[wpietri]

I would bet cash money that Dell, etc, could do just as poorly with equally good engineers. With differences that persist this long and are this far-reaching, I think you have to look at culture, process, and values.

For all Jobs' flaws, he built an amazing culture around valuing user experience and putting that first. That's extremely hard to do, especially with a dominant business culture that instead values things like individual performance metrics, quarterly profit numbers, and low labor costs. The average piece of consumer electronics gets 3-7 physical prototypes before launch; the iPod had over 100. That's not down to the caliber of engineers or line managers.

[symlinkk]

I think “culture” and “management” kind of bleed into each other, because at the end of the day you’re going to do whatever the manager tells you to do. If they tell you to make 100 more prototypes until you perfect the iPod, you’ll do it. If they tell you what we have isn’t perfect but it’s good enough, then you’ll go with that.

[wpietri]

I think doing only what managers say is a fine example of bad culture. People who have been trained to not care can make a hundred prototypes and still not make anything great. People who believe that the organization will support them in making something great for the users will push to do more prototypes until they get it really right.