Businesspeople From San Francisco

"I found that there were these incredibly great people at doing certain things, and that you couldn't replace one of these people with 50 average people. They could just do things that no number of average people could do."

"Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better."

"<!-- Rolling Stone: It's been 10 years since the Macintosh was introduced. When you look around at the technological landscape today, what's most surprising to you?"

"<!-- Rolling Stone: Nevertheless, you've often talked about how technology can empower people, how it can change their lives. Do you still have as much faith in technology today as you did when you started out 20 years ago?"

"Rolling Stone: It's been 10 years since the PC revolution started. Rational people can debate about whether technology has made the world a better place –"

"Microsoft has had two goals. One was to copy the Mac and the other was to copy Lotus' success in the spreadsheet. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost. They were able to copy the Mac because the Mac was frozen in time. The Mac didn't change much for the last 10 years. It changed maybe 10 percent. It was a sitting duck. It's amazing that it took Microsoft 10 years to copy something that was a sitting duck. Apple, unfortunately, doesn't deserve too much sympathy. They invested hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into R&D, but very little came out. They produced almost no new innovation since the original Mac itself."

"We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them."

"You've baked a really lovely cake, but then you've used dog shit for frosting."

"I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates."

"It will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry. This is landmark stuff. I can't overestimate it!"

"There are sneakers that cost more than an iPod."

"People think it's this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

"We don't believe it's possible to protect digital content … What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet — and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock — open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it — puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it."

"The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful."

"We used to dream about this stuff. Now we get to build it. It's pretty great."

"We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on."

"Why would I ever want to run Disney? Wouldn't it make more sense just to sell them Pixar and retire?"

"The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament."

"It wasn't that 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."

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

"I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That's ridiculous."

"I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do."

"The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more efficient. But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea. And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important."

"Mac OS X Tiger will come out long before Longhorn."

"Pixar is the most technically advanced creative company; Apple is the most creatively advanced technical company."

"They are shamelessly copying us."

"Because I'm the CEO, and I think it can be done."

"And one more thing..."

"I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next."

"You know, you keep on innovating, you keep on making better stuff. And if you always want the latest and greatest, then you have to buy a new iPod at least once a year."

"Our friends up north spend over five billion dollars on research and development and all they seem to do is copy Google and Apple."

"Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they're really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through."

"We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise and the software expertise, including iTunes. One of the biggest insights we have was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless."

"I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable."

"I make 50 cents for showing up … and the other 50 cents is based on my performance."

"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."

"I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If that was the case, Microsoft would have great products."

"It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!"

"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. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About 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 people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

"Yes, it's true."

"Now, I have something to tell you today. Mac OS X has been leading a secret double life — for the past five years. There have been rumors to this effect... but this is Apple's campus in Cupertino — let's zoom in on it — in that building right there... we've had teams doing the "just-in-case" scenario; and our rules have been that our designs for OS X must be processor independent, and that every project must be built for both the Power PC and Intel processors. And so today for the first time, I can confirm the rumors that every release of OS X has been compiled for both Power PC and Intel — this has been going on for the last five years. Just in case."

"So Mac OS X is cross-platform by design, right from the very beginning. So Mac OS X is singing on Intel processors, and I'd just like to show you right now. As a matter of fact... this system I've been using here... Let go have a look... [reveals that the system he had been using for the presentation was running Mac OS X 10.4.1 on a machine using a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 processor] So.. we've been running on an Intel machine all morning."

"We intend to release Leopard at the end of 2006 or early 2007, right around the time when Microsoft is expected to release Longhorn."

"I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn [the art of decorative or hand lettering]. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful. Historical. Artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture. And I found it fascinating. None of this had any hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them."

"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference."

"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."

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle."

"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."