Using expensive wood or spending time doing things nobody will see will lower your throughout and raise your costs unnecessarily for the customer.
Even a master carpenter has finite time and money. Every morcel of time spent doing things nobody can see is time not spent doing other things with more visibility. The masters are still competing with other masters in a globally competitive market.
So Job’s fictional carpenter would get outcompeted by the hypothetical free market where carpenters of equal skill are producing more at lower cost.
Apple, during the Jobs days anyway, produced luxury goods for a luxury price. Given the market they were addressing, Job's comments make complete sense.
I think the point of the story is that Jobs's carpenter is not even trying to compete with Walmart trash products. He is deliberately avoiding the market that is sensitive to higher costs.
The truth is way more nuanced than “the master carpenter would get outcompeted.”
This hypothetical carpenter would be competing with other carpenters at the same skill level.
Making furniture with features that no one can see except the carpenter is a disadvantage compared to the same carpenter who focuses their time making more their furniture more visually appealing to their customers.
Everyone seems to forget that Apple was nearly bankrupt in the 90s because no one was willing to pay so much for their product when Microsoft did it cheaper and similar quality (from the users perspective).
If you believe the race to the bottom prevents you from doing great work, then you will not do great work.
Spending all your time polishing details that nobody cares about is not doing great work, it is wasting time. Time that could have been spent experimenting on new techniques, trying new ideas, taking on new projects.
Maybe someone should have explained to Jobs how to compete in the marketplace. Another approach is to try to understand why Jobs said those things given the obvious economic costs that you mention, and how it led to the most valuable company in the history of the world.
Sure. It's a rather tiny market that can't support a lot of furniture makers. But it can support at least a couple, and I'll bet you that those ones aren't going cheap on materials.
> Everyone seems to forget that Apple was nearly bankrupt in the 90s
I certainly haven't forgotten, but that's orthogonal to my point. My point is that in many industries, there are high-quality, very expensive versions of the products. One of the things that makes them high quality and expensive is that they don't cut corners. In electronics, I've seen the same effect, where extra care and expense was placed into things that technically don't need it and are unlikely to ever be seen by the customer. That extra care and expense matters to that demographic, though.
While Apple is certainly not on the same level as that, the point is true craftsmanship and meticulous attention to detail does still exist in consumer goods, and can be handsomely profitable.
I guess the metaphor applies here too. Some will take that pride and rise up. Some will take that pride and fall behind despite being equally qualified as the ones who rose. Others will coast along and make stable business.
I think where the metaphor breaks down is visibility. Sure, that cheap plywood isn't normally visible, but a customer who looks will find it. very few iphone consumers have the skills to find bad code and fewer care as long as it does what it is intended. It's probably more akin to selling hot dogs than selling a chair.
this mindset seems to be the exact ones that coporate companies sinking in tech debt has. The absurd extreme of this is that carpentry is a waste of time when you could be making more money as a doctor.
Fact is you don't need to be 100% optimal on time and resources and you don't need infinite money to live. I'm sure carpenters work on thin margins but a few pieces of plywood won't bankrupt them and leave theif families on the streets.
If someone sacrifices a little time and money for personal satisfaction and pride, that's fine. If they want to maximize profits that's also fine (as long as they aren't abusing their labor to do so). C'est la vie.