The Teacher

Jean-Louis Gassee and Frederic Fillioux on Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs taught us so many things…To us whose professional life strides tech, ads and media, his way of fostering innovation, of creating an obsessive culture of perfection remains both inspirational and enigmatic. For those who like design and engineering, there isn’t a single field Apple hasn’t entered — or at least influenced. When I fumble with the appalling multi-function display of my Prius, when I struggle with the remote control of my office A/C, or when I wonder why in hell the $2000 battery-assisted bicycle I consider buying doesn’t have an programmable memory chip to upgrade software that looks forever stuck in version 1.0, I wonder how the Cupertino guys would have handled it. Needless to say, I do the same when I look at media applications or newspapers/magazines designs, many of which seem to have succumbed to a sad mélange of sloppy execution and a lack of decisiveness in design.

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However, over a span of fourteen years, as it impacted so many sectors, Apple’s unprecedented turnaround yielded a few clues.I tried to isolate some with potential applications outside the tech world. What interests me in Apple ranges from their choice of frosted-glass for my MacBookPro’s trackpad (instead of cheaper plastic), to the use of its immense cash hoard, to the way the company prepared itself for the post-Steve Jobs era.