End of an Era: Steve Jobs

[Chipp Walters]

Hi Jeff, see below...

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 1:29 PM, Jeff Reynolds <jeff at siphonophore.com>wrote:

> I agree with Kevin, luck is a part of it, but Jobs was able to create his
> own luck by both sheer will and also knowing the true basics of design as
> the points to start from applying that fantastic will.
>

BINGO. Why don't more companies understand this as well? Design can be a
huge differentiator in just about any industry.


> I had to laugh at Kevin's mention of the demos. i saw his second public
> demo of the next cube while a grad student at UC Berkeley. I went to see
> Jobs and the cube but never even thought i would ever even think about
> wanting one -- at $10K, that was a fortune to me at the time.


I remember these demos. Michael Dell called and asked if I could get a NeXT
cube for him (we did a bunch of work together in the early Dell days). I
pulled some strings and got one for him-- but only after playing for hours
with it and the 'gorgeous' 4 bit grayscale interface. That interface
'affected' the future of GUID's for sometime.

The design was also quite well done-- it was by frog design.

I also remembering purchasing one of the very first Mac128's and dragging it
into Compaq, back when there were only 50 people there. Rod Canion, a
co-founder, couldn't understand why I would drag a Mac to work when there
were plenty of 'really fine' Compaq portable luggables available.

As a design professor of mine used to say, "If you don't see it, I can't
teach it to you!"

It's nice to see RunRev place such an emphasis on design in their products.
Bravo.