u/EntertainerNo8195

A guy in the crowd stood up and went straight at Steve Jobs. He basically said it was sad and obvious that Jobs did not know what he was talking about, then asked what he had even been doing for the last 7 years.

Jobs could have snapped back. He could have mocked the question. He could have tried to prove the guy wrong feature by feature.

Instead, he did something much smarter.

He admitted the criticism might be fair. He said there were probably things other products did better than Apple’s products. But then he explained that comparing isolated features is the wrong way to think about building something great.

His point was that a feature only matters if it fits into a bigger product vision. The real question is not, “Can this technology do something cool?” The real question is, “Does this help create an experience customers actually want, understand, and will pay for at scale?”

Then Jobs admitted one of his own biggest mistakes: starting with the technology first, then trying to figure out who would buy it. He said the right approach is the opposite. Start with the customer experience, then work backward to the technology needed to make that experience real.

The laser printer example made the whole point simple. Apple could have talked about all the advanced engineering inside the machine, but customers did not need that pitch. Jobs said the real pitch was basically holding up the printed page and asking, “Do you want this?”

That was the lesson.

Great products are not built by showing off technology. They are built by understanding what people want, making the value obvious, and hiding the complexity behind a simple experience.

https://www.businessday.co.za/world/international-companies/2026-07-01-google-to-pay-15bn-to-klarna-in-antitrust-damages-in-sweden/

https://polymarket.com/event/us-announces-new-iran-agreementceasefire-extension-by

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/25/musk-altman-ai-rivalry-ipo?utm