iCon

I bought my first apple product in 2006 during my internship in Toronto. It was a 32 GB iPod. It was more or less an impulse purchase as I was instantly amazed by the feel of the touchpad. Five years later I have purchased the iPhone and it truly is revolutionary.

I was sitting in my computer lab and the TA had just concluded a review of what we had studied in the lecture and how it had to be used to write a program. I was about to begin when one of my batch mates pointed to his screen and said “Did you hear that? Apparently Steve Jobs just passed away” I dispelled his remark assuming it to be headlines in some FakeNews.com to highlight the dismal response that the day before unveiling of iPhone 4S garnered, or so I had thought. To which he remarked “Well, if abcnews.com has published it, I would think it to be true”. I was speechless and shocked. I didn’t know how the death of someone whom I hadn’t met could evoke such strong feelings but I could not help myself mull over the thought. It took some time to digest the news and get back to what mattered at the moment. I had my prelim the very next day and I was finding it hard to get my mind off the incident and concentrate on studying. A series of questions flashed right in front of me. “What a co-incidence, iPhone 4S is launched and this happens the very next day? How is Apple going to uphold its brand? How will its vision stay put?” But it wasn’t those questions that stirred me but the suddenness of the event. I tried to come back to reality by actually chuckling with the thought of him not being able to withstand the thought of not having met market expectations but some how the back of my mind was really heavy with the news.

Why was it so heavy? I hadn’t even met the guy. I was a consumer of just one of his products and did I find it truly amazing. When I came back after my internship the ubiquitous white ear phones dangled from the ears of every other student I passed. Never before had there been a device that let you scroll through your playlists with such ease that you just wanted to keep scrolling. Never had there been a device that had as sleek and stunning a body as the iPod 5G’s all metal solid body. And today what strikes me the most is that every product launch that Apple was going to have in the succeeding years perfectly fit the punch line “Never before had there been…”

It wasn’t until a couple of years after I had graduated that I realized how each of the Apple products focused on just one central characteristic – consumer experience. The way it transformed the entire experience of consuming digital media is something beyond the vision that anybody could have, anybody except Steve Jobs. It is because of his ability to identify a need that even the consumers couldn’t that led to the beginning of a whole new era in consumer electronics. In fact, one cannot even call it a need. Simply put, with the iPod, it was just a mechanism to enrich the experience while going through the mundane process of browsing and listening to music and Jobs took it to a whole new level. It was his creative brilliance that pumped out a product year after year with each one designed way into the future and surpassing the then standards of any existing device. From the classic iPods to iPod nano, shuffle, video and then the quantum leap towards the iPhone and an even higher leap to the iPad, the streak just didn’t seem to end, but it did, or so it seems.

Jobs was a perfectionist. At least as far as the quality of the products he unveiled goes. He had a keen eye for detail and played a key role to develop the immaculate look and feel of each of his products. So strong was his design vision that he not only led Apple to procure a number of design patents but also prominently featured in many of them. A few of them credited to his name that were pivotal for Apple’s success were the lanyard for iPod headsets, the single enclosed design of the iMac, the revolutionary touch-wheel and even as minute aspects as the packaging of each of the devices. The complete process was intended to impart a unique identity to each of the product that was to be revealed as soon as the consumer began to unpack. He had brilliantly developed such a deep understanding of human cognition and the existing technology that he marvelously infused them as if he could foresee the digital future. He left no stone unturned in securing the availability of the best and state-of-the-art technology to test the prototypes and assemble the final device. So dedicated was Job’s approach and so impeccable was his vision that he spent about $150MM on developing the first working prototype of the iPhone. And that is not something hard to believe when you imagine that the entire phone navigation had to be mandated by a single touch. And here is where the design mapped the need, what a person would want to do, to a comprehensive screen with different display sections and an intuitive action to achieve the objective. The interactions were so articulately placed and sequenced that it wasn’t shipped with a manual to understand. So inclusive was the device, so smooth, intuitive, engaging and fast was the navigation and so effortless was its administration that one could not imagine its absence in the first place.

Even after being credited with being a pioneer in unleashing the next era of consumer electronics he was often criticized for exercising extravagant control and for his authoritative management style. And that clearly distinguishes Apple from the rest of the tech firms where freedom of speech and encouragement for creative thinking form the firm’s backbone. Featuring in a number of Apple patents bears testimony to the fact that Jobs was involved at each stage of the product development cycle and his enduring vision laid the foundation for each success. Even after maintaining exclusivity of his products and shielding his technology from the ‘open’ world he leveraged his marketing genius to find a way to inject his innovations into our lives. Erecting the entire foundation on iTunes and then creating a window’s portable version was a master move that quietly brought Apple at the helm of the digital electronics industry. In retrospect it seems trivial but it was nevertheless a brilliantly thought out move that propelled the iPod to one of the most successful products of all times. That provided Apple with a strong and loyal consumer base and, coupled with a multifunctional iTunes platform, a stepping stone to launch the next device. With the iPhone Jobs defined a whole new set of standards of communication, entertainment and lifestyle. He then seamlessly integrated a development platform for the iPhone that worked as a self sustainable unit providing the developers with a huge market to sell their applications and the consumers an array of tools to transform their phones into schedulers, gaming units, browsers or multimedia stations. Although he had an extremely talented team at his disposal, it was his foresight that primarily guided the entire organization. This imparted a secretive nature to all projects with unrelated teams having no clue about the bigger picture, to the extent that even the board was sometimes left in the dark to preserve the information that could compromise the hype for an Apple launch that was unparalleled in the industry and eagerly awaited. It remains a question whether such a model would thrive in Jobs’ absence and how it would affect the functioning of the company that rose through the ashes solely on the back of that model.

Without a doubt Jobs can be credited with pioneering the next generation in electronics. Moore’s law has been at work to crunch down the space that circuits occupy that blessed us with the era of personal computing and further paved way for the development of laptops, net books and then cell phones. But it was Jobs who added an emotional element to these devices, packaged them with an aesthetic appeal and transformed them into devices that worked on intuition. With every product Apple launched it lured the existing and established companies to create clones to cash in on the rewards only to retract back later when they were unable to outpace the spearhead. Even Microsoft made a futile attempt to replicate the success of iPods but it miserably failed in capturing any market share and its hope sank in the ripples that Apple created. “Good artists copy but great artists steal” is a motto that Jobs shamelessly upholds and the evidence of which can also be found in Apple Lisa that incorporated the GUI design that Jobs “stole” from Xerox in 1979 during one of his visits to the company. With the iPod, he was shrewd enough to cunningly steal the throne of music industry from Sony that had set its stronghold with over 200 million units sold of its flagship Walkman players. And then, with the iPhone, he defined a whole new paradigm in the wireless industry. iPhone completely changed the way communications was defined. So high had Jobs set his demands with the wireless service providers over the control of the service, the modifications to incorporate iPhone and the cut from sales that they struggled between choosing their control and the lagging voice service or the lucrative data service. Eventually, after even contemplating becoming a reseller of wholesale minutes, the stage was set. As soon as the revolutionary design was brought into the world it created frenzy and consumers thronged AT&T stores to get their hands on the trend setter. It created a multi billion dollar market and vested the power in the hands of the consumers. It took some time for the entire industry to assess the impact of this launch while AT&T worked to unclog its networks to allow the ever increasing traffic of consumers loyally switching their providers to work on the iPhone. Watching this trend sparked off another frenzy in the wireless industry that led all frontline manufacturers rethink their strategy and respond to the new sensation, touch, with HTC, Samsung and Nokia coming up with their own versions. This area became so hot that even Google dived in with the acquisition Android, an open source mobile OS. It even acquired Motorola for $12bn, $12 BILLION, to safeguard its position and, probably, with the hope to strengthen its development of an integrated device that can match the stature of iPhone. Although iPhone 4S again set records with sales topping ~3 million over the first weekend, it remains to be seen how far Apple can survive in the fierce competition without its visionary.

All said and done, Apple is not going to be the same without Jobs. The world is not going to be the same without Jobs. With his design acumen, his marketing prowess and his foresight he has left an indelible mark that has made the world a better place to live. He has left behind a great legacy not just in the form of Apple but also with his stereotypical design thinking that stresses the importance of customer experience and stretches the boundaries of technology to achieve it. It is the loss of such an attitude, such an innovative and visionary mind, such a pioneer and such an independent thinker that makes me grieve. It’s heartening to see him depart when he seemed, when Apple seems, to be at its peak. No matter how defining the next technology is and how closely it connects with the consumer’s emotions, no one deserves to reveal it to the world, no one can, in the way he did. That image of Jobs in his trademark black turtleneck, Levis 501 denims and sneakers holding the next big thing will forever be engraved in my mind.

R.I.P Steve Jobs.