Steve Jobs on Quality: We Just Can't Ship Junk
What Jobs talks about
Jobs answers a question about market share by reframing Apple’s goal: not to chase every buyer, but to make the best personal computers in the world. He says Apple wants products they would proudly recommend to family and friends.
He draws a hard line around quality, arguing that Apple cannot cross certain thresholds just to compete on price or volume. For him, the company’s identity depends on refusing to ship products that are stripped down or not worthy of recommendation.
The discussion matters because it shows how Jobs tied quality to strategy. He argues that Apple’s products often compare favorably on price once competitors’ missing features are added, but the real difference is Apple’s refusal to make or sell junk.
Molly Wood from CNET asks the question; Jobs responds throughout.
In his words
“Our goal is to make the best personal computers in the world”
“We're proud to sell and would recommend to our family and friends”
“We just can't ship junk.”
“There are thresholds that we can't cross because of who we are”
“We don't offer stripped down lousy products”
Key points
- Apple’s goal is to make the best personal computers in the world.
- Jobs says Apple wants products they’d recommend to family and friends.
- Lowest possible prices matter, but not at the expense of quality.
- Apple cannot ship products it wouldn’t be proud to sell.
- He rejects the idea that Apple should offer stripped-down, lousy products.
- He argues that Apple’s products are often not premium-priced when compared fairly.
Full transcript
One more question. I think we're gonna call it a day. Yes, ma'am. My... I'm Molly Wood from CNET. I have a a question actually about market share, which is sort of what we're getting at. There has been a suggestion that because of pricing and design, Apple tends to appeal to kind of a smaller elite rather than that sort of mass customer base. And so I guess once and for all, is it your goal to overtake the PC in market share? I can tell you what our goal is. Our goal is to make the best personal computers in the world and to make products we are proud to sell and would recommend to our family and friends. And we want to do that at the lowest prices we can. But I have to tell you, there's some stuff in our industry that we wouldn't be proud to ship, that we wouldn't be proud to recommend to our family and friends.
And we can't do it. We just can't ship junk. So there's there's a there are thresholds that we can't cross because of who we are. But we want to make the best personal computers in the industry. And we think there is a very significant slice of the industry that wants that too. And what you'll find is our products are usually not premium priced. You go and price out our competitors' products and you add the features that you have to add to make them useful. And you'll find in some cases, they are more expensive than our products. The difference is we don't offer stripped down lousy products. We just don't offer categories of products like that.
But if you move those aside and compare us with our competitors, I think we compare pretty favorably. And a lot of people have been doing that and saying that now for the last, eighteen months.
Transcribed from the audio by speech recognition (Deepgram). Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.