
Steve Jobs' Best Quotes - arst829
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/08/24/steve-jobss-best-quotes/
======
m0nastic
Folklore.org seems to be down right now, but my favorite Steve Jobs exchange
is the following:

We worked our way up to the front of the crowd to get a good look at the units
[Osborne 1] that were on display. We started to ask one of the presenters a
technical question, when we were suprised to see Adam Osborne himself standing
a few feet from us, looking at our show badges, preempting the response.

"Oh, some Apple folks", he addressed us in a condescending tone, "What do you
think? The Osborne 1 is going to outsell the Apple II by a factor of 10, don't
you think so? What part of Apple do you work in?"

When we told him that we were on the Mac team, he started to chuckle. "The
Macintosh, I heard about that. When are we going to get to see it? Well, go
back and tell Steve Jobs that the Osborne 1 is going to outsell the Apple II
and the Macintosh combined!"

So, after returning to Cupertino later that afternoon, we told Steve about our
encounter with Adam Osborne. He smiled, with a sort of mock anger, and
immediately grabbed the telephone on the spare desk in Bud's office, and
called information for the number of the Osborne Computer Corporation. He
dialed the number, but it was answered by a secretary.

"Hi, this is Steve Jobs. I'd like to speak with Adam Osborne."

The secretary informed Steve that Mr. Osborne was not available, and would not
be back in the office until tomorrow morning. She asked Steve if he would like
to leave a message.

"Yes", Steve replied. He paused for a second. "Here's my message. Tell Adam
he's an asshole."

There was a long delay, as the secretary tried to figure out how to respond.
Steve continued, "One more thing. I hear that Adam's curious about the
Macintosh. Tell him that the Macintosh is so good that he's probably going to
buy a few for his children even though it put his company out of business!"

~~~
anon5
Did some digging about Adam Osborne. Made me quite sad for him...

It seems he was a failed (relatively speaking) genius. He is credited with
building the first computer for people. Also was briefly considered a
contemporary of Bill G and Steve Jobs:

"on April 3rd, 1981 when a startup called Osborne Computer Corporation
announced the Osborne 1 at the West Coast Computer Faire at San Francisco’s
Brooks Hall. It was the first true mass-produced portable PC and one of the
most popular computers of its time" (Source:
<http://technologizer.com/2011/04/01/osborne-computer/>)

He also: "he founded another company that also collapsed–but not before
helping to pioneer the idea of really cheap software"

He later died in India at the age of 64, in 2003. Where he was born and
educated when he was a very young.

~~~
rbanffy
> It was the first true mass-produced portable PC

Erm... "portable" is not the word I'd use. Most would settle for
"transportable". I'd rather use "draggable".

~~~
T-hawk
I remember "luggable" as the adjective of choice for such machines through the
late 80's and early 90's. The PC Magazine columnists (Dvorak and Seymour and
others) were fond of it.

~~~
rbanffy
I remember "luggable". There was an April fool's section in BYTE in the late
80's advertising a line of hand luggage made to look like portable computers.
The text said something about the size being painfully realistic and not
fitting under an airplane seat.

------
phil
All armchair commentators would do well to consider this one:

Q: There’s a lot of symbolism to your return. Is that going to be enough to
reinvigorate the company with a sense of magic?

“You’re missing it. This is not a one-man show. What’s reinvigorating this
company is two things: One, there’s a lot of really talented people in this
company who listened to the world tell them they were losers for a couple of
years, and some of them were on the verge of starting to believe it
themselves. But they’re not losers. What they didn’t have was a good set of
coaches, a good plan. A good senior management team. But they have that now.”
[BusinessWeek, May 25, 1998]

~~~
jballanc
To continue on this thread, I once heard Steve describe it this way:

"When I returned to Apple, I went to every engineering team and fired all the
managers. Then, I went to the smartest engineer on each team and told them
they were going to be the new manager. Of course, being the smartest
engineers, they all immediately said, 'No'! So I told them, 'Look, either
you're going to be the new manager, or I'll go hire someone like your old
manager.' After that, every one of them agreed to take the position."

~~~
ajays
Do you have a reference for this? I'd like to send it out to a few people, but
"I read it on HN" doesn't seem to have the same cache' (yet.. ;) ).

~~~
jballanc
Unfortunately, this was from a talk Steve gave when I was working at Apple, so
I'm quoting from memory...

------
lionhearted
This one, too -

\--

“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy.
The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older,
you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people
exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is
optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the
networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the
truth.” [Wired, February 1996]

~~~
mattgreenrocks
That quote kills me.

I've always had an aesthetic revulsion to committing to giving people
_exactly_ what they say they want. It belies a lack of imagination on the part
of the creator, and smacks of a lack of integrity. However, most of the world
is set up this way, despite my status as a 'professional.'

How do you claim more autonomy? I suppose this is part of the beauty of a
startup.

------
alanfalcon
great stuff. Like Steve on Startups:

“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.

“So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re
gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of
their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to
keep their newfound wealth in perspective.” [Fortune, Jan. 24, 2000]

~~~
kubrickslair
I have posted this a few days back, but I guess in the context of persistance.
He indeed did wait for the next big thing.

Rumelt congratulated Jobs on the turnaround but expressed skepticism about
Apple’s chances of overcoming the Windows-Intel lock on personal computers.
“What are you going to do in the longer term?” Rumelt asked. “What’s the
strategy?” Jobs, he recalls, “just smiled and said, ‘I am going to wait for
the next big thing.’”

------
jballanc
My two favorite Steve quotes both came during a talk with some interns one
summer (paraphrasing from memory):

\-----

Intern: "Where do you see Apple in 5 years? 10 years?"

Steve: "I don't know. I'm too focused on where Apple is going tomorrow...and I
think anyone that does tell you they know where their company will be in 5
years is lying, or doesn't have enough to worry about now."

(It was clear that Steve saw Apple's roadmap as a continuous progression from
the present, rather than a plotted course to some arbitrary goal. That's an
attitude that I've found has served me very well...)

\-----

Intern: "What are your dreams?"

Steve: "To not be asked questions like that...next"

------
javert
So many of these remind me of Howard Roark, the architect in Ayn Rand's novel
"The Fountainhead."

The idea of designing products for yourself, that YOU want, not for a
committee and not for the masses - and of loyalty to the central idea of the
product all the way through. The idea of a man who is religious about his work
- but who is not actually religious. Building something in your own image -
for Roark, it was actual buildings; for Jobs, as has been said, it was Apple.

~~~
malkia
A lot of the popular computer languages were designed rather by individual
persons, or small teams, not comittes.

------
rbanffy
Two of my favorites are not there:

"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."

and

"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."

~~~
charlieok
Actually the one about third rate products is in the article

~~~
rbanffy
True. Must have skipped that.

------
cpeterso
Steve's advice to Nike:

"Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust
after. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and
focus on the good stuff."

------
gxs
“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, February 1996]

Wow I find this one especially prescient. Imo it shows real insight, and shows
he wasn't following some pipe dream.

------
plainOldText
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be
trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s
thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner
voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and
intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything
else is secondary.”

I think this is simply one of the best quotes I've ever come across.

~~~
pajju
has lots of gravity and truth in it.

------
adulau
There is a missing quote from Steve Jobs that I really like.

"It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we
hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."

------
bnycum
One of my favorites not on there.

"We do no market research. We don't hire consultants. The only consultants
I've ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway's retail
strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made [when
launching Apple's retail stores]."

------
arst829
Perhaps the most pertinent to startup life: "“It’s more fun to be a pirate
than to join the navy.”

~~~
vacri
Perhaps in the fantasy in our heads. But in real life, pirates are desperate
people, usually repeatedly risking their lives in order to stay alive. In
comparison, all the people I know in the navy absolutely love it - they like
the life, they absolutely love the travelling from port to port, cameraderie,
high tech playtoys, so on and so forth.

~~~
ulf
I think he meant it more in the context of olden times, where neither pirates
nor navy had "high tech playtoys" and piracy was a little more common than
today

~~~
arethuza
Also the distinction between navies and pirates was a lot less clearly defined
than it is now.

Both John Paul Jones and Sir Walter Raleigh were regarded as pirates by their
adversaries and as naval heroes at home.

~~~
psykotic
And those two would be considered among the least piratic! The English Crown
granted licenses that gave commercial vessels the rights to any plunder from
Spanish ships and settlements. It was effectively a loose mercenary
affiliation. Deal: We empower you to commit legally sanctioned piracy. In
return you make life difficult for our enemies and cut us in on the proceeds.
Soldiers in war were never as restrained as period movies would have us
believe, so imagine being boarded or invaded by a desperate privateer crew
with not even the semblance of honor and soldierly gallantry to moderate their
behavior.

Ahem. Back to Steve.

~~~
arethuza
I think it's allowed in the circumstances:

<http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Pirate_Flag.txt>

------
lionhearted
This one's my favorite -

\--

Q: There’s a lot of symbolism to your return. Is that going to be enough to
reinvigorate the company with a sense of magic?

“You’re missing it. This is not a one-man show. What’s reinvigorating this
company is two things: One, there’s a lot of really talented people in this
company who listened to the world tell them they were losers for a couple of
years, and some of them were on the verge of starting to believe it
themselves. But they’re not losers. What they didn’t have was a good set of
coaches, a good plan. A good senior management team. But they have that now.”
[BusinessWeek, May 25, 1998]

------
dulse
I love that perhaps his most insightful and quote-able interview ever was to
Playboy in 1985.

~~~
qq66
Playboy has a long tradition of great writing, although in recent decades it
seems like its literary niche has been picked up by Vanity Fair.

------
philjackson
"We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody
else. We built it for ourselves."

Seems contrary to advice I often read from people here.

~~~
lhnz
Yes, but you might have also heard about "eating your own dog food."

~~~
philjackson
I have, but that just refers to using your own product, not building it for
yourself.

------
Steko
Two of my favorite Steve stories:

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Gobble_Gobble_Gobble.txt)

<http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3533.html>

------
mateo42
His answer the 1996 interview question with Wired about technology
revolutionizing our lives definitely seems at odds with what we've listened to
him tout about such things as the iPad.

~~~
pbreit
I'm guessing you are referring to this passage, but I can only guess since you
forgot to specify:

"Q: What's the biggest surprise this technology will deliver?

A: The problem is I'm older now, I'm 40 years old, and this stuff doesn't
change the world. It really doesn't.

Q: That's going to break people's hearts.

A: I'm sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these
things. We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been
happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much - if at all.

These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not
otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in
touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the
latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I'm not
downplaying that. But it's a disservice to constantly put things in this
radical new light - that it's going to change everything. Things don't have to
change the world to be important.

The Web is going to be very important. Is it going to be a life-changing event
for millions of people? No. I mean, maybe. But it's not an assured Yes at this
point. And it'll probably creep up on people.

It's certainly not going to be like the first time somebody saw a television.
It's certainly not going to be as profound as when someone in Nebraska first
heard a radio broadcast. It's not going to be that profound."

15 years later...yeah, probably not an accurate call on "the web". But I think
I sort of understand what he's trying to say. And am mindful that he was
trying to be a bit provocative.

~~~
ctdonath
"Having children really changes your view on these things."

Did he? In true Apple form, we (at least I) know absolutely nothing about his
private life. Only hint of offspring is on his new house blueprint marked
"playroom".

------
AaronInCincy
I think $404.50/share is about the best quote he's ever had.

------
whatrocks
Great 1995 interview with Jobs from the Smithsonian:

<http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/sj1.html>

 _In our business, one person can't do anything anymore. You create a team of
people around you. You have a responsibility of integrity of work to that
team. Everybody does try to turn out the best work that they can._

------
acak
The bicycle analogy to computers.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob_GX50Za6c

Paraphrase: The computer is to the human mind, what the bicycle is to our
ability to travel.

------
daimyoyo
My favorite quote from Steve Jobs:
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Signing_Party.txt&topic=Apple%20Spirit&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date)

------
bonzoesc
Sums up my thoughts on vi:

> Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in
> America to improve productivity. It won’t work. The special incantations you
> have to learn this time are the “slash q-zs” and things like that.

~~~
super_mario
Yeah, but a good portion of Mac users would never use it if it weren't UNIX
under the covers and if it didn't enable them to work they way they like (from
command line and vi). Without these people advocating the platform, it would
be a lot less successful.

~~~
dreamdu5t
Agreed. The sole reason I use a Mac is because it's BSD + a far far superior
replacement to X Windows. Among countless other subtle perfections.

------
pavanred
I am eagerly waiting for the Steve Jobs's biography. Its based on 40
interviews with Jobs. I am hoping there are a lot more such interesting
stories.

------
grammr
"I want to put a ding in the universe."

