Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
Written by Ken Kocienda
Narrated by Ken Kocienda
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
This program is read by the author.
An insider's account of Apple's creative process during the golden years of Steve Jobs.
Hundreds of millions of people use Apple products every day; several thousand work on Apple's campus in Cupertino, California; but only a handful sit at the drawing board. Creative Selection recounts the life of one of the few who worked behind the scenes, a highly-respected software engineer who worked in the final years of the Steve Jobs era—the Golden Age of Apple.
Ken Kocienda offers an inside look at Apple’s creative process. For fifteen years, he was on the ground floor of the company as a specialist, directly responsible for experimenting with novel user interface concepts and writing powerful, easy-to-use software for products including the iPhone, the iPad, and the Safari web browser. His stories explain the symbiotic relationship between software and product development for those who have never dreamed of programming a computer, and reveal what it was like to work on the cutting edge of technology at one of the world's most admired companies.
Kocienda shares moments of struggle and success, crisis and collaboration, illuminating each with lessons learned over his Apple career. He introduces the essential elements of innovation—inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy—and uses these as a lens through which to understand productive work culture.
An insider's tale of creativity and innovation at Apple, Creative Selection shows listeners how a small group of people developed an evolutionary design model, and how they used this methodology to make groundbreaking and intuitive software which countless millions use every day.
Praise for Creative Selection:
"Kocienda reveals the real secret of Steve Jobs's leadership and Apple's magic: the ability to push people to think for themselves, and to empower them to turn their best thinking into reality. It is a story about the intersection of technology and humanity." — Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor
“I’ve literally been waiting a decade for this book. Ken Kocienda takes you inside Apple in way only a true insider, a veteran software developer, could. Creative Selection is the answer to the prayer uttered by anyone who wants to truly understand how Apple works. I couldn’t put it down.” — Adam Lashinsky, New York Times bestselling author of Inside Apple
Ken Kocienda
Ken Kocienda was a software engineer and designer at Apple for over fifteen years. After graduating from Yale, he fixed motorcycles, worked in the editorial library of a newspaper, taught English in Japan, and made fine art photographs. Eventually, he discovered the internet, taught himself computer programming, and made his way through a succession of dot-com-era startups, before landing at Apple in 2001, where he worked on the software teams that created the Safari web browser, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Ken lives in San Jose, California with his wife.
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Reviews for Creative Selection
49 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a very specialized book, probably for minorities. I think it is for people who like tech and love Apple. I am that target, so I love it. It is great to see how things are created and evolve inside Apple. I have learned many things that I had never heard anywhere else. The book is also well written.