I once heard someone say “I don’t understand what the big deal is about Steve Jobs, all he did was invent the iPod, it’s not like he cured cancer”. It’s easy to take for granted where the luxuries we all have come to expect in technology came from. If you look back to what things were like before Apple stepped in, you can see not only did they innovate and bring some of the best products to market, but they pushed competitors to innovate and test their own limits. Here are our 10 favorite quotes from the man who practically invented the modern day cell phone, tablet and MP3 player, and one of the greatest CEO’s to ever live, Steve Jobs:
1.“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.”
2. “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”
3. “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.”
4. “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”
5. “Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
6. “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.”
7. “It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.”
8. “This guy badgered me about how Microsoft was going to completely change the world with this tablet PC software and eliminate all notebook computers, and Apple ought to license his Microsoft software. But he was doing the device all wrong. It had a stylus. As soon as you have a stylus, you’re dead. This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, ‘Fuck this, let’s show him what a tablet can really be.'”
9. “Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, “A faster horse!”‘ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
10. “Boom!”
