What is Apple, after all? Apple is about people who think 'outside the box,' people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done.
Interpretation
Apple is fundamentally about innovation and creativity, promoting the idea that technology should empower people to make an impactful change.
In this quote, Steve Jobs expresses the core philosophy behind Apple, highlighting that the company is not solely focused on delivering functional products but aims to inspire users to think creatively and use technology as a means for positive change. This reflects a belief that true innovation occurs when individuals break away from conventional thinking ('outside the box') to create meaningful contributions to society.
In practice
In a business meeting to motivate the team to think creatively.
Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.
It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.
The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.
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.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Digital technology can be a great resource, but it can also be a pernicious one, so it's how we, as a society, really study the cognitive impact of that and use evidence-based research to go after the technology designers to do a better job of dealing with the problems of memory and attention we are seeing.
This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature. - Murray (WN 285)
The whole notion of passwords is based on an oxymoron. The idea is to have a random string that is easy to remember. Unfortunately, if it's easy to remember, it's something nonrandom like 'Susan.' And if it's random, like 'r7U2*Qnp,' then it's not easy to remember.
You have to immerse yourself into a product and use it in order to really understand it and that's why I have a new cellphone every month or two.
It used to be that we imagined that our mobile phones would be for us to talk to each other. Now, our mobile phones are there to talk to us.
Celtel established a mobile phone network in Africa at a time when investors told me that there was no market for mobile phones there.
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