Steve Jobs (21 page)

employing the concept of PSE to its fullest. Only one slide con-

tained words (“iPhone 3G”). The others were all photographs.

Take a look at Table 8.
4.26

Given the same information, a mediocre presenter would

have crammed all of it onto one slide. It would have looked

something like the slide in Figure 8.2. Which do you find more

memorable: Jobs’s eleven slides or the one slide with a bulleted

list of features?

When Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air as “the world’s

thinnest notebook,” one slide showed a photograph of the new

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99

TABLE 8.4
JOBS’S WWDC 2008 KEYNOTE

STEVE’S WORDS

STEVE’S SLIDES

”As we arrive at iPhone’s first birthday,

Photo of birthday cake, with

we’re going to take it to the next level.”

white frosting, strawberries,

and one candle in the middle

“Today we’re introducing the iPhone

iPhone 3G

3G. We’ve learned so much with the

first iPhone. We’ve taken everything

we’ve learned and more, and we’ve

created the iPhone 3G. And it’s

beautiful.”

“This is what it looks like [turns and

Side view of iPhone, so slim

gestures toward screen; audience

that it’s hard to see on the

laughs]. It’s even thinner at the edges.

slide and takes up very little

It’s really beautiful.”

space—an example of using

empty space to communicate

an idea

“It’s got a full plastic back. It’s really

Full-screen view of the back

nice.”

“Solid metal buttons.”

Another side view of the

device, where buttons are

visible

“The same gorgeous 3.5-inch display.”

Photo of front, showing display

“Camera.”

Close-up photo of camera

“Flush headphone jack so you can use

Close-up of headphone jack

any headphones you like.”

“Improved audio. Dramatically

Another photo from top of the

improved audio.”

device

“It’s really, really great. And it feels

Returns to first side-view

even better in your hand, if you can

photo

believe it.”

“It’s really quite wonderful. The

iPhone 3G

iPhone 3G.”

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DELIVER THE EXPERIENCE

iPhone 3G

● Thinner at the edges

● Full plastic back

● Solid metal buttons

● 3.5-inch display

● Built-in camera

● Flush headphone jack

● Improved audio

Figure 8.2 Dull slides have no images and too many words.

computer on top of an envelope, which was even larger than the

computer itself. That’s it. No words, no text boxes, no graphs, just

the photo. How much more powerful can you get? The picture

says it all. For illustrative purposes, I created the slide in Figure

8.3 as an example of a typical slide that a mediocre presenter

would have created to describe a technical product. (Believe it

or not, this mock slide is gorgeous compared with many slides I

have actually seen in technical presentations delivered by sub-

par presenters.) It’s a mishmash of fonts, styling, and text. Not

memorable and truly awful.

In contrast, Figure 8.4 shows one of Jobs’s slides from the

Macbook Air presentation. The majority of his slides for this

presentation looked very similar, featuring mostly photographs.

He referred customers to the Apple website for more technical

information; visuals dominated the keynote. Clearly, presenting

a technical product in such a way as Jobs did for the Macbook

Air is far more effective.

It takes confidence to deliver your ideas with photographs

instead of words. Since you can’t rely on the slides’ text as a crutch, you must have your message down cold. But that’s the difference

between Jobs and millions of average communicators in business

today. Jobs delivers his ideas simply, clearly, and confidently.

Simplify Everything

Simplicity applies to Jobs’s slides as well as the words he carefully chooses to describe products. Just as Jobs’s slides are free

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101

MACBOOK AIR

Display

13.3 inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display

• Support for millions of colors

• Supported resolutions:

-1280 by 800 (native)

-1024 by 768 (pixels)

-4:3 (aspect ratio)

Size & Weight

Storage

120 GB hard disk drive

✓ Height: 0.16–0.76 inch

or

(0.4–1.94 cm)

128GB solid-state drive

Battery Power

✓ Width: 12.8 inches (32.5 cm)

■ Integrated 37-watt hour lithium-

✓ Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)

polymer

✓ Weight: 3.0 pounds (1.36 kg)

■ 45W MagSafe power adapter

■ MagSafe power port

Processor & Memory

■ 4.5 hours of wireless productivity

● 1.6ghz processor

- 6MB shared L2 cashe

● 1066 MHz frontside bus

● 2GB of 1066 MHz DDR 3 SDRAM

Figure 8.3 An ugly slide with too much information, too many different

fonts, and inconsistent styling.

Figure 8.4 Jobs’s slides are strikingly simple and visually engaging.

TONY AVELAR/AFP/Getty Images

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DELIVER THE EXPERIENCE

Einstein’s Theory of Simplicity

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

from extraneous text, so are his words. For example, in October

2008, Apple unveiled a new line of environmentally friendly

MacBook computers. There are two principal ways Jobs could

have described the computers. The column on the left in Table

8.5 is technically accurate but wordy; the text in the column on

the right is what Jobs actually said
.27

Jobs replaces lengthy sentences with descriptions that could fit

in a Twitter post (see Scene 4). Simple sentences are simply easier

to recall. Table 8.6 shows other examples of how Jobs
could
have described a new product, compared with what he actually said.

Plain English Campaign

If you need help writing crisp, clear sentences, the Plain English

Campaign can help. Since 1979, this UK-based organization has

been leading the fight to get governments and corporations to

simplify their communications. The site is updated weekly with

examples of the most complex, unintelligible business language

submitted by readers around the world. The organizers define

plain English as writing that the intended audience can read,

TABLE 8.5
DESCRIBING THE ENVIRONMENTALLY

FRIENDLY MACBOOK

WHAT STEVE COULD HAVE SAID

WHAT STEVE ACTUALLY SAID

The new MacBook family meets the most

“They are the industry’s

stringent Energy Star standards and

greenest notebooks.”

contains no brominated flame retardants.

It uses only PVC-free internal cables and

components and features energy-efficient

LED-backlit displays that are mercury free.

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TABLE 8.6
POSSIBLE VERSUS ACTUAL DESCRIPTIONS IN

JOBS’S PRESENTATIONS

WHAT STEVE COULD HAVE SAID

WHAT STEVE ACTUALLY SAID

MacBook Air measures 0.16 inch at its

“It’s the world’s thinnest

thinnest point, with a maximum height of

notebook.”

0.76 inch.

Time Capsule is an appliance combining

“With Time Capsule, plug

an 802.11n base station with a server-grade

it in, click a few buttons,

hard disk that automatically backs up

and voilà—all the Macs in

everything on one or more Macs running

your house are backed up

Leopard, the latest release of the Mac OS X

automatically.”

operating system.

Mac OS X features memory protection, pre-

“Mac OS X is the most

emptive multitasking, and symmetric multi-

technically advanced

processing. It includes Apple’s new Quartz

personal computer

2D graphics engine based on the Internet-

operating system ever.”

standard portable document format.

understand, and act upon the first time they read (or hear) it.

The website has free guides on how to write in plain English as

well as marvelous before-and-after examples, such as the ones in

T
able 8.7.28

Nearly everything you say in any memo, e-mail, or presen-

tation can be edited for conciseness and simplicity. Remember