Source - Wiki
- You had me at scrolling
- At Macworld '07 (iPhone introduction)
- Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me... Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.
- On Gates and Microsoft, Wall Street Journal, Summer 1993
- Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don't know any better.
- I was worth about over a million dollars when I was twenty-three and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five and it wasn't that important because I never did it for the money.
- PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
- 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.
- PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
- 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.
- PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
- I wish him [Bill Gates] 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.
- Interview, New York Times (1997)
- It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led and how much you get it
- Time, Digital 50 - Steve Jobs #8 ("best line") [1]
- 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) [2]
- We don't believe it's possible to protect digital content...What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.
- Steve Jobs: The Rolling Stone Interview (December 2003) [3]
- The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful.
- Steve Jobs: The Rolling Stone Interview (December 2003) [4]
- We used to dream about this stuff. Now, we get to build it. It's pretty neat.
- WWDC Keynote (2004-06) Video Stream
- We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.
- Interview with Steve Jobs in Macworld magazine (February 2004)
- I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That's ridiculous.
- The Seed of Apple's Innovation. interview with Business Week (October 2004) [5]
- If, for some reason, we make some big mistake and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter a computer Dark Ages for about twenty years.
- In Jeffrey S. Young, The Journey is the Reward, p. 235
- Mac OS X Tiger will come out long before Longhorn.
- MWSF Keynote (2005-01) [6]
- If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.
- From his speech at Stanford University during graduation in the spring of 2005
- 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.
- 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.
- ibid.
- 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.
- ibid.
- When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
- I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to [learn calligraphy]. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful. Historical. Artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture. And I found it fascinating. None of this had any hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.
- ibid.
- 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.
- ibid.
- Because I'm the CEO, and I think it can be done.
- Click. Boom. Amazing!
- MacWorld "Intel Inside" Keynote, January 2006
- Everyone wants a MacBook Pro because they are so bitchin'.
- Apple Annual Shareholder Meeting, April 2006
- You've baked a really lovely cake, but then you've used dog shit for frosting.
- "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" by Alan Deutschman
- Steve Jobs commenting on a NeXT programmer's work as nicely done but incomplete and lacking something.
- "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" by Alan Deutschman
- Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. It's very fortunate if you can work on just one of these in your career. ... Apple's been very fortunate in that it's introduced a few of these.
- Apple unveils cell phone, Apple TV (January 9, 2007)
- Announcing the introduction of the iPhone
- I make fifty cents for showing up... and the other 50 cents is based on my performance.
- On how Apple linked executive pay and performance, referring to his now legendary $1 annual salary at the Annual Shareholder Meeting (2007) source
- I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check...if so, then Microsoft would have great products.
- Steve Jobs on how talent helps develop great products. Apple Shareholder Meeting 2007 source
On Innovation and Design
- Computers are like a bicycle for our minds.
- It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.
- At age 29, in Playboy, February 1985
- I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- (Miele) really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years.
- Wired, February 1996
- They are shamelessly copying us
- cNet News, April 2005
- About Microsoft and Windows
- I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next.
- Brian Williams. "Steve Jobs: Iconoclast and salesman", MSNBC, 2006-05-25. URL accessed on 2006- 05-25.
- Our friends up north (Microsoft) spend over five billion dollars on research and development and all they seem to do is copy Google and Apple.
- WWDC, August 2006
- Look at the design of a lot of consumer products—they're really complicated surfaces. We tried 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.
- We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise and the software expertise, including iTunes. One of the biggest insights we have was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless.
- ibid.
- On the success of the iPod design
- I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If that was the case, Microsoft would have great products.
- Apple stockholder's meeting, May 10, 2007 [7]
- On why he delayed Leopard in favor of iPhone instead of hiring more developers
- It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!
- All Things Digital Conference 5, May 30, 2007 [8]
- On how Apple is the largest developer for Microsoft Windows due to their popularity of their iTunes Jukebox software at D.
On Fixing Apple
- The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!
- BusinessWeek, July 1997
- On Gil Amelio's lackluster reign
- The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.
- In Owen W. Linzmayer, Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company
- If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth -- and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.
- You know, I've got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can't say any more than that it's the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.
- Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could -- I'm searching for the right word -- could, could die.
- It wasn't that Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it's that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That's Apple's problem: Their differentiation evaporated.
- Apple Confidential 2.0
- The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That's over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.
- Wired, February 1996
- Nobody has tried to swallow us since I've been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste.
- Gil was a nice guy but he had a saying, "Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water, and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction."
- D5 Conference, 30 May 2007, on stage with Bill Gates, Kara Swisher and Walter Mossberg
- On taking over Apple from Gil Amelio
Sales Lines
- Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?
- In John Sculley and John Byrne, Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple
- The line he used to lure John Sculley as Apple's CEO
- We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them.
- It will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry. This is landmark stuff. I can't overestimate it!
- iMac is next year's computer for $1,299, not last year's computer for $999.
- The G4 Cube is simply the coolest computer ever. An entirely new class of computer, it marries the Pentium-crushing performance of the Power Mac G4 with the miniaturization, silent operation and elegant desktop design of the iMac. It is an amazing engineering and design feat, and we're thrilled to finally unveil it to our customers.
- We believe it's the biggest advance in animation since Walt Disney started it all with the release of Snow White 50 years ago.
On Life's Lessons
- It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.
- Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple
- I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I'm only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to continue creating things. I know I've got at least one more great computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that.
- Playboy, September 1987
- I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year.... It's very character-building.
- Apple Confidential 2.0
- 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.
- "I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates."
- Newsweek, Oct. 29, 2001
Taking the Fight to the Enemy
- John Sculley ruined Apple and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place -- which was making great computers for people to use.
- It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn't compete with six people in blue jeans.
- My opinion is that the only two computer companies that are software-driven are Apple and NeXT, and I wonder about Apple.
- I tend to stay where I start until somebody kicks me out.
- Charlie Rose
- Why would I ever want to run Disney? Wouldn't it make more sense just to sell them Pixar and retire?
- The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful.
- The Japanese have hit the shores like dead fish. They're just like dead fish washing up on the shores.
- Playboy, February 1985
- In a word, no. I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable."
- Newsweek, 2006-10-143
- When asked whether he was concerned over Microsoft Zune's wireless capability
- They're babes in the woods. I think I can help turn Alvy and Ed into businessmen.
- If I knew in 1986 how much it was going to cost to keep Pixar going, I doubt if I would have bought the company.
- I think Pixar has the opportunity to be the next Disney -- not replace Disney -- but be the next Disney.
- Pixar is the most technically advanced creative company; Apple is the most creatively advanced technical company.
- Yes, it's true.
- On the plans for Apple Computer, Inc. to begin using Intel processors in its Macintosh computers during 2006 and 2007. About twenty two minutes into his address. Rumors of such plans had existed for years, but had been growing more credible and prolific for about a week before his announcement.
- Now, I have something to tell you today. Mac OS X has been leading a secret double life—for the past five years. There have been rumors to this effect... but this is Apple's campus in Cupertino—let's zoom in on it—in that building right there... we've had teams doing the "just-in-case" scenario; and our rules have been that our designs for OS X must be processor independent, and that every project must be built for both the Power PC and Intel processors. And so today for the first time, I can confirm the rumors that every release of OS X has been compiled for both Power PC and Intel—this has been going on for the last five years. Just in case.
- So Mac OS X is cross-platform by design, right from the very beginning. So Mac OS X is singing on Intel processors, and I'd just like to show you right now. As a matter of fact... this system I've been using here... Let go have a look... [reveals that the system he had been using for the presentation was running Mac OS X 10.4.1 on a machine using a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 processor] So.. we've been running on an Intel machine all morning.
- This is a favourite of mine: Wikipedia. For those of you who don't know: This is an Open Source encyclopedia where everybody contributes to it. It has now become one of the most robust and certainly accurate encyclopedias in the world because you got experts from all over the world contributing to it. And we just look up " tiger" in here, and you get the low-down on all kinds of tigers. So that's Wikipedia and it's great.
- We intend to release Leopard at the end of 2006 or early 2007, right around the time when Microsoft is expected to release [Windows] Longhorn.
- "...and one more thing..."
- Climactic end to many of his presentations
- 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.
- Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005
Unsourced
- Real artists ship.
- I want a mouse for $10 that can be mass-produced, because it's going to be the primary interface of the computer of the future.
- Statement after visiting PARC in 1980.
- Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
- Innovation is the distinction between a leader and a follower.
- We're here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?
- It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we'd given customers what they said they wanted, we'd have built a computer they'd have been happy with a year after we spoke to them - not something they'd want now.
- Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
- Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.
- You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
- Better to be a pirate than to join the navy.
- Said in conjunction with a pirate flag that flew over the Macintosh development building on Apple's campus in 1983.
- You know, we don't grow most of the food we eat. We wear clothes other people make. We speak a language that other people developed. We use a mathematics that other people evolved... I mean, we're constantly taking things. It's a wonderful, ecstatic feeling to create something that puts it back in the pool of human experience and knowledge.
- You think it's a conspiracy by the networks to put bad shows on TV. But the shows are bad because that's what people want. It's not like Windows users don't have any power. I think they are happy with Windows, and that's an incredibly depressing thought.
- Apple's market share is bigger than BMW's or Mercedes's or Porsche's in the automotive market. What's wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?
- Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
