Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)

Some quotes from the INSANELY GREAT one.

"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

"A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets."

"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently - they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do."

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. Most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

"Nobody has tried to swallow us since I've been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste."

"Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation."

"Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations."

"It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it too. That's what we get paid to do. We just want to make great products."

"I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance."

"I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year... It's very character-building."

"The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organisation and keep it at bay."

"I was lucky - I found what I love to do early in life."

"Recruiting is hard. It's just finding the needles in the haystack. You can't know enough in a one-hour interview. So, in the end, it's ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they're challenged? I ask everybody that: 'Why are you here?' The answers themselves are not what you're looking for. It's the meta-data."

"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully."

"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

"It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we'd given customers what they said they wanted, we'd have built a computer they'd have been happy with a year after we spoke to them - not something they'd want now."

"To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline."

"We are very careful about what features we add because we can't take them away."

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."

"Apple's market share is bigger than BMW's or Mercedes's or Porsche's in the automotive market. What's wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?"

"I think we're having fun. I think our customers really like our products. And we're always trying to do better."

"I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do."

"When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is - are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself. They'll want to do what's best for Apple, not what's best for them, what's best for Steve, or anybody else."

"There's a phrase in Buddhism, 'Beginner's mind.' It's wonderful to have a beginner's mind."

"Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it's that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That's Apple's problem: Their differentiation evaporated."

"(We want to) get new products out there and have new ways to buy them. I think if we manage the top line, the bottom line will follow. I don't know what the future will bring, but we're working as fast as we can."

"We've had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren't going to lay off people, that we'd taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place - the last thing we were going to do is lay them off."

"Our DNA is as a consumer company - for that individual customer who's voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That's who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it's not up to par, it's our fault, plain and simply."