We all know that Steve Jobs is obsessed with crafting top-notch customer experiences. Of course, he’s famous for being dismissive of focus groups, but did you know he spies on customers at his local Apple Store?
Better than that, he hides in the bushes outside the store carefully watching what’s going inside, like some black-turtlenecked Jane Goodall.
According to Louis Corso, a former employee at the Apple Store Stanford:
“We would find him hiding behind the bushes or around the corner outside, peering inside to see what was going on. We would go, ‘There’s Steve! Everybody play cool.’ We thought he was evaluating us. It was nerve-wracking.”
But Steve wasn’t spying on the employees, he was carefully watching what the customers were up to. “He was directly observing how customers acted around his products and teasing out what they believed about his company. He was staying in touch, albeit from a slightly comic distance,” says the The ZURBlog, which reported Corso’s story.
The New York Times also noted that Jobs visits the store frequently to get a feel of what’s going on.
Here’s Steve in 2004 posing with a customer at the Stanford Apple Store:
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
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Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
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89 responses to “Steve Jobs Hides In Bushes To Spy On Customers”
It might seem a bit odd for the guy to do this but that fact that he places such value on trying to understand the customer from the customer’s perspective (which lately has been referred to as user instead) rather then the corporate perspective is telling. It’s too bad he never started a band.
Sto lat Steve!
then he would understand that Apple needs to lower their prices.
That guy blinked. Picture ruined. Man, hope Jobs gets better soon. The man and Apple have changed the landscape of consumer technology over and over. He deserves some rest and peace of mind.
Although, I would love for Apple to sell their products at a lower price I disagree with you that Apple “needs” to lower their prices. This is a free market and as such companies charge what people are willing to pay. Apple has no issues selling products at the current price points, so why in the world would they lower their prices? I like Apple products and I can afford to buy them, so I do. I don’t upgrade every time they release a new version (I’m still using a Gen 1 iPod Touch) but I have quite a few Apple products in my home.
So I hate to be rude, but Apple doesn’t need to lower their prices, you may “need” them to (and I would like them to) but they don’t need to.
No they don’t, and their generally rising statistics prove such. If anything needs to change, it’s your own attitude about money.
Just as Apple has proven throughout these economic hard times that it is possible to not only weather the storm, but to be indeed prosperous, Steve is also showing us how a top executive can and should be involved at all levels of a company’s operations. After all, it would be much more difficult to “hide in the bushes” if he were wearing $5K suits. . .and just where would he park his Phantom?
Apple regularly lowers its prices. Over and over again. They also boost the power for their devices without raising prices, which, while not exactly the same, is similar. So your complaint is false to fact.
But that, of course, is not what you mean. You mean that Apple should lower their prices so that you can buy a Mac for the same price that a company who slaps an Intel motherboard in a box and bundles it with Windows charges. Or a tablet maker who goes off and buys an OS from google–even if it’s not ready for tablet use. But who cares if the hardware and software are badly integrated? It’s not overpriced like Apple!
Apple’s more expensive process yields better results, that millions of people are willing to pay for.
I love it!! Despite Steve’s superstar status, he’s just a guy like you and me, and really interested in what people think of his products. I’ve done my own “hiding in the bushes” at the Apple Store by bringing up a web site I’ve designed for a client on one of the display Macs and leaving it up on the screen to see what people do with it when they walk up. It’s an interesting experiment to see how people react to what I design.
About the photo of Steve: I’m now so used to his current emaciated condition that he looks almost a bit strange to have that much flesh on his bones. Do well Steve. The world needs you to continue your amazing leadership of Apple.
MBWA. Plain and simple.
LOL.
I bought a MacBook 4 years ago and I still call it my new computer because it is so fast. My total cost of ownership for this period is $299 per year. Since I plan on keeping it for at least another 2 years, that will drop to $199. Tell me of another computer that will last as long with that kind of performance. If you can’t afford to just step out and buy it on impulse, start saving.
More CEOs should be in touch with what’s happening at a customer level in their business.
Niche market…Higher profit margins…Better quality products…Happier more loyal customers…More repeat business…$40B plus in cash reserves…Priceless business model.
I don’t see any positives to lowering prices.
I do see numerous negatives though.
More customer service requests…Increased presure on Chinese suppliers and their employees…Higher pressure on logistics…Higher pressure sales tactics for retail employees…Unpleasant customer experiences in retail stores…Lower profit margins…Lower quality control…Security issues with OS…Mass market…Fewer happy and loyal customers…Less repeat business…Massive reduction in cash reserves.
Ah, yes! Makes sense. Perhaps everything could be even so much better if only Apple would double or triple their prices.
Less suicides per Chinese worker. More of a niche market, so even fewer viruses. Outstanding profit margins. Prestige for the customer. Fewer service requests (fewer customers). Maybe even specially priced editions to match the upholstery in your Bugatti. This could work…
LOL
this supports the speculation that he is a ninja
Hogwash! The “market” will determine Apple’s prices, and I’m damned happy Steve Jobs acts in that manner!
Where’s Waldo? ;-)
Steve should just do an episode of Undercover Boss. That’s ratings gold! Gold, I tell ya!
Get yourself a 64GB SSD for about $120 on sale, and your MacBook will be good to go for a couple more years. It really gooses performance.
IMO, doubling or tripling prices is counter to Steve’s vision for Apple and the customers that they want to serve. Apple isn’t Microsoft or IBM and doesn’t want to be. Hopefully Steve’s vision remains after he leaves the company.
And yes, my aluminum unibody MacBook Pro does go nicely with my Ford Explorer Sport Trak even though the two hardly ever meet.
May his “spying” continue for years and years… decades, in fact.
why… u get what you pay for !! Yes they are a little more expensive, however the quality of product and services more than make up for that price difference.
Imagine having someone snap the photo you probably never dreamed of getting – and finding out you were closing your eyes.
How does Steve manage to always have a five days growth of whiskers on his face. Does he shave and go into hiding for four days and then reappear like the groundhog on the fifth day, then shave, hide, reappear, etc., etc.?
I don’t really care as long as he gets better soon and does his usual great Job(s).
No one seems to notice what I think is Steve Jobs’ greatest accomplishment. When the iPod came out, boom boxes vanished. He should get the Nobel Peace and Quiet Prize for sparing us from overly loud portable public music.
read your comment ‘boom boxes vanished’ made me think about packaging or lack of excessive packaging around apple products
Wow… haven’t seen/heard THAT acronym for a while…
The real question here is, would Tim Cook, Phil Schiller or anyone else on Apple’s CEO succession plan have the natural desire to do this? My guess is no. And this is why the names on any succession plan really don’t matter that much. Who can honestly and truthfully “replace” Steve Jobs?
C’mon! Apple must have those stores wired so Steve can see and hear every customer from Tarzana to Timbuktu!
I was kind of hoping for a picture of him in the not so bushy bushes.
This is not just some guy. I am 95% confident this is Dan’l Lewin. He was the head of sales for the Macintosh University Consortium program back in the 1980s, then the co-founded NeXT with Steve in 85. He was head of marketing at NeXT for like 7 years, then he left for Microsoft.
haha. nice
I think you’re actually wrong on that. Both Seve and Tim live in my neighborhood and both literally hang out in the store independent of each other. I don’t know that Tim isn’t “asked” to do due diligence but I get the sense not.
But, David, your reply is basically saying, “Tim Cook would be a great substitute for Steve Jobs.” I don’t need to live in the neighborhood to know such a sentiment is not correct. Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs cannot truly be replaced. That was and still is my point. It’s far more than just “watching one’s retail stores.”
Management By Walking Around, in case there was mystery
The “customer” in the picture is not just a customer, he is Dan’l Lewin, Corporate Vice President, Strategic and Emerging Business Development of Microsoft.
I think the main thing to note here is that Steve Jobs, a man who has a lot of things on his plate, took the time to do this himself.
Didn’t farm it out or hire someone to gather whatever information he was looking for.
I honestly don’t know what he was trying to do but if Steve Jobs thought it was so important that he did this personally there should be a whole lot of other CEOs hiding in the bushes in front of their retail stores.
And yet, someday … hopefully much latter than sooner … someone will indeed have to take over the CEO position at Apple.
Actually the suicide rate of the Chinese workers that make Apple products is 10X less than the suicide rate of the Chinese population at large. In about five minutes on the internet you can easily verify these numbers … start with WHO statistics on worldwide suicide rates. Then you can actually talk facts and stop parroting bogus information.
And the sky is blue. And the world spins round and round.
Apple will always need a CEO to head it. No one disputes the facts. But once again, the point is that Apple is Steve Jobs. Whomever else at Apple today who replaces Steve Jobs can only succeed him, not replace him. The Apple of the future without Jobs will not be the same as the Apple we have now with Jobs. Those who think it will be a “better” future lack understanding about how tightly Jobs and Apple have been woven together. Those folks may be optimists, but they lack understanding about what has truly made Apple the single greatest company in the world. And can those who lack understanding in this regard be truly capable of picking an appropriate successor to Steve Jobs?
To contend that Steve Jobs has become “institutionalized permanently” is to not giving Jobs enough credit. It degenerates Steve Jobs’ mind into a mathematical formula that can be reproduced or emulated. Such thinking is a slap in the face to Jobs’ creativity, and denies the power of his insane greatness.
Tim Cook would make a great CEO of a large company, especially so because of his close friendship and working relationship with Steve Jobs. But a “great CEO” is not what made Apple what it is today. Steve Jobs doesn’t even have an MBA for crying out loud. Much of the insanity that drives Steve Jobs to greatness is exclusive to Steve Jobs. I’ve not seen anything similar in an MBA-wielding CEO or corporate leader in the last two decades.
Whatever leader comes after Jobs will need to have the same fire and zeal, the same insanity for greatness that makes one truly believe that he or she is truly making a Dent in the Universe. Without that, you will simply have another dime-a-dozen CEO and another ordinary company and another set of ordinary products.
Interesting and useful post
And my ipad goes even better with my 3.8 litre pajero on the sand dunes of Dubai.
sad bastards
I miss you Steve…
He was a s Syrian mole.