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  • Creative Selection

  • Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
  • Written by: Ken Kocienda
  • Narrated by: Ken Kocienda
  • Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (45 ratings)

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Creative Selection

Written by: Ken Kocienda
Narrated by: Ken Kocienda
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Publisher's Summary

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.

©2018 Ken Kocienda (P)2018 Macmillan Audio

What the critics say

"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)

“If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to work in a hotbed of innovation, you’ll enjoy this inside view of life at Apple. Ken Kocienda pioneered the iPhone keyboard, and this book gives a play-by-play of their creative process - from generating ideas to doing a demo for Steve Jobs.” (Adam Grant, New York Times best-selling author of Originals, Give and Take, and Option B [with Sheryl Sandberg])

What listeners say about Creative Selection

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The most banal self glorification imaginable

I have gone through 7 chapters of this, and cannot imagine how someone can enjoy reading a juvenile book written by an apple software developer.

It’s about product management of sorts, but the whole thing could have been written in a blog post with 10 things you need to know about developing software!!

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Good if you’re a coder

I thought this would be more about the process high level and actual culture of the team but it is a single view of what it was like to work on the projects. Good I think for someone who is building code at the macro level.

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Rather short but to the point. .

lesson learned: working with a great team of collaboration is great. having a boss with razor sharp vision is a real blessing.

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