Jobs, upon hearing an improvement suggestion by an audience member, challenging him to "meet in the parking lot" after the demo.
I really don’t care about the PC/Mac debate. Nor Windows vs OS X vs Linux. Nor any other technology debate involving the massive swarms of nerds casting violently inflammatory rhetoric upon one another (courageously, behind a veil of complete anonymity). No, I am very much an “appropriate tool for the job at hand” type. So, although I’ve done a lot of development on Microsoft platform over the years, I really have no negative opinions toward Steve Jobs.
I may have to amend that answer soon. This article was ranked at the top of Digg’s technology section today. From the article:
Many analysts are puzzled that a company could be so out of touch with its user base. A publicist for FullSix, the ” relationship marketing” company that created Please Fix the iPhone drive points out that most big companies have launched initiatives which they use[d] to gather and implement user suggestions. They point to My Starbucks and Dell’s Idea Storm as examples.
Apple does quite the opposite. It gives people random features they never requested (with the exception of 3G, which was more of an upgrade to modern standards than a feature). Many blame Apple’s polarizing CEO Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs has publicly stated before that he doesn’t think customers know what they want, but he does.
I completely understand that you can’t make your product be all things to everyone. But Steve, some of these ideas are good ones. I mean, “copy and paste”? Being able to tilt email to landscape view like every other app on the iPhone? Video?? These are basic. Further, hackers have already provided some of these features to it! So we know it’s doable.
At Spiral16, we’ve engaged many clients that perhaps didn’t know the specifics of measuring and engaging in the online communities surrounding their brand, but at least knowing they need to be there. And now here’s the head of Apple, basically saying, “meh, I don’t care”!
Apple has somewhat of a freakish cult around it, and the iPhone doesn’t yet have a strong competitor. But people are pissed, and competitors are coming. Google’s Android comes to mind – an OS with a completely open interface for application development. I’m sure you see the irony here: the online community that Jobs doesn’t seem to care about may be the very people that write the software for the “iPhone Killer”.
