Name: Steve Jobs - Get Much Simpler, Be Really Clear - Sept. 23, 1997
Uploaded: 2026-02-22T22:19:24.000Z
Duration: 5 min 28 s
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The imperative

We were up till 3 o' clock last night finishing this advertising up and I want to show it to you in a minute, see what you think of it.

I've been back about eight to 10 weeks and we've been working really hard.

And what we're trying to do is not something really highfalutin.

We're trying to get back to the basics of great products, great marketing and great distribution.

And I think that Apple has pockets of greatness, but

in some ways has drifted away from doing the basics really well.

We looked at the product roadmap going out from for a few years and we said a lot of this doesn't make sense and it's way too much stuff and there's not enough focus.

And so we actually got rid of 70% of the stuff on the product roadmap.

I couldn't even figure out the damn product line.

After a few weeks I kept saying, what is this model?

And I started talking to customers and they couldn't figure it out either.

And so you're going to see the product line get much simpler and you're going to see the product line get much better.

And there's some new stuff coming out that's incredibly nice.

In addition, we've been able to focus a lot more on the 30% of the gems and add some new stuff in that is going to take us in some whole new directions.

So we are incredibly excited about the products and I think we're really thinking differently about the kinds of products we have to build.

And the engineering team is incredibly exciting.

I mean, I came out of the meeting with people that had just gotten their projects canceled and they were three feet off the ground with excitement because they finally understood where in the heck we were going and they were really excited about the strategy.

In the same way we, I think, have not been as we have not kept up with innovations in our distribution.

I'm sure it was talked about this morning.

But you know, we've got anywhere from two to three months of inventory in our manufacturing supplier pipeline and about an equal amount in our distribution channel pipeline.

So we're having to make guesses 4, 5, 6 months in advance about what the customer wants and we're not smart enough to do that.

I don't think Einstein is smart enough to do that.

So what we're going to do is get really simple and start taking inventory out of those pipelines.

So we can let the customer tell us what they want and we can respond to it super fast.

And you're going to see us be doing a lot of things like that.

Today is just the first of many things we're going to be doing with you.

So we're going to be not only, I think, catching up to where the best of the best are in distribution, but

we're going to actually be innovating and be breaking some new ground, I think, in the coming several months.

And I'm pretty excited about that as well, in the distribution, manufacturing side of things.

And that gets us to the marketing side of things.

And we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us.

And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.

Now, Apple, fortunately, is one of the half a dozen best brands in the whole world.

Right up there with Nike, Disney, Coke, Sony.

It is one of the greats of the greats, not just in this country, but

But even a great brand needs investment and caring if it's going to retain its relevance and vitality.

And the Apple brand has clearly suffered from neglect in this area in the last few years, and

The way to do that is not to talk about speeds and feeds.

It's not to talk about mips and megahertz.

It's not to talk about why we're better than Windows.

The dairy industry tried for 20 years to convince you that milk was good for you.

And then they tried Got Milk and the sales have gone like this.

Got Milk doesn't even talk about the product.

Matter of fact, it focuses on the absence of the product.

one of the greatest jobs of of marketing the universe has ever seen, is Nike.

And yet when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company in their ads, as you know, they don't ever talk about the products.

They don't ever tell you about their air soles and why they're better than Reebok's air soles.

They honor great athletes and they honor great athletics.

You'd never know it, you'd never know it.