Apple’s Empathy on Trial

Pete Mortensen ()

My other blog has gone Apple this week as we close in on the launch of our book Wired to Care. I’ve just gone live on the Empath-o-Meter with a poll to rate how widespread empathy is at Apple. By empathy, I mean the ability of people inside the company to understand the needs of the folks out in the world that they’re trying to serve. As a Macophile, I obviously feel very well-served by Apple, but I have trouble knowing whether it’s because the folks inside the company really get where I’m coming from — or just that Steve Jobs has an amazing intuition for what’s going to connect with people like me.

Check it out — I’m anxious to see your votes and your comments!

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About the author

Petemortensen

Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete's particular Apple avocations are both around design--interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!

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Posted in Apple, Quickies |

  • OlsonbW

    “but I have trouble knowing whether it’s because the folks inside the company really get where I’m coming from — or just that Steve Jobs has an amazing intuition for what’s going to connect with people like me.”

    I think a lot more about that than I probably should.

    Meaning, what does Steve Jobs use? I’m assuming a Mac and iPhone of course. Maybe a classic iPod with tons of songs on it?

    But what does he REALLY use? What does he do on his Mac? How does he know what we are going to like?

    Is he connected someway to the internet to figure out what we like? It is just because it is still he likes? Does he take lots of pictures and upload them into iPhoto and was thinking, hmmm, I really would like my Mac to find all the pictures of just my wife or so and so and then go to the software group and tell them what he wants.

    Or does he do like with iMovie and wait for someone in Apple to make a demo of a app, or a totally new version of an app, and somehow get it presented to Steve (can I call him “Steve” here or is Mr. Jobs more appropriate?) who goes through a whole bunch of demos and picks out the ones he likes?

    I’m not sure on any of those. And I have a funny feeling that we never will. Unlike attention whore Bill Gates, Steve Jobs apparently couldn’t care less if you knew anything about him at all. All Steve seems to really care about is making, in his mind, the greatest hardware he can think of, and then make software just so that he can sell his hardware.

    In a lot of ways it appears to be the latter.

    As for OS X, if you go to YouTube and look at presentations Steve did of NeXT, OS X in a lot of ways is ahead of NeXT and at the same time a LONG ways behind.

    What I would love to see from Apple is a new way of programming that humans can use. I’m talking even something more relatable to humans even than Apple’s Automator. Something more like Pascal but where the compiler is a lot smarter and takes care of everything automagically behind the scenes that XCode makes the user do like memory management and linking.

    No, BASIC including Visual BASIC is not what I’m talking about. That’s like trying to put on 1970s clothing and putting on a new scarf, walking around and expecting people to think you didn’t go to some garbage dump to get your clothes.

    Yes it would take time but we need a company like Apple to bring out a new programming language that makes programming itself fun and not a twisted cruel joke of a maze to figure out your way through. A new language where your grandmother could learn how to make a Mac or iPhone application in a few days complete with interface.

    THATS what I’m talking about. Programming for the masses.

    What about “real” programmers then? Since they are so good at programming they will be able to take this new language to the ragged edge and do things that us mortals can’t.

    FYI: I used to program in COBOL, FORTRAN, RPG, BASIC, and then C in the 80s and 90s. I just got too busy doing all the other things I did (servers for instance) and no longer had time to program.

    I’d like to get back into it but I’ve always hated pointers and would rather spending my time making full sized desktop programs actually writing code that has nothing to do with memory management or telling it where to link to find this or that.

    I assumed back in the ’80s that compilers would be sophisticated enough by now for programmers now to have to use pointers and do memory management or manually linking libraries. I’m pretty stunned, and I mean it, that programmers are still stuck having to do this.

    I know all the feeble, yes feeble reasons for programmers trying to defend the reason programmers still having to do this.

    Yes I know about Ruby and so forth. When was the last time you saw someone create a Word Processing program, I mean a real one, or an adventure game, or a real spreadsheet program, using Ruby? So Ruby isn’t it either.

    I feel we are still in the dark ages. Because of the state of compilers computers are still at the Model T (or before) stage.

    I’m still waiting for ignition systems that you don’t have to retard or advance, and automatic chokes, and automatic transmissions and … and the list goes on and on and on.

    Only by brute force does the “modern” computer exist. It’s about time that brute force stops being necessary.

  • TheBrew

    The way I see it, Apple make the products that THEY want in their digital life. They want the best out of their product. Second best won’t do. And it so happens that, most of us, agree.
    In a way, I see Apple as an artist, and I could never tell an artist “Hey, play another way” or “Hey, paint this way”. I’m not saying that an artist is better than the sausage factory. We need both, but I’d leave Apple to do their stuff, and ask the factory for another flavour.
    Sure Apple, like any other comany, will jump at the opportunity to make money, so sure, there’re stone-cold decisions when it comes to marketing and sale. But the artist is the artist, let him rock.

    Peace :)