Steve Jobs’ product development philosophy

NC.: Where do great products come from?

JOBS: I think really great products come from melding two points of view—the technology point of view and the customer point of view. You need both. You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new. It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we’d given customers what they said they wanted, we’d have built a computer they’d have been happy with a year after we spoke to them—not something they’d want now.

INC.: You mean the technology is changing too fast.

JOBS: Yeah, and customers can’t anticipate what the technology can do. They won’t ask for things that they think are impossible. But the technology may be ahead of them. If you happen to mention something, they’ll say, “Of course, I’ll take that. Do you mean I can have that, too?” It sounds logical to ask customers what they want and then give it to them. But they rarely wind up getting what they really want that way.

Full article here.

Adobe Creative Suite CS5

Our Moove team visited MediaPro conference some time ago, in November 2010. Uff, the time flies!

I’ve been really impressed then by the Adobe’s efforts to stay the course despite Apple’s efforts to wipe out Flash from the web.

So what is it that Adobe does now? What they have always been doing!

Imagine there used be print as the main “marketing” medium - and to help designe’s Adobe brought Photoshop and InDesign to enable them to design business cards, flyers, brochures that were eventually printed on paper. Then technology improved and we had the Internet.  Adobe introduced Dreamweaver, Director and Flash. Great, now we don’t want flash anymore nor Director. What do we want then? We want tools that will allow non-programmers and designers to create apps for Iphone, Ipad and other smart phones. Is it a remote dream? Why should it be? Website designing or flash animations  also used to be for hardcore programmers only until companies like Adobe developed tools making it easy to create stunning animations without the knowledge of any programming language.

Now we have the Adobe Creative Suite CS5 that makes the transition: helping designers to move from print and flash to smart phone devices… InDesign CS5 can now create and export interactive magazine for iPad and other devices using the Adobe Digital Magazine Solution.

I find it truly inspirational that this company does not sleep just to become one of those who forgot to innovate and one day finds itself forgotten in the history.

So the business lesson of today is: make sure you keep in touch with current trends (business, technology, your industry-specific) and that you innovate (your products, processes, everything). Not because everyone else is doing, but because who’s not doing it will be out of the game soon.

iPhone OS 3.0 SDK

Apple introduce the new iPhone OS 3.0 Software and with that also the new SDK, which is a Software Developer Kit for iPhone.

SDK allows developers to use all advanced features of iPhone mobile as well as its new operating system.

I have to admit, I have been captivated by the Keynote presentation and am hooked up: I would love to try to develop my own application for the iPhone!

If you too are developing for the iPhone and/or have some ideas for new applications, drop me a line!