Poor Richard's e-Redux: Franklin 2.0 - Steve Jobs - "He just worked" ..."One last thing."

The previous 3 posts have meander through Steve Jobs' formative years . By the time Jobs was 36 he had already accomplished more than enough to earn a permanent place in the Pantheon of Innovative Geniuses. It turns out Jobs was merely laying the groundwork for a future that only he could imagine and bring to pass.

"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. "

Sir Arthur Eddington 
English astronomer
(1882 - 1944) 

This is a quote that has haunted me since I first read it as a boy. It is a wonderful concept, as it unshackles current reasoning from half-baked orthodoxy and opens the mind to other possibilities. I have often used it in discussing religion and product market research. Two subjects that generate vast amounts of dogma based on faith and specious supposition. It is also a premise that Steven Jobs embraced as he set into motion his desire to provide the world with technical capabilities they hadn't imagined yet. This brings us back to the dawning of the Internet and Steve Jobs' return from the wilderness.

It is hard to write about the early days of the Internet, as I'm tempted to take on the role of a wizened geezer, who reminds young people how soft and decadent they are since the advent of indoor plumbing and central heating. It is worth noting though, if only for perspective, it wasn't that long ago when it took 15 minutes (and no small amount of technical acumen) to send a word document to another computer via a 24 baud telephone modem. But in 1988, it was 18 hours faster and 25 dollars cheaper, than the alternative (FedEx). Quaint as this seems, it was the prelude to a technical tsunami that would wash around the world for the next 10 years. The result would change the cliche "Its a small world", into a social and economic manifesto, of unprecedented consequence. In 1995, Steve was perfectly poised on the rising swell, to catch that wave.

The world would watch in wonder as Jobs "hotdogged" the Techno-wave for the next 16 years.

Meanwhile back in Cupertino, California, the Wharton credentialed "adult supervision", that had been imported to make sure the "unkempt visionaries" didn't run the company into the ground, was on the verge of saving the company into bankruptcy. They knew how to count the beans, they just didn't have a clue how to grow them.

In 1995 there was little to distinguish this beige Apple computer, from its competition, other than it was more expensive and could only run a limited number of programs. Apparently the grown-up MBA's at Apple had developed a new business paradigm that still beguiles and plagues American industry

It became painfully apparent to the Apple Board that they were in desperate need of a "Rainmaker", not more paradigm shifting consultants. Apple needed thunder - a game changer. It wasn't long until several of the board members remembered there was someone who claimed to have such a product. The product was the NeXT operating system and the man was Steve Jobs.

The NeXTstep operating system would go on to become Apple's company saving OS X.

With hat in hand, the board approached Jobs. I have to imagine Steven enjoyed the conversation like few others. Jobs demanded a price to buy his operating system at roughly the approximated value of what his stock would have been worth prior to his impetuous fire-sale of his stock, after his being forced out, roughly half a billion dollars. The board agreed, with the provision he come back in a creative capacity and see if he could repeat his trick of "capturing lighting in a bottle" again.
(I am sure it is not lost on any you who the first person was to capture lighting. Both Jobs and Franklin were good at it and both started techno/social revolutions.)

Jobs returned, and in short order was handed the keys to the wheelhouse. He grabbed the helm and in full Jobs mode began to bring Apple back to the future.

If you have been following this post, you may recall that Jobs had invested his initial Apple stock in a gutsy start-up called Pixar. Steve baby sat the company through difficult times and subsequently ended up owning virtually all of the company. Shortly after that the company released "Toy Story". No one was quite sure how the movie would be received as no one had ever seen a totally computer generated movie before. Of course the public and the critics loved it.

And this fact goes to the core of Steve Jobs genius and success. No one knew if a digital animation would rise to a quality standard that viewers would pay money for. Jobs saw the potential of the medium and by dint of will (and all his money) made it work. Toy Story 2, proved Pixar was no one-trick wonder. Hollywood beat a path to his door.

One of the twists in Jobs career path was that Pixar put him in the thick of things in Hollywood. Disney wanted (and needed) some of Job's magic and they bought Pixar, much of it with Disney shares. As one of the principle shareholders of not only Apple but The Disney Company, made Jobs a name to be reckoned with in both the computer and entertainment industries. Jobs was to become the first real embodiment of "convergence" before Wall Street and the Press, were even sure what convergence meant. Jobs was about to change that with the introduction of the iPod.

An honest to goodness game-changer the

iPod was not the first or even the best portable hard drive for music. What set it apart was its looks and the fact that it was the first of many Apple's 2.0 products that, as Jobs often said, "Just works."

The iPod "just worked" on many levels. It looked cool, a feature that would trade mark all products going forward. Cool, was what Jobs brought to the party. He wasn't a great engineer, he was far too ADD to crunch code, and his mind was too expansive to simply design. He wanted to be a magician, make people go Wow! I believe that was Jobs' greatest gift (and part-time curse), was his desire to deliver an experience that made people go "Wow" and then made them smile.

There are 3 parts to every magic trick. Think of Christmas as a big magic trick. Take something ordinary, like Decmember, 25th and promise your audience something magical will happen, then begin to create anticipation and make them wait. This is called "The Pledge". Christmas morning when the presents are magically revealed is the actually trick and is called "The Turn". Finally there is the unwrapping of the gifts and the degree of satisfaction the audience receives is called, "The Prestige" or as Steve Jobs called it, the "Wow" factor.

And that's what Jobs brought to the party, lots of "Wow".

A good magic trick requires attention to detail. Any slip or mistake and the illusion of "Wow" is gone. This was the other part of Jobs' great genius, his attention to detail in every part of the audiences' (user's) experience. From the moment they open the box, to the time they tire of it (Apple has a free recycling program) and purchase his next trick.

With the possible exception of Tiffany's, few other boxes have been given as much thought as Apple's

The real magic of the iPod was that, "It just worked." Its design and operation was as simple as it was intuitive. The subsequent integration with iTunes would lay the foundation for all future Apple products. The "Convergence" that so many other media, entertainment and computer companies said was just around the corner, was just around the corner, in Copertino, Ca. And the essence of that convergence was being baked into the Apple DNA.

The real "convergence" or as the business consultants were fond of saying, the nexus, would be the integration of wireless technology, with WiFi and the Internet. I don't have to waste digital ink explaining who accomplished that trick.

The introduction of the iPhone brings the legend of Steve Jobs back to recent events and doesn't need much recounting. We all know the iPhone begat the iPad, which finally begat the iCloud, which brings this story back full circle.

August 10, Apple became the world's largest company - One measure of Steve's "Prestige".

The iCloud or generically "The Cloud", is where Steve Jobs vision began and ended. It represents the future of where digital experiences will live now and possibly forever. It is also most fitting that it will be the place where Steve Jobs' genius will continue to amaze and delight us. That may be his best trick of all.