Introduction to the August 2011 Knowledge Letter

The big news this month is of course the resignation of Steve Jobs. I am a PC boy though I do love my iPhone and am increasingly tempted to convert and buy a MacBook Air. I am not too sure that what I have read about Steve Jobs that I would have liked to work for him. But I hugely admire what he has achieved and I think there is so much we can all learn from him. You may recall I blogged his hugely inspiring Stanford Commencement Speech a while back.

Now Euan Semple, in a recent blog post has pointed me to a quote of his that I love:

We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn't build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.

When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

Credit: Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985

Just take a look at the back of any PC laptop and compare it with a Mac laptop. I have never been able to figure out whey other manufacturers have not followed suit. My daughter has a Mac laptop and I often just pick it up to admire it and to feel it. Its a delight just to hold it in my hands.

If only all businesses took design so seriously. I am sure extra investment would pay off handsomely.