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

By Ken Kocienda

‘Kocienda reveals the real secret of Steve Jobs's leadership and Apple's magic’ – Kim Scott, bestselling author of Radical Candor

A Wall Street Journal bestseller.

An inside account of Apple's creative process during the golden years of Steve Jobs.

'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, bestselling author of Originals

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 readers 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Sep 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781529004748

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.

Reviews for Creative Selection

[jessethek-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I’m using pros details the development of Safari on the Mac and auto correct on iPhone. I learned that AutoCorrect has extensive coding to try to guess what it is I wanted to press on which key. This means that the more carefully I type the more likely it is that I am wasting time.

[waldhaus1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am something of a computer history junkie having read many books on the subject. The soul of a new machine remains my favorite. This book will have appeal to anyone who is a fan of apple devices. Just as the fifties and studies are often thought of as"rocking" decades, I believe we are now in a smartphone decade with a new kind of interpersonal connectivity. This book provides some insight as to how the foundation was laid. For me Kocienda's thoughts about creativity are important as well. I suspect we are moving from the era of the smartphone to the era of artificial intelligence. One test for Associates intelligence will be the ability to be creative. Kocienda illustrates three elements of creativity: 1) recognition of a problem to be solved; 2) assembly of potential solutions from the parts and ideas at hand, and 3) choosing the best solution based on standards that can be referred to as taste. I hope I am not misrepresenting his idea. It seems a way to move towards role based creativity of that isn't an oxymoron.

[rcrider13 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A breezy tale of the development of the Safari browser and the iPhone keyboard. This book touches the surface of these topics but does not delve deeply into the nitty gritty details. Overall I was wanting more detail on the actual development of the software, but this book will give an overview for much of the audience. It also provides some insight into the philosophy of development at Apple as perceived by the Author, but it was obvious this book passed through Apple PR before publishing.