More Than Design

Designers (like me) love to talk about how successful Apple is in context of Design—software, operating system, hardware—but Apple’s popularity and profitability are due to much more than the big “D”.
This email exchange between Steve Jobs and News Corp./HarperCollins sheds light on how important negotiating (or for Jobs, not negotiating) has been to Apple (Tim Cook’s supply chain mastery is a whole other story).
Let’s face it, without content (music/movies/books) and simple content delivery mechanisms on iPads, iPhones and iPods, they’d just be beautiful hardware devices with nothing to do.
Reading Jobs’ emails reminds me of poker. When you watch a true master playing, you understand it’s more than just the cards they’re holding that determines if they win. It’s intelligence, Jedi mind tricks, attitude and confidence all combined into one.

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