{"id":43204,"date":"2011-10-06T08:31:50","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T12:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=43204"},"modified":"2011-10-06T08:31:50","modified_gmt":"2011-10-06T12:31:50","slug":"steve-jobs-and-the-lesson-for-detroit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2011\/10\/steve-jobs-and-the-lesson-for-detroit\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Jobs and the Lesson for Detroit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When he was once asked who he most admired, Steve Jobs pointed to Henry Ford and Walt Disney.\u00a0 No surprise.\u00a0 They both had the ability to give people what they wanted, often before they knew it.\u00a0 And perhaps that was what we\u2019ll remember Jobs for most, rather than any individual technological breakthrough.<\/p>\n

Not that he didn\u2019t have plenty of those, starting with the original Apple I computer and working up to the new iPhone 4S, released just days before the 56-year-old executive\u2019s death after years of battling pancreatic cancer.<\/p>\n

Jobs hadn\u2019t even been born yet when the founder of IBM famously declared that there would likely be a market for no more than a handful of computers in the entire world.\u00a0 Working out of his adopted parents\u2019 garage with a high school chum, Steve Wozniak, Jobs set in motion a transformation that rivaled the one launched by Henry Ford.\u00a0 Today, it\u2019s difficult to find a household that doesn\u2019t own several cars \u2013 or several computers, if you include desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.<\/p>\n

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It's Free!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Moreover, we have seen the grand integration of those two machines that changed the world.\u00a0 As recently as the 1970s, when Jobs was just tinkering with his first primitive computer design, the typical automobile was a truly mechanical device.\u00a0 The only electronics onboard could be found in those tinny transistor radios.\u00a0 Today, however, the typical car contains thousands of dollars in silicon technology.\u00a0 Microprocessors operate everything from the engine to the airbags.<\/p>\n

No, Jobs wasn\u2019t responsible for most of that.\u00a0 Such technologies were already under development by the time he rolled out the original Apple I.\u00a0 But he and his team played a significant role in the transformation of the driving experience as more and more buyers opt for high-end infotainment systems.<\/p>\n

What car today doesn\u2019t offer iPhone integration, the means by which countless motorists move their personal soundtracks from home to car.\u00a0 When Mini recently introduced its Mini Connected feature, which lets it integrate a range of audio and other features into its cars it chose to develop the new technology specifically for the iPhone, with the even bigger-selling Android phones having to wait.<\/p>\n

When Hyundai launched its new Equus premium luxury sedan it turned to the then-new iPad, using it to replace the time-tested print owners manual \u2013 and also allowing owners to schedule service directly through the tablet computer.<\/p>\n

Both Chevrolet, with the Volt, and Ford, with the new Focus Electric, have developed iPhone apps that will let owners communicate with the battery cars through their iPhones \u2013 checking state of charge, for example, and setting the time to begin charging.<\/p>\n

Such technologies alone might earn Steve Jobs a shot at minor immortality in the Automotive Hall of Fame.\u00a0 But perhaps the most important thing he can offer the auto industry is more conceptual than technological: it\u2019s the idea that truly great companies don\u2019t just make great products; they make great products that consumers didn\u2019t even know they needed.<\/p>\n

Henry Ford instinctively understood that when he began work on his first car.\u00a0 Back then, most folks were happy with horse and buggy, or perhaps train and trolley.\u00a0 After all, at the turn of the 20th<\/sup> Century the average American hadn\u2019t strayed much further than 25 miles from home.\u00a0 Yet soon, we would become a nation on wheels.<\/p>\n

Henry Ford forgot that lesson in later years, keeping his Model T around long after buyers told him they wanted something new.\u00a0 But the company he founded showed it still had a visionary strain with the launch of the Sync infotainment system \u2013 developed in cooperation, it turns out, with Apple\u2019s arch-rival Microsoft.\u00a0 But by delivering something that consumers suddenly must have, Ford is again in a leadership role.\u00a0 And, like Apple, it can smugly watch as the competition races to mimic the breakthrough.<\/p>\n

Jobs, through the Mac, iPad, iPhone and Apple\u2019s other products, gave us the ability to travel further still through the limitless virtual world.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t an easy man to work with, mercurial, prone to fits of obscene rage, obsessed with secrecy.\u00a0 But he also had his name written on something like 300 individual patents.\u00a0 It’s said that no one should ever assume that they are indispensable. And it\u2019s true that none of us, commoner or king, can outlast time.\u00a0 If anything, our days are remarkably short.\u00a0 Yet, with the passing of Steve Jobs that theory will be severely tested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Jobs said the men he most admired were Walt Disney and Henry Ford. And like them both, he had a unique ability to give people what they wanted before they knew they wanted it. Best known for his consumer electronics, Jobs also helped transform the car, reports TheDetroitBureau.com – while also offering a lesson today’s auto leaders should take to heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43204"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=43204"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=43204"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=43204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}