“Have you ever purposely misled a customer? The public? The media? Steve Jobs did,” Gene Marks writes for Entrepreneur. “And he did it to change the world.”
“The story goes back to 2007, when Apple was first introducing the iPhone. Jobs knew that he had a product that would have an enormous impact on the way humans use technology — and also have an enormous impact on his company’s future profits,” Marks writes. “Unfortunately, Jobs had a big problem: the iPhone didn’t really exist.”
“Yet in January of that year, he planned to demo the iPhone to an audience at the company’s Macworld conference that included customers, partners, tech media… and the world. All he had to show them was a flawed, unfinished model and some big ideas. So what did Jobs do? He decided to mislead his audience,” Marks writes. “Jobs demanded a workaround that would fool the audience. His development team created a ‘golden path’ which was basically a step by step, scripted procedure of features that he could show in a specific order so that the phone wouldn’t malfunction.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: After all of the misleading that so much of the tech media has done for decades and continues to do to this day regarding Apple, it should be a legal requirement for any Apple CEO to mislead the tech media as much as possible.
And, Jobs was “misleading” anyone. He knew what he’d approve to ship and that is exactly what he previewed. Demos of products that are still in development are routine in the tech industry.
Hardly any different than demoing a supposedly finished product that then doesn’t work which is what most other companies tend to do.
Agree. Microsoft would learn of cool, independent software, then preempt customers with an announcement that Microsoft, themselves, would _of course_ be launching their very own version of the same software …and THEN Microsoft would tell its software teams to go create it. Monkey see, monkey do. It was a clearly abuse of Microsoft’s OS monopoly. Much easier to follow than to lead…
What Apple did was showcase a totally new product category concept that was already well into its development phase. And they did so without skitching anyone else. It was not at all the type of shenanigans Microsoft engaged in.
Has anyone been able to build a customised drone and order it online using a HoloLens yet? Now that was some misleading bullshit.
Yeah, this statement is nonsense:
Jobs had a big problem: the iPhone didn’t really exist
Obviously, it did. But it was apparently in an ‘alpha’ state such that it was just learning how to walk, to use a metaphor. Or rather, the software and/or hardware wasn’t ready for prime time or demo time without hand holding.
Does that ever happen in the computer field? Yes, constantly.
*MISLED
not mislead.
The reason for misleading, because afraid of copy cats?.
Clickbait vapid article. How is it misleading? That a beta has bugs that he didn’t show? Anyone was free to take that same “golden path” using the then alpha, not even beta, version of the software. Bs article making a point so vapid and pleased with itself as passing off some kind of insight. It ain’t.
I completely agree.
As someone who has both participated in early stage, public demonstrations and witnessed them as an audience member, I can say without hesitation that we all know that these demonstrations are tightly scripted. Virtually none of them are freeform.
Why? Because even in thoroughly tested hardware and software there are always unknown bugs, and it’s virtually guaranteed that a freeform demonstration will stumble across one of those unknown bugs bringing the entire demonstration to its knees.
The iPhone software was not even in Beta stage at that point. It’s like a demonstration of Pink back in 1990. It showed what was going to be possible. Unfortunately, unlike Steve who shepherded the iPhone into a great final product (after a few iterations), Scully never really got behind Pink and the CEOs after him were no better.
The author claiming that a very tightly scripted demonstration of a pre-tested series of events to avoid crashes in public is “misleading” the public and tech media is 100% bullshit.
” I can say without hesitation that we all know that these demonstrations are tightly scripted.”
a.k.a. -Bullshit!
It’s one thing to convey an idea through a scripted speech, and entirely another for a scripted speech to describe a real existing complete product.
I will give you this, the BS at that time did turn into reality.
Plenty of companies fudge up a demo to generate interest in a new product, but only a very few are able to deliver that working product exactly as promised a few months later.
He just didn’t want to make a fool of himself like bill gates did at several of his rollouts of windows stuff.
It was always great cuz someone(s) at the demo would always yell, ‘get a Mac’ !
Apple who demos an unfinished (but very real and ultimately world-changing) product six whole months before launch, vs Google who has us all using beta versions of their products for years, vs Microsoft who has us using ill-concieved buggy shrink-wrapped software for decades.
Wasn’t the introduction of the Mac much the same? It didn’t really work, but they got a demo to make it look like it worked… Or was that just in one of the Jobs movies that have come out?
How is it misleading to give a staged and scripted demo of an early beta of a piece of software that wouldn’t be released for another 6 months? Every tech company does this when demonstrating beta software. You don’t just get up on stage with beta software and “wing it” and press whatever you want. You have a script, and you demo the stuff that works not the stuff that doesn’t. Scandal!
WOW! Now I understand Google and samsung…
They want to mislead the public, but in their case, they forgot to shift the actual finished product and they shipped the demo units.
The industry does this routinely. With Jobs, there was one major notable difference: you never knew it. Because what Jobs showed was exactly what the device delivered later. His presentations were almost always flawless, the devices he was unveiling worked smoothly and beautifully on stage. And when they hit the stores, they work exactly as demoed — flawlessly.
Unlike others; some demos may be flawless, some may not, but the final product may or may not have the features demoed, and it will more often than not be quite different from what was shown.
Jobs’s bar has always been set quite higher. Others may have tolerated many more bugs in final product and embarrassing crashes or freezes during demos (Gates’s legendary freeze of his Windows Home Theatre PC on live TV), but not with Apple.
And there was, and continues to be, the difference.
Did Steve Jobs lie? No. Did he defraud anyone? No.
Did he outline a sublime future? Yes.
iPhone performed as demoed by Steve, so why label as misleading????
Plus Steve did mention one interesting but important reason for the 6-month delay: a commitment to improving the security features on the iPhone. Even then, Steve was being Prescient.
Headline should say “misled.”
This’golden path’ is now kind of a legend. It has been recounted in books (Isaacson?) And latest the new iPhone book. This isn’t news. It’s history. Clickbait.