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Apple's SVPs of Marketing and Hardware Engineering, Greg Joswiak and John Ternus, get candid about products that were initially considered failures. Discover how the original MacBook Air, MobileMe, and Apple Maps were transformed from 'disasters' into some of their most successful and essential products.
Transcript
00:00Traumatizing one, you know, certifiable disaster.
00:03A product that didn't succeed or was, quote unquote, a flop, that was actually a blessing in disguise.
00:09We're not perfect. We're going to make mistakes along the way.
00:12What we try, and again, Steve has talked about it, no one bats a thousand.
00:16But what you try to do is when something doesn't go right, you try to, you know, pick yourself up,
00:21dust yourself off and figure out what are you going to do to change it.
00:24And to me, maybe a couple come to mind.
00:26You know, that first MacBook Air, I don't know if you remember, it was not the response we were hoping
00:30for.
00:30It didn't sell very well and we didn't say, okay, that was a flop and we're done, right?
00:37We addressed the feedback and MacBook Air, for those scoring at home, is the most popular laptop in the world
00:44now from a product that didn't come out the gates very strong.
00:48Or let's take an even more traumatizing one, right?
00:53We had MobileMe, right?
00:56That was a, you know, certifiable disaster when we brought it out.
01:01But we knew there was something there.
01:03We just had to rethink it, right?
01:05And bring in a new team to work on it.
01:07And that turned to iCloud, which to us still is a differentiator for how our ecosystem of products all tie
01:13together that create this magical, you know, Apple experience from your iPhone to your iPad to your Mac to across
01:19your products.
01:20And, again, that came from, you know, troubled roots that reinvented into something much greater.
01:26When you brought it up, I was thinking the MacBook Air is like a perfect example of that.
01:32What else?
01:33You know, Maps is another good one.
01:34When we started out with Maps, it was an ambitious undertaking.
01:37It was bumpy.
01:38But the team had just been, over years, just pushing and pushing and pushing.
01:42And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing.
01:44It's an incredible product.
01:45And, again, it's, you know, as Josh said, sometimes you don't always bat a thousand.
01:50But if you have the vision and you're persistent and you keep working at it, you can take something, you
01:54know, that has a rocky start and turn it into something great.
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