A Steve Jobs masterclass from a decade ago
> It would have been trivial for Apple at that point to hire a team or two to shoehorn a so-so version of Flash onto their devices. (This seemed like an even bigger mistake on the iPad which had just launched). But he is clear and adamant. They are going to make calls they believe are best to shape great products.I don't really think the Flash decision had anything to do with "better products," and simply ecosystem control. Apple had always wanted to keep a very tight control of any ecosystem they inhabited. From their decision to stick with PowerPC as long as they did, to their zoo of Apple-specific dongles, to the Apple Store and beyond. Steve Jobs was a genius in understanding that an ecosystem is orders of magnitudes more valuable if you, as an entity, control it. Valve is another company that did the same thing.> It takes courage to look at a feature that lots of people “want” and make the call to exclude it.This is a lot easier to do when you control the ecosystem. It's not like someone could migrate to using a Samsung-made iPad or something.> In a moment of self-deprecation/levity he quips “We never saw ourselves as in a platform war with Microsoft and maybe that’s why we lost”. It’s a quick flash of him taking himself less-seriously and it’s disarming.This is absolutely untrue, and Jobs is playing the crowd. Not only did Apple definitely see themselves in a platform war, they doubled-down on this with the iPhone. It was always about platforms. Jobs just happened to lose the first time, but he decidedly won the second.> Jobs: We are about making better products, and what I love about the consumer market that I always hated about the enterprise market, is that: we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it and every person votes for themselves. They go yes or no, and if enough of them say yes, we get to come to work tomorrow. You know that’s how it works. It’s really simple.
Whereas with the enterprise market, it’s not so simple, the people that use the products don’t decide for themselves, the people that make those decisions sometimes are confused. We love just trying to make the best products in the world for ppl and having them tell us by how they vote with their wallets whether we’re on track or not.Not sure exactly how forthright Jobs is here, but -- honest or not -- man, I just want to say this is an incredible answer and motivates me to get off my ass and go build something :)