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You Have to Feel It

(mitchellh.com)
359 points tosh | 8 comments | 30 Aug 25 14:38 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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kookamamie ◴[30 Aug 25 18:29 UTC] No.45076932[source]▶
> You have to feel it.

The corporate machine does not feel it.

It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead.

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Wowfunhappy ◴[31 Aug 25 01:14 UTC] No.45079464[source]▶
Whatever you think about Apple, I find it hard to believe that the team that developed the original iPhone could have done so without feeling it.

Perhaps that was just the magic of Jobs, who definitely felt things. But he didn't make the iPhone single handedly.

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1. paulryanrogers ◴[31 Aug 25 03:23 UTC] No.45080093[source]▶
I think there is some survival bias in the analysis, and that something like the iPhone was inevitable given all the experimentation going on in the market.

Apple also made the Newton. But folks don't call back to it or praise its makers very often.

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2. tempodox ◴[31 Aug 25 06:12 UTC] No.45080783[source]▶
> the Newton

I found the idea fascinating, but it was too clunky and heavy for the features it offered. I think the concept was too far ahead of its time, it couldn’t be implemented well in available tech.

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3. borski ◴[31 Aug 25 06:24 UTC] No.45080836[source]▶
Actually, I’ve found people often do praise the Newton. They lament it as being ahead of its time, but in terms of feeling it actually did have the right vibe. The tech just wasn’t there yet at the time.
4. Wowfunhappy ◴[31 Aug 25 12:03 UTC] No.45082525[source]▶
> something like the iPhone was inevitable given all the experimentation going on in the market.

I agree, but I don't think it would have been as polished as the iPhone out of the gate.

> Apple also made the Newton. But folks don't call back to it or praise its makers very often.

As a sibling comment mentioned, I think the Newton was perhaps better than you're giving it credit for, but my point isn't that Apple makes great products, it's that it's possible at certain times for certain teams within large companies to "feel it".

Perhaps entertainment could be another example. Do you think the team that made Wall-E didn't "feel it"? What about Zelda Breath of the Wild?

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5. kibwen ◴[31 Aug 25 13:04 UTC] No.45082847[source]▶
> as polished as the iPhone out of the gate

I think people are forgetting how extremely unpolished the iPhone was out of the gate. No app store. Even something as fundamental as copy/paste took until years later.

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6. Wowfunhappy ◴[31 Aug 25 19:27 UTC] No.45086260{3}[source]▶
There's a difference between polished and feature-rich. I'd actually argue the iPhone was more "polished" before they introduced the app store—their vision was pure.
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7. ghaff ◴[31 Aug 25 23:30 UTC] No.45088023[source]▶
For that matter, the Palm Pilot was beloved of a lot of techies at the time but neither the input nor synchronization technology/infrastructure were really there. I won one at a trade show and even upgraded it later but, honestly, it wasn't all that useful.
8. ghaff ◴[31 Aug 25 23:31 UTC] No.45088031{4}[source]▶
On the other hand, it was really the third-party apps that arguably distinguished the iPhone from the manufacturer-centric phones previously.