CONTENTS Introduction: Steve Jobs and the Vision Thing...1 Quotations...7 Milestones...107 Steve Jobs s esignation Letter as CEO of Apple...139 Changing Times: What s Next for Steve Jobs?...143 Citations...149 About the Editor...181
THINK DIFFEENT 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. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About 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 people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. 1997 Apple ad created by TBWA/Chiat/Day.
QUOTATIONS
Quotations 23 CUSTOME LOYALTY 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. It s because when you buy our products, and three months later you get stuck on something, you quickly figure out [how to get past it]. And you think, Wow, someone over there at Apple actually thought of this!... There s almost no product in the world that you have that experience with, but you have it with a Mac. And you have it with an ipod. Bloomberg Businessweek, 12 October 2004. DAVID VESUS GOLIATH It s curious to me that the largest computer company in the world [IBM] couldn t even match the Apple II, which was designed in a garage six years ago. InfoWorld, 8 March 1982.
EXCELLENCE People judge you by your performance, so focus on the outcome. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren t used to an environment where excellence is expected. Steve Jobs: The Journey is the eward, 1987.
Quotations 35 FOCING THE ISSUE What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers, and the engineers go, Nah, we can t do that. That s impossible. And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people, and they go, We can t build that! And it gets a lot worse... Sure enough, when we took it to the engineers, they said, Oh. And they came up with 38 reasons. And I said, No, no, we re doing this. And they said, Well, why? And I said, Because I m the CEO and I think it can be done. And so they kind of begrudgingly did it. But then it was a big hit. Time, 16 October 2005.
78 i, Steve PIOITIES ASSESSMENT On meeting his wife, Laurene: I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself: if this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman? I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she d have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town, and we ve been together ever since. The New York Times Magazine, 12 January 1997. POCESS 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. Bloomberg Businessweek, 12 October 2004.
Apple is Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs is Apple. Charles. Wolf, analyst at Needham & Company, quoted in Apple s Culture of Secrecy, The New York Times, July 26, 2008.
MILESTONES
108 i, Steve 1955 SJ is born in San Francisco to Abdulfattah John Jandali and Joanne Simpson. He is given up for adoption to Paul and Clara Jobs, who name him Stephen Paul Jobs. (24 February.) 1966 The Jobs family moves to Los Altos, California, and SJ enters Homestead High School, where he develops an interest in music (especially Bob Dylan and The Beatles) and electronics. SJ (age 14) meets future Apple co-founder Stephen Woz Wozniak (age 19), both students at Homestead High School. 1972 SJ and Woz build and sell illegal tone generators called blue boxes to college students who use them to make free phone calls. (An October 1971 article in Esquire explained how to make them.) They illicitly earn $6000 before moving on to legitimate ventures.
Milestones 121 1992 Fortune magazine adds SJ to its National Business Hall of Fame. SJ s biological sister, Mona Simpson, publishes a novel titled The Lost Father. At CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Chicago, Sculley shows a prototype of Newton, Apple s personal digital assistant. (May.) 1993 John Sculley debuts Newton at Macworld. (January.) Apple debuts dozens of minimally differentiated computers for the home and business markets, confusing customers, who can t tell them apart. Failing to meet sales expectations, NeXT closes its doors. (11 February.) Sculley is replaced as CEO by Michael Spindler. (7 June.)
Milestones 129 The ipod debuts with the ad line, One thousand songs in your pocket. Pixar releases Monsters, Inc, which grosses $255 million domestically. (2 November.) 2002 Apple introduces the emac, a line developed specifically for the burgeoning educational market. (29 April.) 2003 At Macworld, Apple announces the Safari web browser, ilife software and new PowerBooks. Later in the month it announces new high-end tower units Power Macs. (7 January.) Pixar releases Finding Nemo, which grosses $339 million domestically. It goes on to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. (30 May.) Apple debuts the itunes Music Store, but only for Mac computers. (28 April.)