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Comment by kenjackson | Hacker News Reader

Regarding your tablet story, which is obviously fictional, but I think raises a good point. Apple was originally working on a tablet, before the iPhone. Someone (maybe Jobs) decided that a phone would be better use of the technology today.

Imagine a world where they release the iPad in 2007 w/ no app store. That tablet gets slaughtered in the market. It may well prevent the iPhone from ever getting made, much less given special privileges from ATT.

The simple act of saying, "Not a tablet... not yet" may have been the difference between the greatest turnaround in corporate history and who knows what.

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The turn around began before '07, and it wasn't the iPhone that started it. But that is a good point, Ill bet the story would have been quite different if the iPad came first.

...ah, but that's the whole point! The iPad could never have come out before the iPhone because it wasn't perfect yet.

In fact, were the iPad under development at a different company, it probably would have been released in '07. The logic and reasoning from the top execs would have been: "Well, we know we will sell some. We'll probably make back our investment and then some! Besides, working out all of the kinks will take another 3 years and billions of dollars. Who wants to do that?"

This is what annoys me about most people's understanding of MVP. I see too many companies whose approach is: "Here's our thing. It does these 10 things. Each feature works. SHIP IT!"

Instead, the Apple approach is:

ENGINEER: "Here's our thing. It does 10 things."

MANAGER: "Does thing 1 work 100% of the time?"

ENGINEER: "Um...more like 85%"

MANAGER: "Is thing 2 so intuitive that your Grandma could explain it to me?"

ENGINEER: "Well...there's still 5 panels of configuration required..."

(...time passes...)

MANAGER: "Make it do 1 thing."

ENGINEER: "But, but..."

MANAGER: "And it better do that 1 thing better than any damn product even GOD could create!"

ENGINEER: "Ok!"

This is what worries me about Apple post Steve Jobs. While I am almost totally certain that there are people in the company with all the vision and creativity of Steve, I don't think anyone else has the clout to pivot the company on a dime the way Steve did.

I think you're wrong. The last couple pivots weren't even his (though I understand that they did have his approval).

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