Alan Ken Thomas - The Business Wisdom of Steve Jobs: 250 Quotes from the Innovator Who Changed the World

The Business Wisdom of
Steve Jobs

The Business Wisdom of Steve Jobs

250 Quotes from the Innovator Who Changed the World

Edited by Alan Ken Thomas

Skyhorse Publishing

Copyright 2011 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61608-749-4

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

Even in death, people remain divided over Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Inc. and known to the world as the man behind the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.

To some, Jobs was a man who changed the world for the better, an inventor and entrepreneur whose impact on daily life is immeasurable. To others, Jobs was a false idol, the symbol of everything wrong with a business playing its cards close to the chest. Everyone had an opinion about him.

But he wasnt always the center of attention. Steven Paul Jobs, born in San Francisco in 1955 and adopted and raised by Paul and Clara Jobs, was in fact a college dropout who found his lack of higher education hindering his path into the technology business. He eventually found work at burgeoning videogame company Atari, Inc., and it was around this time that he met Steve Wozniak.

It was a small humble beginning: Jobs, Wozniak and third partner Ronald Wayne founded Apple in 1976. A year later the Apple II was released to some success, but it wasnt until 1984, with a Superbowl ad and the release of the Macintosh that Apple really began the first of two creative and financial ascensions.

By all accounts, Jobs was a brilliant but difficult creative thinker, someone motivated by the idea that the simpler the design and the easier to use, the better the product. But his unorthodox ideas and ambitions eventually forced his resignation from Apple amidst power grabs over the companys board of directors and executives.

He left in 1985, and given the full history of the company, its telling that in his absence Apple began to stagnate in innovation and products, while Jobs two new ventures become the foundation for the later years of his life.

In the case of Pixar, originally a small graphic design offshoot of Lucasfilms, Jobs bought a $10 million company and sold it less than twenty years later for $7.4 billion to Disney. Along the way, the company revolutionized animation, starting with Toy Story and releasing successful full-length features almost most every year since.

At NeXT Computer, Jobs vision for the computer as an educational tool would eventually prove to be too cost-prohibitive for mass success, but the technical strengths of its hardware and software were years ahead of its time, something that even Apple recognized, acquiring the company in 1997 and bringing Jobs back with it.

And so began the history that pretty much everyone knows by now: first came the iMac, with its unique one-piece design and Technicolor hues. Then it was the iPod, turning the music industry on its head and marking the new age and format of digital music sales. The iPhone and iPad, elaborating on the iPods idea of portability and accessibility, exceeded all expectations, solidifying the Jobs legacy and the second coming of Apple, Inc., something not many people ever anticipated out of the company.

This book was written and researched on an iMac, with text messages from an iPhone vibrating on the table next to me, a girlfriend tapping on an iPad in the living room and an iPod updating on iTunes in the computers background. Typing out that sentence and re-reading it struck me as oddit made me seem like a nerdy fan-boy obsessed with the cult of Mac. But then two things hit me: one, that an extraordinary amount of my day is built around products Steve Jobs oversaw the making of and two, that my current situation is not one confined to the select few technophiles.

Its indisputable that the lives of people across the world have changed (for better or for worse is an entirely different discussion) with the introduction of the personal computing experience. Take a full week and start a running tally on how many hours you spend using a computer, listening to music on a digital device, operating a smart phone. Directly or indirectly, Steve Jobs pushed the world forcefully in the direction he wanted it to go. He may not have been the inventor of any of the devices or programs that have come to be synonymously associated with Steve Jobs. But his genius was in understanding and anticipating what people wanted before they knew it even existed (there are more than a few quotes in this collection relaying that exact sentiment).

Jobs, battling pancreatic cancer in the late years of his life, passed away in 2011, at the age of 56. He was as unique as he was private, both as an individual and as the public face of Apple Inc. You may not be surprised to find that the number of interviews he granted since 1976 is limited. But what touched me, and hopefully leave its mark on you, is how much he was able to convey in such a short time span. His 2005 commencement address at Stanford University alone could serve as a standalone piece of literature itself.

As many have pointed out, its rare that one man represents the public face of a company to the extent that Steve Jobs did for Apple. Maybe thats why so many took it so person-ally upon hearing the news of his passing. It wasnt because he was a particularly kind or generous man (as youll see hints of throughout this book). It wasnt because Apples products were perfect (they werent, and youll see some of that here too). Maybe, just maybe, it was because for the past ten years weve all relied on Steve to show us whats next, to let us know where were heading and what were going to need to get us there. It could be that were all subconsciously fan-boys, whether we want to admit it or not.

Stock in Apple took a dip immediately following his death and Id like to think, romantically, that for the first time in a decade there was a brief but unified moment as the world, suddenly facing a void, wobbled as it found its balance.

A.K.T., 2011

On Beginnings

We started off with a very idealistic perspectivethat doing something with the highest quality, doing it right the first time, would really be cheaper than having to go back and do it again.

Newsweek , 1984

Silicon Valley for the most part at that time was still orchardsapricot orchards and prune orchardsand it was really paradise. I remember the air being crystal clear, where you could see from one end of the valley to the other.

On growing up in Silicon Valley in the early 1960s, Smithsonian Institution , 1995

Things became much more clear that they were the results of human creation not these magical things that just appeared in ones environment that one had no knowledge of their interiors. It gave a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in ones environment. My childhood was very fortunate in that way.