Steve Jobs (1955 – 2011)
Chairman and CEO of Apple Inc.
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
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.
No one wants to die. Even people who wanna go to heaven don't wanna die to get there.
We intend to release Leopard at the end of 2006 or early 2007, right around the time when Microsoft is expected to release Longhorn.
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.
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.
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.
I found that there were these incredibly great people at doing certain things, and that you couldn't replace one of these people with 50 average people. They could just do things that no number of average people could do.
If you just want to say, "Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along," that's fine. If you’re interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is. … Let’s be realistic, who came up with "File/Edit/View/Help"? Do you want to go back to the original Mac and think about where those interface concepts came from?
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.
My opinion is that the only two computer companies that are software-driven are Apple and NeXT, and I wonder about Apple.
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.
We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash.
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.
We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.
The Japanese have hit the shores like dead fish. They're just like dead fish washing up on the shores.
It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!
It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing.
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.
Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?