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.
The critical thing in developing software is not the program, it's the design. It is translating understanding of user needs into something that can be realized as a computer program.
A back door is a nonstarter. It means we are all not safe... I don't support a back door for any government, ever.
Most of the good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.
What we did with this mobile telephone was create a revolution. Before the mobile phone existed we were calling a place, now we are calling a person.
Customers need to be given control of their own data-not being tied into a certain manufacturer so that when there are problems they are always obliged to go back to them.
Today's environment is beginning to threaten today's organizations, finding them seriously deficient in their nervous system design... The degree of coordination, perception, rational adaptation, etc., which will appear in the next generation of human organizations will drive our present organizational forms, with their clumsy nervous systems, into extinction.
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