When Steve Jobs passed away, Bill Gates said that Jobsâs influence would be felt for âmany generations to come.â1 Tim Cook, who succeeded Jobs at Apple, went even further, speaking of âthousands of years from now.â2
History will remember Jobs for the seismic impact he had on the world of computers, especially in making them popular and accessible to all. What is also extraordinary is the way in which he was able to pivot his company several times. As Apple changed, so did its primary competitor: IBM, Microsoft, Samsung, in that order. Jobsâs influence will mark the world forever, and his thinking will inspire hundreds of innovative business models.
In 1993, a book was published about Chiat\Day, the leading Californian agency that later became part of the TBWA network. It was entitled Inventing Desire.3 Thatâs what Steve Jobs did. He invented tomorrowâs desires.
All in One
When the iPod (and later the iPhone) came out, it was a real surprise not to find any instructions inside the package. Steve Jobs believed that users of his products should be able to use them instinctively. This might seem easy, but determining the most intuitive path requires a colossal amount of work. Jobs introduced what would be later called a âseamless user experience,â known today as a âfrictionless customer experience.â Fluidity is the new norm.
At the launch of the Mac in 1984, Apple created an ad that referred to George Orwellâs novel 1984. Using the line âyouâll see why 1984 wonât be like 1984 . . .â4 Apple introduced the concept that machines should adapt to humans, not the other way around. Today, the algorithm should adapt to the user. Technology should not be constraining, ergonomics must permit fluidity of interactions. This prefigures a future when we will be truly augmented, where our intimacy with a machine will be total. The result: a world without friction between man and machine.
From stores to products, from iPods to Macs, from iTunes downloads to iPad apps, Apple masters better than anyone what physicists call the science of reciprocal actions. Apple was the first to create an ecosystem where devices interact automatically with one another, where products work together ânaturally.â As we probably all remember, it started with the iPod. The iPodâs initial pitch was very simple: â1,000 songs in your pocket,â to quote the slogan on the billboards TBWA\Chiat\Day created for Apple. The offer was the combination of iTunes, the iTunes Store, and the iPod. Photos, games, and apps came later, as users progressively adopted the platform.
Many companies around the world are now looking to create their own proprietary ecosystems, business models with elaborate architectures. Those in China are no exception. For example, hundreds of millions of Chinese have WeChat and Alipay. They use these all-in-one apps constantly to contact friends, pay bills, order taxis, reserve hotels and plane tickets, catch up on the news, or schedule appointments. In a Fast Company article about multifaceted âsuper apps,â Albert Liu, EVP of Corporate Development at Veriphone declared, âThe advantage of super lifestyle apps like Alipay or WeChat is theyâve connected incrementally more data than an app thatâs just focused on a single area. . . . There is no comparison with anything in the U.S.â5 WeChat is used on average more than 10 times a day for other things than chatting. Itâs been described as the âone app to rule them all.â This all-in-one thinking is not so far from the mindset we inherited from Steve Jobs. And this approach is now driving the smartphone explosion in China.
Back in 1983, at the International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado, Steve Jobs had already identified the huge potential of applications. A grand visionary, he predicted a future when each user would have âan incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in 20 minutes.â6 In 2007, the launch of the iPhone made all previous applications permanently outdated. Apps were presented for the first time as simple icons, accessible through a user-friendly tactile interface. In doing so, Steve Jobs created applications that were attractive and easy to use. Before then, no one could have thought that millions of apps would see the light of day in the next decade. Without the flair of Steve Jobs, and his drive to impose his vision of the future at all costs, Uber and Airbnb would probably never have existed. At least, they wouldnât exist in their current forms.
It was also in the early eighties that Steve Jobs pursued an idea that a number of his competitors disputed. As he put it, âMore and more, software is getting integrated into the hardware. . . . Yesterdayâs software is todayâs hardware. Those two things are merging. And the line between hardware and software is going to get finer and finer and finer.â7 I remember some observers at the time castigating Steve Jobs for his desire to make Apple a company that integrated both hardware and software. In his criticsâ view, this would condemn the brand to a niche market. For a while, the naysayersâ arguments were reinforced by the success of the seemingly absolute compatibility of Microsoft Windows. Itâs true that, at the beginning, Apple was the brand for a small core of believers, often from creative industries. These passionate brand advocates allowed Apple to carry on until the tipping point of 2001, which was when the iPod launched. That year Steve Jobs changed the world, opening up a new era for design.
Apple was an early adopter of what was already known as âdesign thinking,â a both analytical and intuitive approach that leads to a deeper understanding of the user experience. Apple accelerated its emergence.
Today, all tech companies follow in the footsteps of Steve Jobs. Programmers are interested in not only what machines can do, but more importantly, how they are used. Fulfilling Jobsâs predictions, the interaction between software and hardware has become the distinctive sign of business.
In the Financial Times, John Gapper commented on Googleâs project to make an entire platformâsoftware and hardwareâfor driverless cars. He said, âWithout the iPhone revolution, it is hard to imagine a technology company entering the transport industry, or designing a device that can steer cars around while receiving and transmitting streams of data.â8 The iPhone has provided tech companies with a new and unlimited world of opportunities. It was a pioneering product, helping people find ways to develop seamless hardware and software solutions that drive innovation into new spaces.
Only when hardware and software work perfectly together, can the user experience be optimized. And what is a strategy today if not to constantly seek to improve the user experience? Thatâs why, little by little, as underlined by the Harvard Business Review, âFirms started treating corporate strategy as an exercise in design.â9 This approach facilitates the resolution of more and more complicated issues, addressing large-scale problems with multistep processes. Design helps cut through complexity.
For Steve Jobs, design was not so much a physical process as a way of...