Ex-Apple engineer reveals 'intimidating' process of pitching to Steve Jobs
A recent book has revealed what it was like to pitch to the iconic Steve Jobs.
When it comes to the technological Mount Rushmore, the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and even Elon Musk are all likely featured there. Sadly, the co-founder of Apple passed away in 2011, leaving his legacy to be carried on through his many innovations and Michael Fassbender playing him in a 2015 movie. Jobs leaves behind an incredible legacy, and as well as being awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, he's racked up an impressive 141 patents since his death.
While most think of Jobs as that mild-mannered guy in the turtleneck, one ex-Apple employee has explained the 'intimidating' process of pitching to the tech whizz.
Having co-founded Apple in his parent's garage in 1976, Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne helped grow Apple into the tech giant it is today. After being fired and then returning as CEO in 1997, Jobs took Apple from the age of the personal computer into the era of the iPhone.
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It's hard to imagine what the smartphone scene would be like without the iPhone, but let's remember, not every idea was just down to Jobs. Speaking to CNBC Make It, software engineer Ken Kocienda revealed the man behind the Mac.
Kocienda explained: "Steve Jobs was very focused on making great products. So when I developed a prototype for a new piece of software and when it came time to show it to him, if he didn’t like it, he would say so in no uncertain terms and he could be pretty intimidating."
Kocienda has written the book Creative Selection, which explains how he helped work on the original iPhone in 2007 and his innovations with autocorrect.
Expanding on what it was like to pitch to Jobs in the early days, Kocienda reiterated that Jobs wanted a new product or feature to 'speak for itself': "Steve didn’t like a lot of talk or description about demos and prototypes before he was looking at them.
"It needed to be obvious ... most people when they are interacting with software, they just want the software to do what it’s supposed to do. They are not interested in it as a technological or creative artifact."
Kocienda said that Jobs liked to pretend he was just a normal customer walking off the street and into an Apple Store. Was the product or feature able to sell itself without confusing the average consumer?
He said that Jobs' 'less is more' attitude flowed down through Apple: "[I] go back and look on YouTube at some of his presentations that he would give up on stage announcing new Apple products. His slides are not filled with words, he doesn’t have bullet after bullet, after bullet, after bullet...."
"Many of his slides have one or two words. He honed and refined and simplified his message so that he knew exactly what he wanted to say and could say so in as few as possible words and so people were not overwhelmed by too much message. It was very clear what the point was and then people got it."
Even if pitching to Jobs might've been intimidating, it clearly worked for Kocienda. After all, how many people have the 'inventor of autocorrect' on their CV? What the 'duck'?