Apple

“Like, the Steve Jobs at 25 or 29 could not be, lead the quality of an organization that Apple became when Apple, when Steve came back when, you know, he's in his late forties.”

“They paid half a billion dollars essentially to rehire Steve Jobs, and it was the bargain of the century.”

“That year, Michael Dell famously said of Apple, what would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to shareholders.”

“Jobs' return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business The creation of new value cannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.”

“That building a great product is not scientific. It's not something that could just be derived from data alone. You have to have taste, and one way to develop taste is through years of practice”

“Steve Jobs himself had decided how he would judge our browser as a product. The focus would be on one thing, speed. Steve wanted our browser to be fast, to be really fast, much faster than Microsoft Internet Explorer, which is the product that we aim to replac…”

“We never waited around for brilliant flashes of insight that might solve problems in one swoop, and we had very few actual eureka moments. Instead, this is the main point of the book. Instead, we move forward in stepwise fashion from problem to design to demo …”

“Shallow beauty in products does not serve people. Product design should strive for depth, for a beauty rooted in what a product does. Not merely in how it looks and feels. Form should follow a function, even though this might seem like a strange notion for pix…”

“Three, three weeks or a month before the keynote itself, Steve would start rehearsing with portions of his slide deck. Slowly, day by day, he would build the show by stepping through it As he wanted to present it at the keynote. This was one of Steve's great s…”

“Designing an excellent user experience was as much about preventing negative experiences as facilitating positive ones. Great products make people happy almost all the time and do the opposite rarely, if at all.”

“At first, Steve attempted to brush off the question, but when Williams pressed him, Steve said, I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful and not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's ne…”

“Steve did not want to sit around and have a bunch of meetings and talk about hypotheticals. He wanted to physically see the work, so they pushed all their work forward through a series of demos, and in many cases, him telling you specifically, hey, what I want…”

“Building a company at the intersection of technology and liberal arts is literally something Edwin Land talked about and did, something Steve Jobs learned from Edwin Land, and then Steve Jobs used it at Apple.”

“One bad experience might undo Dozens are a hundred positive experiences that a customer previously had with your company.”

“The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts to be able to get the best of both. To make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but a…”

“Studying great work from the past provides the means of comparison and contrast and lets us tap into the collective creativity of previous generations. The past is a source of the timeless and enduring.”

“Steve Jobs famously disbanded such an organization at Apple, which was called the Advanced Technology Group, shortly after he reasserted control over the company in 1997.”

“He believed that stripping away non-essential features made products easier for people to learn from the start and Easier to use over time. He wanted products and their software to speak for themselves. He realized that nobody would be standing over the should…”

“At Apple, we never would have dreamed of doing that, and we never staged any AB test for any of the software on the iPhone.”

“People just do not care about your product as much as you do. You have to make it simple and easy to use right from the get go. And so this idea of putting yourself in the customer's shoes and even attaching like a specific example of a customer helps you Make…”

“And Ken talks about, hey, when you're doing demos to Steve, this is the price to be in the room. If he feels you have no valuable insight, you're never going to see him again. Ken was able to demo several times. He says you have to make substantial contributio…”

“Inevitably, whenever you hear a brand that is known for quality, a brand that in many cases outlives the original founder, right? Whether it's a Ferrari, a Rolls-Royce, an Apple, An Estee Lauder, a Chanel. You can always tie it back to one insanely dedicated a…”

“Instead, Steve argued there was no reason that well-designed, well-made computers, just like Yvonne is arguing here, that well-designed, well-made clothing couldn't command the same market share and margins as a luxury automobile. A BMW might get you to where …”

“I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with. I love and admire my species living and dead and am totally dependent on them for my life and wellbeing.”

“The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament. There's a lot of good people left at Apple that are capable of doing that with proper leadership, which is what has been missing.”

“When you have something that doesn't work out, a lot of times people reaction is to get very protective about never wanting to fall on their face again. I think that's a big mistake, because you never achieve what you want without falling on your face a few ti…”

“I remember the week before we launched the Mac, we all got together and we said, every computer is going to work this way. You cannot argue about that anymore. You can argue about how long it will take, but you can't argue about it anymore. It is inevitable.”

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

“There is something good here worth saving. I don't quite know how to express it, but it has to do with the fact that Apple is the only alternative to windows and that Apple can still inject some new thinking into the equation.”

“The first one was a real belief that there wasn't a hierarchy of ideas that mapped onto the hierarchy of the organization.”

“The only good reason to be a manager is so some other bozo Doesn't be the manager and ruin the group that you care about.”

“The dynamic range of people dramatically exceeds things you encounter in the rest of our normal lives, and to try to find those really great people who really, really love what they do.”

“You need a risk taking creative environment on the product side. And that requires a fiscally conservative environment on the business side.”

“The most successful consumer product of all time came from just the fact that he was just building a product for himself.”

“One thing that reading biographies of dead people will do for you, it will remove the illusion that you have something to lose. If you want to design calculators at HP, then do that. But if what you really want to do is to try to start a company, you're making…”

“While turnarounds are difficult in any circumstances, they are doubly difficult in a technology company.”

“Soon after he returned, he slashed the company's product offerings from 17 to four.”

“And so I went back there as interim CEO and I decided right up front that I was going to act like I was the permanent CEO.”

“To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It's a very noisy world. And we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.”

“One of his talents was spotting markets filled with second rate products. Same with James Dyson, right?”

“Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, recounts in his book and a bunch of other interviews I've seen with him biggest regret in his life, he was offered 30% of Apple, I think for like 50,000 or a 100,000, it was something like that, and he said no.”

“He had about seventy million dollars at that time. Ok, so, if you adjust for inflation in our present day, that's like being 30 years old and having two hundred million dollars today.”

“The way that people describe Tiger's level of focus and intense level of focus is very similar to how Steve Jobs, where Steve would, people around him in Apple would say he was focused so intently on one thing that you could talk, you could snap your fingers, …”

“The Macintosh experience taught me that A players like to work only, only with other A players, which means you cannot indulge B players.”

“He used to say regularly that as brilliant as Apple products were, eventually they all ended up in landfills. Pixar movies, on the other hand, would live on forever.”

“At Apple, he had the reputation of being deeply involved in the most minute details of every product, but at Pixar, he didn't believe that his instincts were better than the people here, so he stayed out.”

“And so he actually tries to get Apple before he gets kicked out to buy these guys.”

“Steve Jobs was, this actually is the first thing that makes Steve Jobs a billionaire. He was a billionaire off of Pixar stock, not Apple stock.”

“Steve understood that every interaction a customer had with Apple could increase or decrease his or her respect for the company. As he put it, a corporation could accumulate or withdraw credits from its reputation, which is why he worked so hard to ensure that…”

“The wilderness period, you know, when Steve was fired from Apple, and then when he comes back and goes on, it sets the greatest record, in my argument greatest record in entrepreneurship history, and Steve would tell you this himself.”

“Without that 13 years of struggle, he wouldn't have nearly been the leader and the entrepreneur that he was later in his career.”

“Simple is fast, and I think what the advice that Herb would give you, and I think the advice that Steve would give you, if you feel you're not moving fast enough, narrow your scope, simplify, and then up the intensity”

“And he's like, Hey, what if we gave it away for free? And we just did an ad supported version of Mac OS. And instead of buying them, you can get it for free, but you have to watch an ad every time before you use your computer.”

“I just saw that there's four different versions of the Apple pencil. There's no way that Steve would like that.”

“Ken Sego, the author. He's the one that came up with the name iMac. And thank God he did, because you know what Steve wanted to call the iMac before it was called iMac? He wanted to call the iMac Mac Man.”

“If you believe that your product will improve the life of your customer, then you have a moral obligation to get good at marketing.”

“If you had a slick presentation internally, Steve suspected that you spent the value, the limited valuable time that you had wrapping the idea, making it beautiful instead of spending the time thinking through the idea itself and getting to its essence.”

“Right before Charlie Munger died, he said something that's so important. And he said that trust is one of the greatest economic forces on earth.”

“So when he was building the first Macintosh, he's in his twenties, he limited the team to a hundred people. If you wanted to add a person, if you say, Hey, we need, you know, this person's help. You act, you first have to find the person that was unnecessary a…”

“In fact, in this book, he said that he considered his keynote presentations competitive weapon and he considered a competitive weapon for Apple.”

“He's actually one of the largest tech company landlords in the world. Tech companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, All lease property from Ortega. In fact, his commercial real estate portfolio alone is worth around twenty billion dollars.”

“Steve, Steve thought annual reviews was the dumbest thing ever. Cause like, I'm giving you feedback constantly. Why would I wait for 12, you know, once a year to give you feedback.”

“In 1998, with over twelve billion in sales, we surpassed IBM and Apple to become the second biggest PC company in the world. Only Compaq now stood above us, and we had them in our sights.”

“We had to ambush them. What that meant is that we had to go to high traffic locations and put stores there, even if it was more expensive.”

“The idea is that you should build a company at the intersection of arts and technology. That is Edwin Land's idea. That is an idea that Steve Jobs learned from Edwin Land that Steve used when he was in his twenties, his thirties, his forties, until he died.”

“Nolan Bushnow, the founder of Atari, recounts in his book and a bunch of other interviews I've seen with him. Biggest regret in his life, he was offered 30% of Apple, I think for like 50,000 or a 100,000, it was something like that. And he said, no”

“I think the person that was most influential on how he managed when he came back to Apple was actually the time he spent with Ed Catmull. Seeing how Ed Catmull actually ran Pixar.”

“To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It's a very noisy world. And we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.”

“The cure for Apple is to innovate. It's way out of its current predicament. There's a lot of good people left at Apple that are capable of doing that with proper leadership, which is what has been missing.”

“I don't care about being right. I just want to be excellent. Please continue to challenge me. It's the way we get to the right decisions, and I enjoy it.”

“He had about seventy million dollars at that time. Ok, so, if you adjust for inflation in our present day, that's like being 30 years old and having two hundred million dollars today.”

“One of his talents was spotting markets filled with second rate products.”

“One thing that reading biographies of dead people will do for you, it will remove the illusion that you have something to lose. If you want to design calculators at HP, then do that. But if what you really want to do is to try to start a company, you're making…”

“If Apple comes up with a dozen innovations in a year, we can maybe advertise four or five of them. We can't advertise more than that, because even if we had all the money in the world, the customer would get very confused with all these messages coming at them…”

“The first one was a real belief that there wasn't a hierarchy of ideas that mapped onto the hierarchy of the organization.”

“There is an irrational love for the way, like, he approached the product that he made and the company that he built, and then ironically, these type of craftsmen usually wind up with the money anyways.”

“And so in about a year, he raised Apple's market cap to four billion from 1.8 billion.”

“And so I went back there as interim CEO and I decided right up front that I was going to act like I was the permanent CEO.”

“There is something good here worth saving. I don't quite know how to express it, but it has to do with the fact that Apple is the only alternative to Windows, and that Apple can still inject some new thinking into the equation.”

“We actually got rid of 70% of the stuff on the product roadmap.”

“Every time we convince people that we've accomplished something at one level, they come up with something new. I used to think this was a bad thing. I thought, oh geez, when are they ever going to believe that we're going to be able to turn this thing around? …”

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

“I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it, and I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.”

“I remember the week before we launched the Mac, we all got together and we said, every computer is going to work this way. You cannot argue about that anymore. You can argue about how long it will take, but you can't argue about it anymore. It is inevitable.”

“You need a risk-taking creative environment on the product side, and that requires a fiscally conservative environment on the business side.”

“Steve respected talented people who could fight. You had to be willing to push back against Steve. Your ideas would only survive if you could evangelize them and convince all the smart people around that this was the best option.”

“The whole pricing discussion took five minutes.”

“The founder of B walks in and he pursued a different approach. He hadn't brought anyone else from his team. He wasn't carrying a laptop. In fact, he had prepared no presentation whatsoever because the two teams had been kept separate.”

“Steve opened, offering the company at 12 dollars a share, which would have made the total acquisition price five hundred million dollars.”

“In fact, Ed Catmull told this great story where Steve was talking about that he had fired two people from Apple's board, and the reason Steve gave Ed surprised Ed, and Steve said, is because they didn't ever disagree with me.”

“And so he winds up poaching his co-founders. I think there's like four or five co-founders of next directly from Apple. This causes Apple to sue Steve jobs.”

“We reduced product development from three years to nine months. We made Apple one of the fastest companies in tech”

“There's 16 odd designers focusing on refining and improving Apple's products and manufacturing processes. By comparison, Samsung has a thousand designers working in 34 research centers around the world. Apple had 16 in one spot.”

“We don't do focus groups because that is the job of the designer. It is unfair to ask people who don't have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design.”

“While turnarounds are difficult in any circumstances, they are doubly difficult in a technology company.”

“The creation of new value cannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.”

“Not the one Henry helped to finance. He invested in Apple.”