The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 22 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Kawasaki: If Apple and Tim Cook cannot take moral stands, nobody can
“Your moral compass should exist at a higher level than, how can I make the most money? And so you may have to, you know, you may have to take stands. And to take an extreme example if Apple and Tim Cook cannot take a stand, who can? Who can? You're the most fr…”
Ahrendts: Steve Jobs forbade Apple retail staff from selling
“All of those retail employees, they just revered Steve, and he told them they weren't allowed to sell, that their job was to enrich lives, and they needed to do it through the lens of education through his products”
Ahrendts: Steve Jobs forbade Apple retail staff from actively selling
“And he told them they weren't allowed to sell, that their job was to enrich lives, and they needed to do it through the lens of education through his products.”
Host Jeff Berman: Apple, Nike, and the NFL are the hardest dealmakers
“The three hardest companies I've ever done deals with are Apple, Nike, and the National Football League. And I worked at the National Football League.”
Ahrendts: Authentic executive video should avoid studio production and makeup
“YouTube videos don't have studio lighting and hair and makeup. This has gotta be authentic. We'll do it in my office with an iPhone.”
Kawasaki: Optimal decision is often improving current roles rather than jumping ship
“One of the lessons that I learned from quitting Apple and all that is that, you know, sometimes the grass is not greener, and the optimal decision is to stay on the grass you're on and fertilize it And water it. And make it greener. Not jump ship.”
Kawasaki: Apple's corporate structure cannot accommodate major creative side projects
“Let's just say that the Apple HR mechanism is not geared towards people writing 16 books or conducting a podcast”
Kawasaki: Selling jewelry was harder than evangelizing the original Macintosh
“I think selling jewelry was harder because jewelry is, it's made of commodities, albeit valuable commodities like gold and diamonds, but you can stick that on a scale. Whereas with Macintosh, you know, we really had magic”
Kawasaki: Incumbent companies must cannibalize their own products before competitors do
“If we don't cannibalize our business, Two guys or two gals in a garage are. So isn't it better that we create a Macintosh that kills an Apple II, or we create an iPhone, iPod, iPad that kills a Macintosh? Isn't it better we kill it than somebody else kills it?”
Kawasaki: Massive companies start with simple questions, not grand master plans
“These companies that do achieve, you know, quote, worldwide domination, they often start or almost always start with very simple questions. And I think from the outside looking in, if you look at an apple or something that has acquired this lofty status, you t…”
Hoffman: Apple's biggest hits succeeded because Jobs changed his methods and self-image
“And I'd argue these were all so successful in part because Steve learned to change his approach, his process, and even the way he saw himself.”
Hoffman: 70% of Apple employees lacked senior leadership representation before Ahrendts
“As we noted earlier, retail actually made up 70% of Apple's a 100,000 employees, but not on the senior leadership team, the level at which a company's driving mission gets set.”
Hoffman: Apple enforces extreme internal secrecy and siloes project work
“It's extremely internal, like, you know, you're not allowed to talk to anyone outside the company. Many groups are working on things that nobody knows about, and that it doesn't share between the group.”
Tim Cook and Eddy Cue rejected Iovine's Beats pitch for two years
“I went to see Tim Cook and Eddie, they'll tell you, for two years, every two months. I didn't care. You know how many times they said no to me? Whatever two years and one month is.”
Interscope produced early iTunes commercials and helped Apple tune the platform
“We did all the early commercials for iTunes. We helped them tune iTunes. We just, Interscope went all in on iTunes.”
Ahrendts: Burberry was the first to deploy iPads in stores
“We were the first to buy the iPads, and digitize everything in the stores, et cetera”
Kawasaki: I quit Apple twice and rejected Steve Jobs' third offer
“You are talking to a person who quit Apple twice and turned down Steve for a third position. So, the receipts indicate that I obviously did not think that Apple was going to be the most valuable company in the world because I left there twice and turned down t…”
Ahrendts: Apple Retail built the 'Loop' app for peer store problem-solving
“We created an app called Loop that they had to close the loop.”
Only three million US music streaming subscribers existed before Apple entered
“Remember, there was only three million subscribers in America when Apple got in the game.”
Catmull: Steve Jobs' 1999 Macworld prank showed his lighter sense of humor
“Now Steve, with this lighter sense of humor, I thought it'd be a great idea to have Noah Wiley come out on the stage and pretend to be him. They just demonstrated the depth of humor to be able to do that.”