For years, I've kept a list of my favorite quotes. Steve Jobs is by far the most represented. In his honor, I'd like to share some of my favorites.
Steve Jobs interview with Inc. in 1989
"But I've also found that the best companies pay attention to aesthetics. They take the extra time to lay out grids and proportion things appropriately, and it seems to pay off for them. I mean, beyond the functional benefits, the aesthetic communicates something about how they think of themselves, their sense of discipline in engineering, how they run their company, stuff like that.
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We thought, why don't we take the extra few days or weeks and do it right? We had a fundamental belief that doing it right the first time was going to be easier than having to go back and fix it. And I cannot say strongly enough that the repercussions of that attitude are staggering. I've seen them again and again throughout my business life. They're just staggering."
Steve Jobs interview with Inc. in 1989
"Let me give you an example from NeXT. We have probably the most automated factory in the world. Our circuit board comes out untouched by human hands. We have a series of sophisticated robots, some of which we built, some of which we bought. Now these robots come in different colors, and I wanted them all painted the same color. We went through a lot of trouble over that because the robot companies weren't used to painting things in any color but their own. People in our factory asked me, "Why is it so important to paint these machines the same color? We don't understand it." So we had to sit down with everybody and explain. Even after hearing the reasons, it took people six months or so before they began to understand.
For one thing, we want the place to look nice because we bring customers through. They're going to make a decision on using NeXT products, and they ought to know that we have a very high-quality manufacturing operation. But the real reason is that we don't want people to think of the factory as separate islands of automation. We want people thinking of the whole. Suppose we have a bottleneck at one robot. In reality, you can probably rebalance the line and solve the problem -- provided you think of it as a whole. It took people six months to understand this, but now it's in their bones. We spend a lot of time going over these concepts and why they are important -- not just in the abstract, but right down to the everyday tangible point of view. That's what building a company culture is all about."
Steve Jobs in an interview with the New York Times
"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."
Macworld San Francisco 1996
"If we had 4 great products, that’s all we need. And as a matter of fact, if we only had 4, we could put the A team on every single one of them. And if we only had 4, we could turn them all every 9 months instead of every 18 months. And if we only had 4, we could be working on the next generation or 2 of each one as we’re introducing the first generation. So that’s what we decided to do -- to focus on 4 great products."
Steve Jobs (unknown source)
"Here's what you find at a lot of companies. You know how you see a show car, and it's really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory! 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."
Steve Jobs in a Rolling Stone Interview when asked about Apple’s market share in 2003
"So our market share is actually greater than BMW's — greater than Mercedes — in the car industry. And, yet, no one thinks BMW or Mercedes are going away, and no one thinks that they're at a tremendous disadvantage because that's their market share. Matter of fact, they're both highly desirable products and brands."
Thanks, Steve. You inspire us all to work harder and never settle.
Updates
Steve Jobs (unknown source)
"My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be."
Steve Jobs quoted at CNN Money
"But there always seems to come a moment where it's just not working, and it's so easy to fool yourself - to convince yourself that it is when you know in your heart that it isn't."
