If there’s anything that sets Apple apart from other companies, it’s that it has a unique way of understanding technology and an environment where that philosophy is translated into the way employees work. excessive personal commitment and above all too much secrecy.

It’s a quirk that’s remained in the company’s DNA since the time of Steve Jobs, who required his employees to push their abilities to limits even they could imagine. His character gave Steve Jobs a reputation as a millionaire and a stubborn boss due to his outbursts of anger that could result in a fired employee.

But thanks to this constant pursuit of perfection Even the smallest detail enabled many other employees of the company to learn important life and development lessons.

Justin Santamaria was one of the employees who, spurred on by Steve Jobs’ demands, learned some of the tricks he employed during his more than 10 years at Apple. Santamaría was part of the team that developed FaceTime, iMessage and CarPlay. Working on these developments under the supervision of Steve Jobs, he learned three vital lessons from the Apple founder that have accompanied him throughout his career.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. You must persevere

One of the features that characterize Steve Jobs: absolute obsession with perfection. It wasn’t enough for something to just work. It had to be the best version possible. This meant iterating over and over with small changes; As he put it at the presentation of the first iPhone, it was simply done until the perfect formula was found, “five years ahead of the rest.”

Steve Jobs demonstrated his determination to achieve perfection with the chassis design of the first Macintosh, forcing Terry Oyama and Jerry Manock to tweak every curve, every angle, and every curve of the prototypes over and over again until he achieved the exact aesthetic he was looking for. . The engineering team claimed to have found no differences between the chassis finally put into production and the previous 15 prototypes.

It’s like polishing a diamond, Steve Jobs wanted even the smallest detail to be perfect. It didn’t matter how long it took to get there. Santamaría told CNBC that Steve Jobs was preparing the presentation of iChat during his first week at Apple and exclaimed in his excitement for the new messaging app: “I’m going to make the crowd shit their pants.”

I didn’t fail, I found 999 ways not to make a light bulb

This phrase, attributed to Edison, is a perfect example of one of the maxims Justin Santamaría learned while working with Steve Jobs.

The Apple team was treading uncharted territory when designing the first smartphone. Jobs admitted mistakes as part of the creative processand he encouraged his employees to learn from them and turn them into a useful way to get a little closer to the outcome they were truly looking for.

The perfection of a product does not start with a perfect idea, it needs to take shape gradually. As Picasso said, “If the muses come, let them catch you working.”

As the former Apple employee noted, “Jobs expected things to go wrong. But he also understood that making mistakes is often worth being rewarded with learning. In fact, preparing for failure is crucial to not losing perspective.”

Don’t let the trees stop you from seeing the forest

When Apple introduced the first iPhone in 2007, it changed the mobile telephony paradigm forever and these are the keys to success The aim was to eliminate the physical keyboard that all phones had to date to make more room for the multi-touch screen.

This change in the way the mobile phone is used has opened up a wide universe of usage possibilities for the mobile screen, allowing for the creation of a more organic user experience where you only need to touch elements on the screen.

Santamaría said in his interview that overcoming this obstacle was not easy. The iPhone design team had to confront something as widely accepted and reinforced as the physical keyboard on mobile phones and learn to see the opportunities it presented. “The original iPhone changed the world forever in 2007, highlighted by its multi-touch display and digital keyboard. The decision to remove the mechanical keyboard was a smart industrial design solution. This allowed the iPhone to have more screen real estate for other creative functions” .

Jobs needed to meet with the development team. Reasons why they shouldn’t settle for a physical keyboard. “If it works for BlackBerry, why not for us,” they responded.

One of the development team’s biggest fears was that the mobile phone would make unintentional calls or accidentally start playing a file. Facing this challenge led engineers to develop one of the iPhone’s most characteristic gestures: Slide to unlock and get the best possible display in just six months.

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Image | Flickr (Joi)