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Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

4.4 out of 5 stars 1,483 ratings

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 15 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 that countless millions use every day.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

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Product details

Listening Length 7 hours and 28 minutes
Author Ken Kocienda
Narrator Ken Kocienda
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date September 04, 2018
Publisher Macmillan Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B07D435DFQ
Best Sellers Rank

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
1,483 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book engaging, with one noting it reads like a thriller novel for programmers. Moreover, the book offers a fascinating glimpse into the design process, with one customer describing it as a great deep dive into software development. Additionally, the writing style is easy to read, and customers appreciate the perspective, with one highlighting its unique viewpoint. However, the book receives mixed feedback regarding its readability, with one customer describing it as boring technical reading.

35 customers mention "Readability"33 positive2 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as an amazing and fun read, with one customer noting it reads like a thriller novel for programmers.

"...In all, it was an entertaining book and I enjoyed his stories." Read more

"...Age of Steve Jobs, by Ken Kocienda is well written and a thoroughly enjoyable read regarding Apple’s constant reiterative demo process, where Apple..." Read more

"...The book was was interesting, informative, and enjoyable though both lenses, personally and professionally...." Read more

"...All in all it was a solid read. Not groundbreaking insights, but a great window into a world that is so fascinating to me...." Read more

35 customers mention "Storytelling"35 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the storytelling in the book, finding it interesting and insightful, with one customer highlighting the great stories about building Safari.

"...of the process to get final approval, but instead they were done to show early progress, determine viability of the project, and make fundamental..." Read more

"Ken had some great stories to share about building Safari and the keyboards for the iPhone and iPad...." Read more

"Creative Selection, Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs, by Ken Kocienda is well written and a thoroughly enjoyable..." Read more

"...The book was was interesting, informative, and enjoyable though both lenses, personally and professionally...." Read more

22 customers mention "Design"22 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's detailed look at Apple's design process, with one customer noting it provides a deep dive into software development.

"...successful to seven elements: inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy...." Read more

"...the design process, and to the shipped product, all while explaining intricate details and telling interesting stories along the way...." Read more

"A fascinating if wordy description of the process of software development...." Read more

"...The author does a nice job of marrying difficult programming concepts such as "compilers" and "porting" with interesting discussion involving..." Read more

11 customers mention "Writing style"11 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, finding it well written and easy to read, with one customer noting it is written by an insider.

"...Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs, by Ken Kocienda is well written and a thoroughly enjoyable read regarding Apple’s constant reiterative..." Read more

"Creative is a well-written book and affords interesting insights relative to software development for Apple, at least for us who are clueless about..." Read more

"This is the real deal, written by an insider (I was also there during that time)...." Read more

"...Also, the author is very clear and humble in his tale, and he demonstrates how a team of motivated people, with a clear goal and empathy with the..." Read more

6 customers mention "Perspective"6 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's perspective, with one describing it as a fascinating view and another noting it provides a great "view from below."

"...Kocienda provides a fascinating view into the process of design at Apple and gives a perspective from the inside rarely told...." Read more

"...Not groundbreaking insights, but a great window into a world that is so fascinating to me...." Read more

"...This is a great “view from below” of how an engineer’s day was at Apple working on the next great thing and this has some great lessons...." Read more

"Ken shares an incredibly unique perspective as a tenured engineer that spent time working on some of Apple's most meaningful products...." Read more

3 customers mention "Description"3 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's detailed descriptions, with one review highlighting its behind-the-scenes insights into Safari development.

"...The author provides revealing details about his job as a software engineer, how he approached a variety of problems while he was in the middle of..." Read more

"This book provides some of the best "behind the curtain" insights on the product development process and ethos at Apple in the first 10 years of the..." Read more

"Great insider descriptions of Safari, iPhone, iPad, and the Apple employee experience." Read more

4 customers mention "Reading quality"0 positive4 negative

Customers find the reading quality of the book to be poor, with one customer describing it as boring technical content and another noting it contains lots of fluff.

"...This example is relatively silly, but it demonstrates the importance of concrete examples...." Read more

"Boring Technical Reading" Read more

"...insights about Apple’s development process, but it falls short of a serious treatise about the topic. Read it for the anecdotes." Read more

"Lots of fluff in book. I would pass. The iPhone part was cool but that was only 33% of book." Read more

A sneak peak behind the scenes at Apple
5 out of 5 stars
A sneak peak behind the scenes at Apple
When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone In 2007 he commented he had waited 2 years for that day to arrive. He was quite proud of the Apple iPhone and said the iPhone would change the world. How right he was. If you will recall, before the introduction of iPhone cell phones had plastic keypads that were hard to use. The iPhone revolutionized the way we interact with the phone by replacing plastic keys with pixels. The multi-touch keypad was born and there was no looking back. Today, almost all cell phones use this technology. In “Creative Selection” Ken Kocienda takes us behind the scenes at Apple to see exactly how the iPhone was developed and the keyboard in particular. That is because creating the keyboard for the new iPhone was his primary responsibility. He provides an insider view of what went on inside Apple’s secretive environment during the development stages of the iPhone and how decisions were painstakingly made on all iPhones features. It is quite an interesting journey and I found the book to be a page turner. It made me appreciate my iPhones even more. Bottom line, I love the book. It is for anyone who loves technology and wonders how the amazing products we use today come into existence. It is highly recommended and I give it 5 stars.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2018
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    I was excited about diving in this weekend into Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda, a new book providing a detailed look inside the design process at Apple. And Creative Selection did not disappoint. While much has been written about Steve Jobs and Apple, I found Creative Selection particularly insightful because it provided a vignette into the development of the first iPhone, and in particular, one of it's most critical features - the keyboard - from the perspective of Ken Kocienda, the software engineer ultimately responsible for developing it. Ken goes through the many challenges and subsequent iterations to address those challenges with building the first keyboard to be presented only on a glass display. And in doing so, it showcased how Apple's design and development process was different from traditional Silicon Valley companies in subtle yet incredibly important ways.

    Ken distills the Apple development approach that ultimately made them successful to seven elements: inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy. And he walks through what each of these elements means to him with detailed stories exemplifying each.

    But I wanted to share some personal observations I took away from the book on how Apple built products in such a fundamentally different way.

    Ken describes the process by which they would prepare product demos for their own team and then for various leaders, use that demo as the primary avenue for feedback, and then continue to iterate to the next demo, followed by more rounds of demo feedback, and so on. He calls this process creative selection. While at the surface this may sound like a typical product review process that many companies have, there was so much that was different about it.

    First, demos were done early and often, even at the prototype stage. These were not just reviews at the end of the process to get final approval, but instead they were done to show early progress, determine viability of the project, and make fundamental design decisions. The goal was to produce an initial prototype to demo as quickly as possible and then continually refine the prototype through subsequent feedback sessions. These demo sessions with senior leaders happened on a weekly basis, not months apart.

    And in contrast to so many classic reviews where leaders are largely concerned with ensuring projects are on time, that there are no unaddressed bottlenecks, and that the team is executing on the right strategy, leaders at Apple in fact played the role of arbiters of taste. Ken defines taste as developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole. And in these reviews, leaders would often be making calls on the spot on design decisions for the product. Ken retells the story of many reviews with Scott Forstall, who was head of iPhone software, and Steve Jobs himself who would make critical decisions to remove UI elements, to pick amongst a few design directions that the team was presenting, and to cancel efforts entirely, all based on the context and feedback they got from the presenting team, their own first-hand experience with the demo, and their ultimate sense of taste. This feedback was highly respected by the team and didn't feel like classic executive swoop-ins because of how deeply involved the senior leaders were on a weekly basis with engaging in-depth with the product during these demos.

    The nature of these meetings also looked so different from traditional exec meeting topics with discussions around market opportunity, competitors, resourcing, etc. They were instead fundamentally about the design and user experience. And each leader would play with the product themselves just as a user would to really connect with the product experience.

    Equally important to their process was extreme product dogfooding, which they called living on the product. They understood that even after making initial product decisions in these demo reviews, they needed to continue to experience the product on a daily basis to ensure the experience was actually satisfying. And in doing so, they would continually come up with feedback from amongst the team who was living on the product, and incorporate that feedback into the product. Ken shares how each change he made to the keyboard auto-correction capabilities would be rolled out to the small team of iPhone software engineers and how the feedback directly from those individuals shaped his future iterations. I do regularly see a disconnect in product quality emerge when the product, design, and engineering teams aren't using their own product on a daily basis.

    And finally, the teams tasked with owning critical software components were very small empowered teams of individuals. Each component would have a DRI - a directly responsible individual - who was ultimately on the line for producing that component. And there was a fundamental belief that small teams did the best work, because they were empowered to do so. Ken was the DRI for the iPhone keyboard and worked directly and closely with an associated designer. Glaringly absent from these teams were in fact product managers. The responsibility instead was divided amongst the engineers, designers, a program manager for project management support, and the senior leader. By empowering these very small teams they had the ability and motivation to do their very best work.

    I would encourage you to check out the book for yourself as it was a fascinating glimpse into the design process of one of the world's most innovative product companies: Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda.
    25 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2018
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Ken had some great stories to share about building Safari and the keyboards for the iPhone and iPad. There were some business lessons interjected here and there, which didn't really resonate with me. In all, it was an entertaining book and I enjoyed his stories.
  • Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2019
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Creative Selection, Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs, by Ken Kocienda is well written and a thoroughly enjoyable read regarding Apple’s constant reiterative demo process, where Apple creates concrete and specific demos so peers can make judgements/comments/criticisms/improvements based off actual ‘physical’ samples. Substantial work is put into each demo, similar to the way ideas are pitched at Amazon in detailed memo form, rather than simple power point presentations. Unlike Amazon memos that are polished, complete plans, Apple demos are down and dirty focusing on the specific area/item being demoed, with the background staged (potentially a Hollywood-type façade) to engross to the viewer into experiencing the demo portion as if the viewer is using the complete product. The comprehensive due diligence/research involved in creating the demo (or memo for Amazon), helps to continually refine the idea.

    Concrete, specific demos allow peers to discuss the item being created in explicit detail, and offer distinct criticisms and suggestions. Ken Kocienda presents an interesting illustration of the importance of having a specific ‘physical’ item to discuss and critique. He uses puppies as an example. Think of a cute puppy in your mind and imagine as many details about your puppy as you can. I’ll think of one as well, I bet my puppy is cuter than yours. Under this scenario, we both have imagined cute puppies, but there is no way to distinguish which one is cuter. We can argue as we each describe our puppy, but we cannot resolve which is cuter without concrete and specific examples. However, if we have physical pictures of each puppy, we can easily discuss their actual merits. This example is relatively silly, but it demonstrates the importance of concrete examples. Without them the theoretical argument is virtually impossible, with them the discussion is efficient and relatively simple.

    The production of the demos at Apple forces the creator to get a true understanding of the underlying issues with his creation. The comments/criticisms received from peers utilizing the physical demo (rather than discussing theoretical images) are integrated into the following demo version. Each demo, building on all prior work. The best ideas survive, while the weaker ideas go extinct. From these constant, reiterative improvements, magical, one-of a kind generational products have been created.
  • Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2018
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    I listened intently to this book from two perspectives: as a long-time user/fan of Apple products and as a leader of a school district's technology department. The book was was interesting, informative, and enjoyable though both lenses, personally and professionally. Kocienda provides a fascinating view into the process of design at Apple and gives a perspective from the inside rarely told. He effectively takes the reader/listener through the idea stages, into the design process, and to the shipped product, all while explaining intricate details and telling interesting stories along the way. In education, we often tell our students (and teachers) about the importance of using the "4 Cs"—creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking—to prepare our students for the world. Kocienda gives concrete examples of how he used all the "Cs" throughout his illustrious career designing and developing products many of us use every day. While I purchased both the Kindle and Audible version of this book, I must recommend the Audible version since Kocienda provides his own voice as the reader. In addition to his talent as an author, he clearly has a talent as a voiceover artist as I feel his voiced account of his story added another important dimension.
    3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Matt Johnston
    5.0 out of 5 stars Touching and affectionate expose of Apples design process
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 11, 2018
    Thoroughly enjoyed this book - from the anecdotes to the rigorous creative design methodology it espouses. Touching additions allowed for heartfelt stories to frame each chapter.
  • Herve Gbedji
    5.0 out of 5 stars Must read for developers, technology managers, startup founders
    Reviewed in Canada on August 29, 2021
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    In the book you learn way more than the history of some of Apple's defining products. You learn about why listening to employees matter, why self control and empathy are a leader's best friend. You also learn about the endless payoffs of being practical at every level of the organization. It's simply well written Ken
  • Cliente de Amazon
    5.0 out of 5 stars Una radiografía del proceso creativo interno de Apple.
    Reviewed in Mexico on October 10, 2018
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    Si te interesa conocer el “behind the scenes” del desarrollo de iDevices, este libro es la opción. Ken nos lleva de la mano a Cupertino a la época de desarrollo de Safari, WebKit y el teclado del iPhone original.

    Hay mucho que aprender del ser y quehacer de la industria y muy entretenidas anécdotas del proceso creativo.

    En lo personal, me permitió conocer un poco más de Scott Forstall, el polémico antiguo VP de iOS.

    Lo recomiendo mucho.
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  • Natarajan Mahalingam
    5.0 out of 5 stars A must read on the Apple design & product development approach!
    Reviewed in India on June 26, 2021
    As I continued reading towards the end of the book, my iPhone's screen brightened and chimed a message - that was such a nostalgic moment as I saw Ken Kocienda and the Purple (the iPhone's project name) team in their lab working out the kinks on the software! The hard & smart work that had gone into the making of one of the most iconic technological products ever hit me hard - what we take for granted today with smartphones had an evolutionary history that Creative Selection details so well on many aspects

    Ken's writing evokes shades of highly technical, philosophical, and deeply spiritual reverence to the Design methodology at Apple under Steve Jobs. If you're interested to learn how Apple produced such stellar products like Safari web browser, iPhone & iPad, etc., then look no further than Ken's book. A first person account of the entire product and project journey interspersed with Ken's vulnerable and humble writing style bring it all out in glory

    Written primarily for the product development and programming crowd, there are certain chapters or sections that are highly technical, but for non-technical background readers, it's still easily digestible. In fact, some of us might even take a liking to understand more about the technical aspects of our browsing experience after reading this book (I did a little! :-))

    Overall, if you would like to know more about that smartphone you hold in your hand, the autocorrection feature you use so frequently day-in and day-out or simply marvel at the glass screen into which you type and the characters stare back at you - then, this is THE book to grab and read. I promise, you'll enjoy every bit of this book as I did!
  • Ignacio Carretero Molero
    5.0 out of 5 stars Inspirador y revelador
    Reviewed in Spain on March 9, 2023
    A veces profundiza en exceso en temas técnicos, pero en general aporta mucha información interesante y reveladora sobre cómo trabajaba el Apple de Steve Jobs y el proceso para crear grandes productos. Muy inspirador.