STEVE JOBS, Apple co-founder, has died. Here are his thoughts on everything from design to the internet and death itself.
STEVE JOBS, Apple co-founder and technological visionary, was well known for his words as well as his creations. Here are some of his thoughts over the past 25 years.
On life
"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."
– Stanford commencement speech 2005
On Macintosh
"I don't think I've ever worked so hard on something, but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn't be ours any more.
"When we finally presented it at the shareholders' meeting, everyone in the auditorium stood up and gave it a 5-minute ovation. What was incredible to me was that I could see the Mac team in the first few rows. It was as though none of us could believe that we'd actually finished it. Everyone started crying."
– Playboy magazine 1985
On customers
"There's nothing that makes my day more than getting an e-mail from some random person in the universe who just bought an iPad over in the UK and tells me the story about how it's the coolest product they've ever brought home in their lives. That's what keeps me going. It's what kept me five years ago [when he was diagnosed with cancer], it's what kept me going 10 years ago when the doors were almost closed. And it's what will keep me going five years from now whatever happens."
- AllThingsD Conference, 2010
On technology
"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.
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."
– Playboy magazine 1985
On motivation
"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."
– Business Week 1998
On money
"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."
– Wall Street Journal 1993
On internet start-ups
"The problem with the internet start-up 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 magazine 2000
On design (1)
"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. You have to really grok what it's all about. 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."
- Wired magazine, 1994
On design (2)
"In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service."
– Fortune magazine 2000
On Apple
"My position coming back to Apple was that our industry was in a coma. It reminded me of Detroit in the 70s, when American cars were boats on wheels."
– Fortune magazine 2000
On innovation
"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 realised 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.
"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."
– Business Week 2004
On home computing
"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 1985
On desktop computers
"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.
"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 magazine 1996
On instinct
"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
– Stanford commencement speech 2005
On work
"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."
– Stanford commencement speech 2005
THE OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY:
The official Steve Jobs biography will be released on 24 October after being rushed forward because of the Apple co-founder's death.
Steve Jobs
by Walter Isaacson
Buy it from the Guardian bookshopSearch the Guardian bookshop
The authorised biography Steve Jobs is written by Walter Isaacson, the former managing editor of Time magazine. Customer pre-purchases have already made it the number one bestseller at Amazon. Publishing house Simon & Schuster had originally planned to release it on 21 November.
Isaacson has told how Jobs, in pain and too weak to climb stairs a few weeks before his death, wanted his children to understand why he wasn't always there for them. "I wanted my kids to know me," Isaacson quoted Jobs as saying in their final interview at Jobs' home in Palo Alto, California. "I wasn't always there for them and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did."
Isaacson said he visited Jobs for the last time a few weeks ago and found him curled up in some pain in a downstairs bedroom. Jobs had moved there because he was too weak to go up and down stairs "but his mind was still sharp and his humour vibrant", Isaacson writes in an essay that will be published in Time magazine's 17 October edition.
Jobs died on Wednesday at the age of 56 after suffering a rare form of pancreatic cancer.
Simon & Schuster's synopsis says the book is based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years – as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colle
agues. "Although Jobs co-operated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits
. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against.
"Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple's hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership and values."
Another publisher, Bluewater Productions, has said it is rushing out a special edition e-book of its forthcoming comic book on Jobs.
The 32-page comic titled Steve Jobs: Founder of Apple is initially being sold on the NOOK and Kindle readers. The print edition is due for release at the end of October, with a portion of the profits from both issues going to the American Cancer Society.
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