Agreed entirely. Though lately, I've heard a lot of people invoke what I'll call the "Steve Jobs Defense" in response to the author's point. Roughly speaking, the logic goes that Steve Jobs never asked customers what they wanted; he didn't believe they knew what they wanted until he made it for them.

This is dangerous thinking, first and foremost, because it's somewhat untrue. Steve Jobs may have shunned focus groups, but he didn't ignore market research altogether. He didn't leap blindly into new markets; in fact, the vast majority of his company's "inventions" were simply brilliant iterations on existing pieces of technology. Apple certainly made markets, but it didn't invent those markets out of whole cloth. Steve couldn't have launched the iPod and iTunes without understanding how people consumed music -- even if he planned to change how they did so. Likewise, he couldn't have launched the iPhone without a thorough understanding of the dynamics of the carrier and customer sides of the mobile business. And so on, and so forth.

>Steve Jobs may have shunned focus groups, but he didn't ignore market research altogether.

Right. Steve Jobs was brilliant because he let his competitors do his market research for him. There's a good reason that Apple is never the first into any market. The first entrant into the market makes a lot of mistakes. Apple sits back, observes the initial entrants, and only enters the market once the initial entrants have demonstrated that the market is viable and technically feasible to enter.

I politely disagree. Apple may not be the company to dream up the abstract idea of what the market might be, but it has a longstanding history of being the first to capitalize on it, which could be read as "first to market".

Tablets were around before the ipad. But they sucked. Portable mp3 players were around before the ipod, but they sucked. smartphones, laptops (that were hyper portable), and personal computers were around before Apple got into any of these markets. Apple's strength lies in tapping into the abstract idea of what a market could be and fully realizing it's potential. Of ushering these large complex machines and ideas into reality where non-technical people can not just interact with them but see the beauty in them too, just as any engineer would. They serve the ultimate market--the general, non-technical public.

I would say that's first to market, because early adopters aren't the market necessarily--for many things they're an experimental group that you use to figure out what to bring to everyone else.

Apple has its share of faults, but being a "me too" company sure ain't one of em.

Oh, I wasn't trying to imply that at all. I was saying that Apple lets its competitors do the technical and feasibility research for them by releasing half-baked products that are rejected by the market for various reasons. In the meantime they're iterating behind closed doors. End result: they launch right as the competition gives up on the market.

I agree with you Jonathan.

The Steve Jobs defence has some validity to it. However, everyone isn't Steve Jobs..

Additionally, having a track record of creating things that people wanted helps immensely in justifiably invoking the Jobs clause.

But most people aren't Steve Jobs. They aren't on their second, or third, or fifth great product.

Even then, Steve Jobs had the deep enough pockets to have some spectacular failures (Cube mac, etc) on the way to getting it right.

Do startups have the deep pockets to spectacularly fail, or believe in their own legends a little too much?

I'm not so sure, but look forward to reading the thoughts here.

Down voter(s); mind typing what you disagreed with, or what rule of HN this violated? Still learning, thanks.

Steve Jobs was wrong a lot too. He just had the resources to carry through thanks to early successes.