Over the past week I have read some great stories about Steve Jobs, a sort of software/business phoenix who rose through the ashes of being fired from the company he co-founded to coming back to bring it to a level that only he could.
Candidly, I am not a big user of Apple products, except for my iPad and iPod. While I am not a rabid fan of their products as a consumer, I am a huge fan of their product design. Running a software company, I am constantly pressured to include "features" in our roadmap because "all" users are clamoring for them. Time and time again we build these "have to have" features and they are rarely used. I then came across a great article from FastCompany (http://www.fastcompany.com/design/2011/what-can-steve-jobs-still-teach-us) that had this quote:
"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."
-- Steve Jobs
Anticipating needs before people know they are needs is incredibly hard. Creating needs before people know they have them is near impossible, but somehow Jobs and his design team have been able to do this over and over again. I hope Cook and team are able to keep this type of anticipatory product design going, although without Jobs, I don't think it's going to happen.
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