“Death is very likely the single best inven­tion of life… It is life’s change agent”

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.

“If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most cer­tainly be right”

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 you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of think­ing you have some­thing to lose”

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.
 
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On Work

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking”

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 until you find it. Don’t settle.

Play­boy: Are you say­ing that the people who made PC jr don’t have that kind of pride in the product?

SJ: “If they did, they wouldn’t have made the PC jr.” Play­boy Inter­view 1985

“We just want to make great products”

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.

“The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!”

“They’re not going to learn slash q-​z any more than they’re going to learn Morse code”

The manual for Word­Star, the most pop­u­lar word-​processing pro­gram, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel––one that reads like a mys­tery to most people. They’re not going to learn slash q-​z any more than they’re going to learn Morse code. That is what Macin­tosh is all about. Play­boy Inter­view 1985

“Be a yard­stick of qual­ity. Some people aren’t used to an envir­on­ment where excel­lence is expec­ted“
 
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On Per­sever­ance and Deal­ing with the Hard Times

“Some­times life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith…”

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 was awful tast­ing medi­cine, but I guess the patient needed it. Some­times life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

“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”

“We were just going to invest our way through the down­turn, that we weren’t going to lay off people”

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.

“The prob­lem… isn’t that too many people are start­ing com­pan­ies; it’s that too many people aren’t stick­ing with it”

The prob­lem with the Inter­net star­tup craze isn’t that too many people are start­ing com­pan­ies; it’s that too many people aren’t stick­ing with it. That’s some­what under­stand­able, because there are many moments that are filled with des­pair and agony, when you have to fire people and can­cel things and deal with very dif­fi­cult situ­ations. That’s when you find out who you are and what your val­ues are.

“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“
 
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On Cre­ativ­ity and Design

“When you’re a car­penter mak­ing a beau­ti­ful chest of draw­ers, you’re not going to use a piece of ply­wood on the back”

When you’re a car­penter mak­ing a beau­ti­ful chest of draw­ers, you’re not going to use a piece of ply­wood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beau­ti­ful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aes­thetic, the qual­ity, has to be car­ried all the way through.

“Some people think design means how it looks. But of course… it’s really how it works”

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primar­ily, it was how it worked. To design some­thing really well, you have to get it… It takes a pas­sion­ate com­mit­ment to really thor­oughly under­stand some­thing, chew it up, not just quickly swal­low it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.

“Design is the fun­da­mental soul of a human-​made creation”

In most people’s vocab­u­lar­ies, design means ven­eer. It’s interior dec­or­at­ing. It’s the fab­ric of the cur­tains of the sofa. But to me, noth­ing could be fur­ther from the mean­ing of design. Design is the fun­da­mental soul of a human-​made cre­ation that ends up express­ing itself in suc­cess­ive outer lay­ers of the product or service.

“Cre­ativ­ity is just con­nect­ing things”

Cre­ativ­ity is just con­nect­ing things. When you ask cre­at­ive people how they did some­thing, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw some­thing. It seemed obvi­ous to them after a while. That’s because they were able to con­nect exper­i­ences they’ve had and syn­thes­ize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more exper­i­ences or they have thought more about their exper­i­ences than other people.

“The broader one’s under­stand­ing of the human exper­i­ence, the bet­ter design we will have”

Unfor­tu­nately, that’s too rare a com­mod­ity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse exper­i­ences. So they don’t have enough dots to con­nect, and they end up with very lin­ear solu­tions without a broad per­spect­ive on the prob­lem. The broader one’s under­stand­ing of the human exper­i­ence, the bet­ter design we will have.

“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups… people don’t know what they want until you show it to them”

For some­thing this com­plic­ated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

“We didn’t build the Mac for any­body else. We built it for ourselves”

We think the Mac will sell zil­lions, but we didn’t build the Mac for any­body else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do mar­ket research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.

“We made the but­tons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them” 

“Pro­cesses… that’s not what it’s about”

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.

“This is not just engin­eer­ing and sci­ence. There is art too”

“Click. Boom. Amaz­ing!“
 
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On Keep­ing It Simple

“Simple can be harder than complex”

That’s been one of my man­tras — focus and sim­pli­city. Simple can be harder than com­plex: You have to work hard to get your think­ing clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

“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”

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.

“Focus means say­ing… no to the hun­dred other good ideas that there are”

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.

“It’s only by say­ing no that you can con­cen­trate on the things that are really important”

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. 

“I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do“
 
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On Innov­a­tion

“It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it”

Innov­a­tion has noth­ing to do with how many R&D dol­lars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spend­ing at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

“The cure for Apple is not cost-​cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate”

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

“Innov­a­tion comes from people meet­ing up in the hall­ways or call­ing each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea”

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.

“Innov­a­tion dis­tin­guishes between a leader and a fol­lower“
 
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On Bill Gates and Microsoft

“I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit nar­row. He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger”

“I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s suc­cess — I have no prob­lem with their suc­cess. They’ve earned their suc­cess, for the most part. I have a prob­lem with the fact that they just make really third-​rate products”

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

“The only prob­lem with Microsoft is they just have no taste”

The only prob­lem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have abso­lutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of ori­ginal ideas, and they don’t bring much cul­ture into their products.
 
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On Pre­dict­ing the Future

“We’re just in the begin­ning stages of what will be a truly remark­able break­through for most people”

The most com­pel­ling reason for most people to buy a com­puter for the home will be to link it to a nation­wide com­mu­nic­a­tions net­work. We’re just in the begin­ning stages of what will be a truly remark­able break­through for most people––as remark­able as the tele­phone. Play­boy Inter­view, 1985

“Even­tu­ally, Microsoft will crumble because of complacency”

It’s like when IBM drove a lot of innov­a­tion out of the com­puter industry before the micro­pro­cessor came along. Even­tu­ally, Microsoft will crumble because of com­pla­cency, and maybe some new things will grow. But until that hap­pens, until there’s some fun­da­mental tech­no­logy shift, it’s just over. Wired, 1996
 
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On Lead­ing Apple

“Are they going to fall in love with Apple?”

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.

“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better”

“My job is to cre­ate space”

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 organ­iz­a­tion and keep it at bay

“I’ve always wanted to own and con­trol the primary tech­no­logy in everything we do“
 
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And One More Thing…

Not a Steve Jobs quote, but the words to the “Think Dif­fer­ent” Apple commercial:

“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.”

The com­mer­cial is avail­able to view here: Think Dif­fer­ent

Also well worth view­ing is Steve Jobs’ Com­mence­ment Address at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity in 2005, avail­able here: Steve Jobs Com­mence­ment Address

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