Insanely Simple: The Obsession that Drives Apple's Success

Is this book a biography, a memoir, or a business book? Perhaps it could even go into self-help. The author is an advertising guy who had worked for a number of tech accounts, including Apple. He is proud of the work on Apple (and even claims to have helped name the 'iMac' which led to i-everything.) There is discussion about advertising campaigns that succeeded as well as those that failed miserably. (There were both for the iPod). There is also plenty of discussion of Steve Jobs and how is personality would be very direct and abrasive, but would take feedback to get things best.

Apple is compared to Intel. The later had an attention to detail and strived to be defect free. They would seek the perfect advertising campaign, with many committees formed to achieve it. Apple would let people run with it, and try to hope the lawyers could work out any problems. Some campaigns would fail, but that is part of the came.

Underneath all of this attention to Apple is the discussion of simplicity. Making things simple is hard. It is easier to write verbosely with sesquipedalians than to be short and concise. Adding many different products to catch different markets seems like the easy way out. However, it can confuse customers and lead to internal turmoil. Sometimes sacrificing short term revenue in the name of simplicity can be beneficial in the long term. Apple has become one of the most valuable companies on the planet. How much has the quest for simplicity contributed to that?

Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

In the tradition of business leaders everywhere, Tony Fadell wrote a book describing how he succeeded. There were things that worked for him. He was able to launch the iPhone and iPod as well as lead Nest before it was acquired by Google. Those are key roles at a couple big FANG companies, so he must have good advice, right?

The advice he gives boils down to "do what you like and don't be afraid to fail." The book is structured with many small standalone sections, though the narrative provides a roughly chronological story of his career. He moved around a lot as a kid. He got involved with computers and BBS's before the internet. He worked at small tech startups trying to make the next big thing. Companies often failed because they didn't know who they were building things for or how they would be sold. He had a desire to make a better music listening experience. Things didn't work out, but he eventually landed at Apple and launched the iPod into existence. There were many design decisions involved in the evolution. (It seems like there was also a good deal of luck in the process. If things went slightly different ways, the whole project could have been torpedoed.)

The iPhone launch was the next big challenge he worked on. He also struggled with big company politics. He was ready to leave because of a bad boss, but eventually got the promotion he wanted (over the boss's objections) and stayed a while longer. He later went to Nest and had a lean culture. He is in favor of treating employees well, but not being overly focussed on perks. There are also many additional nuggets. People have more appreciation for things they need to pay for. Junior employees and more experienced employees all play a roll in an organization. It is great to take risks when you are young, on your own and free to make your own decisions. It becomes more challenging as you have more responsibility. Leadership roles come naturally to some people. However, individual contributors also play an important role.

Steve Jobs

I've never been a big fan of apple. I was more a Commodore 64 or an Android guy. Apple seemed to be all about style and marketing rather than technology. After reading Steve Wozniak's autobiography, I had a little more respect for him on the technology side. However, reading Jobs' books drills in the fact that he is a jerk. Without Apple, he would probably be some unknown artist or maybe even a homeless guy wandering around. However, without Jobs, Apple would have probably never been the big behemoth it is today, and Wozniak would probably still be working at HP as a highly respected, distinguished engineer. They happened to have the right skills to complement each other and came together at the right time. This gave Jobs the position of influence and allowed him to use his ruthlessness to launch the pirate raid on the computer industry.

Steve Jobs was born to graduate students in Wisconsin who put him up for adoption in California. If he had grown up as Steve Jindali with an intellectual family in Wisconsin, he may be an obscure poet or intellectual today. Being adopted by a working class family in California put him in a position to be surrounded by an innovative industry as well as the drive to do something with his life.

In reading this, part of me says "this guy is a doofus." But, the other part says, why didn't I do this? Why didn't I take the big gambles at a younger age. Use the youth to flop more. If you fail, oh well. If not, you may have a giant company.

His parents did take a "reasonable gamble" in moving to south Los Altos so he could go to school there. If they didn't, well, he may not have made the connections that would have helped him found Apple. At that time, the area was expensive, but still in the realm of middle class. Today, there is nothing for less than a million dollars. (Though you can catch the old residents by the low assessed value (max of 2% increase since the 70s for unsold houses leaves a lot of assessments around $100,000).

Jobs may have lead to his own death by refusing cancer surgery early, and letting his cancer spread. He had motivation to try many weird diets. The strength and accomplishment of doing it led to his motivation for accomplishing many things, yet it may not have helped his health.

He left Apple, founded NeXT, did a lot of cool things there, but didn't really sell much. Yet, he was able to sell the company back to Apple for a few billion and end up taking over the company he helped found.

At the time, he also bought Pixar. There John Lasseter worked as an animator after getting canned by his dream job at Disney animation. Pixar eventually went from making computers to making movies. It got bought by Disney for a few million, and now Lasseter gets to be an animation boss there.

Jobs' wife gets to stay at home with the children, garden and do charity work. The joy of having money and being able to do meaningful work, rather than working for the "man". (Similarly, Jobs Apple money let him do all sorts of other stuff.)

In his end-note, Jobs said his goal was to create great products. Money helped enable, but was not the ultimate goal. Without money, he would not have been able to do squat. However, when the company focussed to much on money, the product faltered and money started to fall. He also couldn't name another "fully integrated" hardware/software company like apple that did cool stuff. What will happen to Apple now? It is a behemoth. Can it be creative as a large company and without the leadership? We are also in an era where operating system doesn't matter as much as it did. What new features are in the newest IOS? Does anybody really care? The power and performance of electronics are exceeding our ability to do stuff with it. Most innovation now is in new form factors (Google Glass, tablets, watches, etc.) Content is now more cloud based. We could be nearing the end of the "integrated" era, and moving into something new. What will happen to Steve's company?

The book ends with Jobs on his deathbead in Palo Alto. Yet, we don't get a final obituary. (I guess it finished a bit too soon...)

iWoz

iWoz is Steve Wozniak's "brag" book. Humility is not one of his strong points. As a kid he was an "engineering nerd" who was way ahead of everybody else in math and technology. However, he was not so advanced socially. He saw himself as somebody who was interested in both people and technology. (Hmm... Don't all engineers think they have the "human touch", while others are dedicated engineers?)

At the start, we get the kids riding his bike around the orchards in southern Sunnyvale. He went to the (now shuttered) Serra school and Homestead high school. Most of the kids had stay at home moms and were free to do creative antics like create a local electronic intercom system. (Could all the programmed children activities be hurting the creative and education of children?) This silicon valley of the past most have been very different from that of today.

We hear about the science fairs he won, the pranks he pulled, his telephone phreaking, electronic gadgets and plenty of other "nerdy" activities that he did. Then he goes to school, does some pranks, decides to return to De Anza college, gets involved in the home brew computer scene and builds the Apple I. He was lucky to find stores that wanted it. Jobs was lucky to hook up with him and have a knack with people. He was lucky HP (his employer) didn't want part of it. They also tried to sell to Commodore, who didn't want it. He was serendipitously in the right place at the right time. Had he finished school in Colorado, he would probably be just another nameless engineer working at some big company. Had he and Jobs not hooked up, they would both be anonymous dudes. Another one of the many computer startups may have been the one that hit it big. Had they not emphasized quality over price, the ground would not have been set for the current premium model of iOS and mac devices. One thing he mentions is that "marketing" took over Apple pretty early in the company's history. This had started to alienate the "engineer" in him. (But it has ultimately led to the success of the company.) Even during the "dark days" when apple wasn't doing well, they were designing iPods, etc.

Woz wants you to think that he was a uber-engineer who was destined for engineering greatness. In reality, however, he seemed to just be lucky. After Apple, there none of his inventions had really caught on. (Who has used the CL-9 universal remote?) The Apple computer was revolutionary at the time. But he even mentions that he had created the equivalent of the Altair 5 years before it was released. If the Apple I (and Apple II) had not found the right customers, investors and partners, they could have been in the same place. His closing message is to encourage people to go solo and invent without the bureaucracy of a large corporation. However, the "behind the scenes" message is that invention itself isn't worth diddly-squat. You need to make sure the device gets out there and gets sold. Working for a company can leave you rather nameless, but more able to see the fruits of your labors. (Who knows who Jonathan Ive is? Yet, he is responsible for the design of most modern Apple products.)

The phone memory money grab

One of the great things about android phones is the external sd card slot. My Samsung Galaxy Exhibit came with 2GB of flash memory. For under $30 I could put in a high speed 32GB micro SD card for storing photos and audio.

The Nexus 4, however, doesn't have an SD card slot. Instead, you can pay $50 extra to get 8 GB more storage. This seems like a page from Apple's book, where for a mere $100 you can get an extra 16GB of memory. And of course, there is no upgrading either of these. So if you later decide you need a few more GB, you are AWOL. A lovely case of planned obsolescence

Luckily, Samsung still allows you to plug in SD cards. Sure, they'll sell you a phone with 16GB more memory for $50-$100 more. But, they'll also let you plug in $10 16GB microsd if you later decide you need a little more room for your audiobooks. Hmm... Maybe that is one of the reasons they are now dominating the market.

The stupidity of upgrading Apple products

I should have known better. I had an iPod touch that worked well for playing playlists of audiobooks. I upgraded and all the playlists came in random order. D'oh! I hoped the next upgrade would fix it. It didn't. Then they stopped pushing out upgrades to my old hardware. Oh well. At least I was able to get a work around by saving the books with the same name and using the audiobooks view of the ipod.

Now on to the ipad. It is often used for playing audiobooks. It seemed to be working well. Some of the other apps also worked well. there was no pressing reason to upgrade.

So why on earth did I do it?

Stupid Apple.

They trashed the old "ipod" app on the ipad and put in place an inane music app. No double speed playback. No text list of albums, books (or anything!) You are stuck with an ugly album art view - which just wastes real estate when there is no art. Books are also in seemingly random order. Alright, even worse than that, they are ordered by track without regards to disk. Disk 1 track 1 is followed by disk 2 track 1. Absolutely lovely. I supposed you could try a playlist - put those are still broken as miserably as they have been for the past few years (with a total random order)

And of course, this being Apple, there is no way to go back to the previous version.

Maybe we can hope (in vain) that they will eventually fix it.

Apple's mothership

Apple has posted the plans for its new spaceship campus.
Architecturally it is original, but for the community it has a lot to be desired. Part of the charm with Apple in Cupertino is that the buildings are scattered throughout the neighborhood. Even the Infinite Loop headquarters building is connected by a pedestrian sidewalk to a junior high school and a residential neighborhood.

The new campus, however, falls victim to ugly car-central pseudo-eco development. The campus is somewhat isolated from living areas, and tries to make itself even more isolated. Sure, there is a lot of green space, but there is also a huge fence around the campus cutting off any public access to it.

And the plans include cutting off a section of Pruneridge to make a disconnected fenced-in path. Sure, greening over a street may be nice, but the least you could do is make a public path.

Perhaps a bigger question is whether or not this building will ever get built. Sure, Apple is on a nice upward trajectory now. But Apple was doing fairly well after Jobs was fired in the mid-80s, only to stagnate for a decade before the iPod came out. With one of the largest market-caps around (with a relative low valuation), is there much room for upward growth?

Perhaps Apple's growth will stall while the building is in the approval process, and it will be scaled down (or never built.)

Or maybe it will be built, with Apple needing every bit of space, as they sit on a cash hoard bigger than the US national debt.

Or maybe they will really vacate all the leased building, turning Cupertino in to an office ghost town - or perhaps leading to a startup boom in the city.

Tune in a few years from now to see how it plays out.