptop? Or would you rather make an iPad? So at this time, a lot of companies

are producing netbooks, which are small and inexpensive, low-powered laptops, right? So it says netbooks accounted for 20% of the laptop market, but Apple never seriously considered making one. Netbooks aren't better than anything, Steve Jobs said at the time. They're just cheap laptops. laptops johnny proposed that the tablets in his lab meaning the ipad could be apple's answer to the net to the netbook in 2011 shipments of ipads rapidly overtook those of netbooks 63 million versus fewer than 30 million so let's go back to that quote Apple never seriously considered making one. Netbooks aren't better than anything. They're just cheap laptops. And I'll close on some North Star advice from Johnny Ive.

All I've ever wanted to do is design and make. It's what I love doing. It's great if you can find what you love to do. Finding it is one thing, but then to be able to practice that and be preoccupied with it is another. And I just love that advice right there. Find what you love to do

and then spend your time practicing it. That is where I'll leave it for the full story. I highly, highly, highly recommend reading this book. It was absolutely fantastic. It's a short little book, less than 300 pages, full of a ton of this book. It was absolutely fantastic. It's a short little book, less than 300 pages, full of a ton of useful lessons to apply to your work. If you want to buy the book and support the podcast at the same time,

there's a link in the show notes available on your podcast player or available at founderspodcast.com. You can also go to amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash founders podcast, and you should be able to see every single book that I've done for the podcast in reverse chronological order. That is 178 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.