Thomas Edison of our Time?

I had the great fortune of meeting Steve Jobs.  Just once, but I can assure you, it certainly was memorable.

The Executive Committee of CableLabs traveled to California to meet with the heads of a number of Silicon Valley companies, large and small, a couple of years ago.  One of those meetings was with Jobs and boy, it sure was different from all the rest.  His uniqueness wasn't just about his wardrobe, but more so about attitude.

Jobs waltzed into our meeting, plopped himself down on a table and slid his iPad towards us.  The device had just come out and he was as proud as I imagine Thomas Edison might have been about his lightbulb.

But he wasn't there to gush.  He was there to challenge.  

"When are you guys going to wake up and put your content on this device?  Why are you taking so long to embrace the future?  If you don't do it quickly...."  

You get the gist.  

To be fair to my colleagues and myself, Steve Jobs had no understanding about the challenges of not being able to invent things from a totally blank slate.  Cable has over 60 million customers with existing technology that has to keep working, no matter what we do that's new.  There are content rights issues, backward compatibility issues, complex technical issues pertaining to our legacy platforms, just to name a few. 

But what made Steve Jobs so unique was that he simply didn't care about "why not."  He never, ever wanted to hear "why not."  At Apple, his confidence and can-do attitude inspired an army of product developers, engineers and marketers to break through the barriers that held everyone else back.  To do the impossible.

And the rest is history.  

He brought attitude and a certain amount of well-earned arrogance to our meeting that day.  After his challenge, Steve began hearing why not.  Heck, I was one of them.  It wasn't that we didn't want to make stuff for the iPad,  we simply kept asking, "have you considered how complicated this is?..."

Steve Jobs wasn't the least bit interested in that conversation that went something like,

"But we don't have the rights."  

"Go get them."

"But we don't have the bandwidth."

"Add it."

"But we use a different compression technology."

"Change it."

And on and on.

When he was done, he stood up and left the room.  And he left us to our own devices.

Six weeks later, Comcast showed its first iteration of an iPad product to the whole world at the Cable Show.  Today, the largest cable companies including Comcast, Time Warner and Cablevision already have developed their own terrific, multi-functional versions of cable on the iPad.  Most of the rest of us are working on versions of iPad applications soon to be released.

Steve Jobs didn't invent these new iPad applications.  Many people in and out of the cable industry were working on doing things on tablets long before that meeting.  But there was something that happened at that meeting that, at the very least, accelerated our development, or perhaps, even more importantly, may have caused the "Why Nots?" to win out over the "We Can'ts."

I only hope the world doesn't have to wait too long before the next Steve Jobs comes along.

 

 

Comments

[Mark]

Steve Jobs was an amazing person. I agree with you that he never accepted failure, or any other excuse that attempted to explain why a goal had not been reached. That is what I believe sets Apple apart. I believe that Steve would simply say "this is what I want on the market, and you have X-amount of time to get it there". He transformed the music and movie industries (about time), and I believe that it is time for the TV industry (including licensing / rights management) to change too.

I want to be able to literally take the same channels that I get on my TV, and have them ALL available on my iPad/iPhone in the same format as I have them on my TV -WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS OR BLACKOUTS-. I want my local TV channels as well as "cable channels". I want to be able to take my Indianapolis cable subscription on the road with me to my Inlaws' house in Cincinnati and still be able to use and watch all the channels that my cable subscription offers at home. I don't want a handful of online content. I can get that on my own. I want my cable subscription available on my iPad/iPhone just as it is on my cable box. That is what I am waiting for, and would be willing to pay for. Right now, I have to rely on Orb, Singbox, and HD Homerun to make this happen. I would much rather it all be available on one app.