[rglover]

Steve already gave away the secret [1] (must watch) a long time ago:

"You have to work backwards from the customer experience."

AI was never going to be on Apple's roadmap in a significant way because it's in their DNA to differentiate technology from products.

[1] https://youtu.be/oeqPrUmVz-o?si=ndUU1H5D3pNifWss

[otterley]

"Working backwards" is also, famously, Amazon's philosophy. It's one of my most cherished takeaways from working there.

[justonceokay]

Once I extracted the medicine from the poison I am very glad that Amazon was my first corporate work experience. Many of the leadership principles and cultural norms there are actually very good ideas when not taken to extremes.

I remember my first meeting I went to at another company that was just a guy talking with a PowerPoint. I couldn’t believe we didn’t have the data or time to ask probing questions. We’re just supposed to take this guy for his word? Crazy

[copperx]

Please go on. You mean at Amazon you would be grilled with questions if you were the presenter?

[justonceokay]

Standard procedure at the time for a meeting was:

- no PowerPoint

- 1-6 page write up of the problem, proposed solution and timeline, and alternate methods that were not chosen

- meeting participants ideally have already read the paper, but given 10-20 minutes in silence to read and mark up their thoughts.

- presenter says their piece, mostly just summarizing the paper and clarifying tricky sections

- intellectual bloodbath as all participants try to poke holes and see around corners not foreseen by the presenter

- follow up next week, until the group/manager is satisfied about the direction of the project

[neumann]

This is great when everyone is smart, aligned in the purpose, has no politics, dog in the fight, but awful everywhere else.

It's the difference between peer review by leaders in the field trying to make your paper better, and juniors wanting to be heard or insecure academics trying to get an ego boost by nit picking and wasting time.

Intellectual bloodbath sounds like so much of the latter with point scoring being the goal.

[baxtr]

That’s a great meta point.

Intellectual honesty, saying "I don’t know", for example, is only possible in low-politics environments. Otherwise, you make yourself vulnerable to the wolves.

[baxtr]

I wonder if the 1-6 pages are all AI written nowadays and if people are allowed to use AI to summarize the pages. Anyone know?

[otterley]

You can use AI to help, but a badly-written narrative isn’t going to do the author any favors. You want to maximize the probability that your narrative will be accepted.

Summarizing with AI isn’t usually a problem, but the objective of the narrative is to gain a deep and detailed understanding of the proposal or problem described within it. The reader or decision maker often can’t do their job well unless they read the whole thing. These narratives are often thoroughly marked up with commentary during the review, sometimes every paragraph.

[Sammi]

It's almost like working with a coding agent.

[kj4211cash]

We have a bunch of Amazon transplants who newly arrived at my company and have started doing this. I thought I would love it, because I'm a good writer, a great reader, not great at PowerPoint or meeting gamesmanship, etc. Turns out I kind of hate it. The silent reading time is annoying, especially when you've already read the doc or when most people are on zoom, etc. The intellectual bloodbath doesn't happen at my company. The most senior people are given the floor and they usually spout nonsense because they haven't had time to read the doc, are miles away from the intellectual details, are too busy playing office politics, etc. And then there's just as much meeting gamesmanship as before. I was hoping decision would be more scientific but that just hasn't happened. Maybe we're doing it wrong. Maybe we've hired the Amazon rejects. I don't know. Hoping it improves.

[nh2]

Asking the grandparent:

The what is the idea behind the "ideally have already read the paper, but given 10-20 minutes in silence" part?

The fact that people that have already read it have nothing to do and waste time sitting around bored sounds like an obvious flaw, are we missing something?

[getnormality]

Wait, so, there's silent reading time that you hate, AND somehow seniors still manage to claim that they didn't read the thing?

[shepherdjerred]

AWS had great culture when I worked there, maybe they still do. The leadership principles are universal and I don't know of any other company that took their principles so seriously.

[piker]

I love this video. It's classic Steve Jobs in a real meta way.

While I agree with the thesis, the response is total reality distortion field.

He says "you have to start with the customer experience" rather than the technology.

Then he name drops 4-5 technologies that were speculative endeavors and says when Apple put them all together to make the laser printer: "we can sell this".

[vjvjvjvjghv]

"You have to work backwards from the customer experience."

To do this right, you probably need to learn from the many attempts others made before. I bet nobody knows yet what a good customer experience for AI will be. They are all still experimenting until somebody puts together all the parts in a successful package.

[paulddraper]

What was Siri?

[rglover]

A product built on government funded technology (CALO) [1].

SRI -> SiRI Inc.

[1] https://www.sri.com/75-years-of-innovation/75-years-of-innov...

[m463]

"You have to work backwards from the customer experience."

answer... ditch phone/screen, just have an earpod you talk to.

[FridgeSeal]

“Take the flexible, rich method of conveying information, and replace it with a slower, jankier, more limited and more rigid form!”

Sounds heinous, please never design the UX for a product I’ve got to use.

[basisword]

Who wants to talk to an earpod in 95%+ of real world situations? I remember the original Siri ads where a guy was configuring his schedule via Siri on a run. 15 years later and most of the world still thinks you're a doofus if you're running and talking to your voice assistant. Some things will never change.

[m463]

I've always thought they would come out with subvocal microphones that I though you could use diving or whatever.

(I don't know if they exist)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition

[coded_monkey]

I mean, one of the last big things Jobs did was buy Siri and he reportedly saw it as the next big interaction model. Apple just messed it up by letting it get progressively worse ever since.

[amelius]

> "You have to work backwards from the customer experience."

Ok. Let's try that with some basic needs. And I'm totally serious. Let's go. I am abroad, walking in a city. I look for a book store. I get my Apple phone, open maps, OK, that works.

Now I have to go to the bathroom. Hmm, is there an app for that?

How do I convert this phone into a nice and clean toilet? Stupid question you say? I'm the user, remember, and I have __one__ need right now.

Wait, I'm supposed to use maps again to find a public toilet? Chances are it's going to be smelly and dirty. Not the great UX I am looking for, Apple.

Seriously, Apple has been addressing the wrong problems for far too long now. They are not looking from the user's perspective, but rather from the viewpoint of: we have a CPU and a touchscreen and a camera, what can we make with that so that more people will buy it? And how can we sell people even more stuff __through__ it?

But of what use is a better camera if the device can't even solve basic needs?

If you want to call yourself a revolutionary company, you gotta step back and think different.

[paulhebert]

I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. You want iPhones to be able to differentiate and find clean bathrooms on the fly?

[amelius]

No I want iPhones to solve real problems users have rather than pretend my entire life happens inside a 7" screen.

"You have to work backwards from the customer experience."

[yladiz]

So you want your phone to transform into a toilet??

[nozzlegear]

Wouldn't there just be signs pointing to a public bathroom if you're abroad in a city? This is an utterly bizarre contrivance.