Pic by Jeffrey Sharp
Fake Steve Jobs is a hero. While the real Steve is locked away running Apple and guiding breakthroughs like the iPhone, Fake Steve, who invented the friggin’ iPod, is giving revealing interviews to media organizations.
Finally, in a new interview with Engadget, Fake Steve really opens up:
I was really into NeXT, whatever happened with that?
Well, we had some issues around pricing. Like, we figured out what the product should cost, and then we multiplied that by four and set our prices that way. Turns out we were over-overpricing. When I returned to Apple we figured out how to overprice correctly. About 50% more than the reasonable price is about what people are wiling to pay to get a product that makes them cooler than everyone else. So now instedad of over-overpricing, we’re just overpricing. And as our results indicate, it’s working.
That’s why they pay this man the big bucks.
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!
