Lessons from Ken Kocienda, Former Principal Engineer of iPhone Software at Apple
6 min readOct 11, 2022
Mr. Kocienda is the author of Creative Selection, the book that tells some of the most fascinating stories he lived at Apple during the Golden Era of Steve Jobs.
This article doesn’t want to recap the book, as there is no joy and profit in reading certain stories through the words who didn’t live them in first person, but will share my key takeaways and concepts I’d gladly stored in my mind.
- An outstanding leader requires an outstanding team in order to develop greatness.
As a young entrepreneur, it’s fascinating for me reading the dynamics of how the software development of products like the iPhone, the iPad and Safari happened at one of the most fascinating companies in the entire world.
As a user, instead, I’ve always been curious to understand why people loved their iPhones so much and why they were willing to pay such a crazy price for them. I’ve been an android user for quite a long time before switching to iPhone, but when I finally did I understood all the whys I was asking to people.
The passion, dedication and talent of the engineers was completely transferred on the products they built, and while reading Ken’s stories, I was imagining in my mind the environment, the ambience, the routine, the discussions with other visionaries and fellows with the same goal: to build something unique. Without the different teams inside Apple, it wouldn’t be such a successful company.
I’m amazed by the way people were interacting with each other to share a demo or ask for an opinion, I’ve never saw something like this. If you think about it, it’s incredibly smart:
Who are the users of an Apple product? People
Who are the designers? People
It’s all about the people!
In the first chapter, you can read a detailed story about Ken demoing to Steve himself. During the demo and during the entire design process, the people at Apple have one thing in mind: “Would a user like this feature or would they prefer to have this other one? Is it making the whole user experience better or is it make it more complicated? Is this what someone would expect to get from a product like this? If no, are we surprising him positively or negatively?” Constant. Focus. On. People.
This “people-centric” approach is what leads me during very specific choices about things my company is building, either internal stuff or for our clients. “Empathy” is the key word here: seeing from other people’s eyes. - Open tasks for maximum fun.
Let me ask you a question: if you asked Albert Einstein to solve a physics problem, would you play like an owl on his shoulder looking at every single thing he writes down and scold him if he decided to choose a different way to get to the solutions than you would have?
Well, I would not.
Being the CEO of my own company, even tho we’re still pretty young, already taught me that people perform best when you give them a lot of freedom and some restrictions to keep them on the rails. As an example, I’m currently re-building my company’s website with a great friend of mine, who also happens to be a great developer. Rather than telling him straight what I want, which would make his job incredibly boring, I enjoy giving him more freedom and see what he comes up with. And guess what, most of the times his ideas are incredible!
From Ken’s book I was able to understand that my approach is right: the Leaders didn’t give “orders” to their employees, but instead they offered projects opportunities that programmers would have to “sign up” for and get it done.
This is psychologically clever: programmers will take this as a challenge, as a fun thing to do rather than a task for their 9–5 (not a lot of companies may be using this simple challenge-like approach…what if it’s one of the drivers for people wanting to quit their job?).
Challenging people who love computers to develop something new, innovative and positive for the people is a driver of constant growth and dynamism.
Apply this with some changes to other field than computer science and I believe you’ll have a pretty good environment at work :). - Perfection does not exist, but optimality is achieved by the merge of multiple disciplines.
Art and tech are the drivers for Apple products that meet at “the intersection”, where the iPhone, iPad and all the others were born. This is an additional layer of problems induced by the company itself, as now they don’t have to just build a product which software gets its job done, but also an amazingly good working that will make people eager to use it again (“Design is not how it looks, it’s how it works” — Steve Jobs).
Merging multiple disciplines is clever as one can help the other to make the final product fantastic. When it comes to a product like an iPhone, if the software is not outstandingly good and devoid of bugs it will surely impact its performance. But if the only thing it has is a software that just works, then it will be a trivial, boring product. Instead, merging it with liberal arts like Apple did, it becomes an extension of the person using it, with smooth interfaces and easy-to-understand features that don’t require explanation: just a few tries and you know how to use it like if you’ve been using it for months.
These are the profits of merging two disciplines to help each other making the product they’re being applied to better.
Something I personally love to use along tech is psychology. The science of how we make decisions and why we feel happy and sad is an incredibly powerful tool to shape the experience the users will have with a very specific product…can’t wait to have RSC to drop some new stuff! - Collaboration is vital!
At Apple people collaborated a lot. Ken writes multiple times of how he was used to get into his fellows’ offices or call them into his to show them a new feature of the iPhone keyboard or a challenge he was facing with Safari.
Having a new pair of eyes on a problem is psychological lust: Ken’s co-workers had no knowledge of the steps he already took in order to get there, meaning that their brain was not on the same rails as Ken’s. This simple fact can easily bring them to use different logical paths and therefore to different conclusions and ideas. Plus, a fresh pair of eyes on an established problem can look at it also from the perspective of a suer, something that’s more difficult for who’s been working on it for a long time. All of this, once shared with Ken, can light his mind up and give him the answer he was so eagerly looking for.
It’s amazing how the human mind works, isn’t it? - The magnificent process called “Creative Selection”.
Ken gave this name to the following process:
Demo > Feedback > Demo.
Moving in such a way for a consistent period of time gave Apple the opportunity to be dynamic. I’m constantly checking myself to see if I’m as dynamic as I need to be as it reflects an incredibly important metric. If something is still, static…it’s not moving. No movement is negative as nothing is evolving, nothing is getting better, nothing is getting more exciting.
The dynamism the Creative Selection process brought into Apple’s offices is arguably one of the most important features that shaped both the final result and the speed at which Apple was able to develop its products.
A lack of dynamism is a loss of opportunity, as there would not be the opportunity to explore all the features possible and to make all the demo that may be required.
Dynamism has no price, it’s as valuable as the company cares for delivering the best it can and satisfy its customers as much as it wants.
Overall, this book was one of the most interesting I’ve ever read from a vision-builder standpoint. It literally built in me a perception of how working at Apple during the early years of the 2000s looked and felt like…which is something I’ve been trying to figure out, imagine and feel for quite a long time as the myth of the Silicon Valley has lit up a fire in me years ago.
I want to thank Mr. Kocienda for writing such an insightful book, which I personally suggest to anyone who would love to have a walk inside Apple’s offices during the Steve Jobs era.
Simply inspirational.
Here’s a direct link to get your copy on Amazon.com.
