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Ultimately, It Comes Down To Taste. It Comes Down To Trying To Expose Yourself To The Best Things That Humans Have Done And Then Try To Bring Those Things Into What You're Doing. Picasso Had A Saying: Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal. And We Have Always Been Shameless About Stealing Great Ideas, And I Think Part Of What Made The Macintosh Great Was That The People Working On It Were Musicians And Poets And Artists And Zoologists And Historians Who Also Happened To Be The Best Computer Scientists In The World.

-Steve Jobs

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Ultimately, It Comes Down

Steve Jobs

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Ultimately, It Comes Down To Taste. It Comes Down To Trying To Expose Yourself To The Best Things That Humans Have Done And Then Try To Bring Those Things Into What You're Doing. Picasso Had A Saying: Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal. And We Have Always Been Shameless About Stealing Great Ideas, And I Think Part Of What Made The Macintosh Great Was That The People Working On It Were Musicians And Poets And Artists And Zoologists And Historians Who Also Happened To Be The Best Computer Scientists In The World.

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The Roots Of Apple Were To Build Computers For People, Not For Corporations. The World Doesn't Need Another Dell Or Compaq.

If You Want To Hire Great People And Have Them Stay, You Have To Be Run By Ideas, Not Hierarchy. The Best Ideas Have To Win.

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Some People Can Do One Thing Magnificently, Like Michelangelo, And Others Make Things Like Semiconductors Or Build 747 Airplanes -- That Type Of Work Requires Legions Of People. In Order To Do Things Well, That Can't Be Done By One Person, You Must Find Extraordinary People.

If I Knew In 1986 How Much It Was Going To Cost To Keep Pixar Going, I Doubt If I Would Have Bought The Company.

The Ipod Is Not A New Category. Music Is Not New. It's Not A Speculative Market. It's A Very, Very Large Market. It's Been Around For Thousands Of Years And Will Be Around As Long As Humans Exist.

I Think We're Having Fun. I Think Our Customers Really Like Our Products. And We're Always Trying To Do Better.

In The First 30 Years Of Your Life, You Make Your Habits. For The Last 30 Years Of Your Life, Your Habits Make You.

Why Would I Ever Want To Run Disney? Wouldn't It Make More Sense Just To Sell Them Pixar And Retire?

Without Death There Would Be Very Little Progress.

You Know, I've Got A Plan That Could Rescue Apple. I Can't Say Any More Than That It's The Perfect Product And The Perfect Strategy For Apple. But Nobody There Will Listen To Me.

Innovation Distinguishes A Leader From A Follower.

My Passion Has Been To Build An Enduring Company Where People Were Motivated To Make Great Products. Everything Else Was Secondary. Sure, It Was Great To Make A Profit, Because That Was What Allowed You To Make Great Products. But The Products, Not The Profits Were The Motivation.

To Do Anything Of Magnitude Takes At Least Five Years, More Likely Seven Or Eight. Rightfully Or Wrongfully, That's How I Think.

My Model For Business Is The Beatles. They Were Four Guys Who Kept Each Other Kind Of Negative Tendencies In Check. They Balanced Each Other And The Total Was Greater Than The Sum Of The Parts. That's How I See Business: Great Things In Business Are Never Done By One Person, They're Done By A Team Of People.

Customers Don't Measure You On How Hard You Tried, They Measure You On What You Deliver.

Shake Off This Erroneous Notion That Life Is There And You're Just Gonna Live In It, Versus Embrace It, Change It, Improve It, Make Your Mark Upon It.

So When A Good Idea Comes, You Know, Part Of My Job Is To Move It Around, Just See What Different People Think, Get People Talking About It, Argue With People About It, Get Ideas Moving Among That Group Of 100 People, Get Different People Together To Explore Different Aspects Of It Quietly, And, You Know – Just Explore Things.

Have The Courage To Follow Your Heart And Intuition.

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We Don't Believe It's Possible To Protect Digital Content. What's New Is This Amazingly Efficient Distribution System For Stolen Property Called The Internet-- And No One's Gonna Shut Down The Internet. And It Only Takes One Stolen Copy To Be On The Internet. And The Way We Expressed It To Them Is: Pick One Lock--open Every Door. It Only Takes One Person To Pick A Lock. Worst Case: Somebody Just Takes The Analog Outputs Of Their Cd Player And Rerecords It-- Puts It On The Internet. You'll Never Stop That. So What You Have To Do Is Compete With It.

If You Tell People They Can't Burn Cds Of Their Music, As Almost Every Current Legal Music Service Has Done, Or They Can Only Burn One Cd With A Track Or Pay Per Track Per Burn Extra, Nobody Is Going To Go For It.

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.

Compelling Reason

The Desktop Metaphor Was Invented Because One, You Were A Stand-alone Device, And Two, You Had To Manage Your Own Storage. That's A Very Big Thing In A Desktop World. And That May Go Away. You May Not Have To Manage Your Own Storage. You May Not Store Much Before Too Long.

It Is Hard To Think That A $2 Billion Company With 4,300-plus People Couldn't Compete With Six People In Blue Jeans.

There Will Always Be Music On The Internet That People Can Steal. What's New Is Not Theft. What's New Is A Distribution Channel For Stolen Property Called The Internet. So There Will Always Be Illegal Music On The Internet.

Most People Have No Concept Of How An Automatic Transmission Works, Yet They Know How To Drive A Car. You Don't Have To Study Physics To Understand The Laws Of Motion To Drive A Car. You Don't Have To Understand Any Of This Stuff To Use Macintosh.

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When Companies Get Bigger They Try To Replicate Their Success. But They Assume Their Magic Came From Process. They Try To Use Processes To Substitute Content.

The Day I Was Born Songs Were On Records, Phones Were Tied Down, Computers Needed Rooms And The Web Was Fiction. Change The World. You Can.

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Our Friends Up North Spend Over Five Billion Dollars On Research And Development And All They Seem To Do Is Copy Google And Apple.

Research And Development

I'm Convinced That About Half Of What Separates Successful Entrepreneurs From The Non-successful Ones Is Pure Perseverance.

We're Not A Media Company. We Don't Own Media. We Don't Own Music. We Don't Own Films Or Television. We're Not A Media Company. We're Just Apple.

The Hardest Thing When You Think About Focusing. You Think Focusing Is About Saying "yes." No. Focusing Is About Saying "no." And When You Say "no," You Piss Off People.

We Believe People With Passion Can Change The World For The Better. That's What We Believe. And We Believe That Those People Who Are Crazy Enough To Think They Can Change The World Are The Ones That Actually Do.

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.

Older People Sit Down And Ask, 'what Is It?' But The Boy Asks, 'what Can I Do With It?'.

I Think The Biggest Innovations Of The 21st Century Will Be At The Intersection Of Biology And Technology. A New Era Is Beginning.

You Can't Win On Innovation Unless You Have A Way To Communicate It To Customers.

A Small Team Of A+ Players Can Run Circles Around A Giant Team Of B And C Players.

Deciding What Not To Do Is As Important As Deciding What To Do.

I'm As Proud Of Many Of The Things We Haven't Done As The Things We Have Done. Innovation Is Saying No To A Thousand Things.

Our Goal Is To Make The Best Devices In The World, Not To Be The Biggest.

A Lot Of People In Our Industry Haven't Had Very Diverse Experiences. So They Don't Have Enough Dots To Connect, And They End Up With Very Linear Solutions Without A Broad Perspective On The Problem. The Broader One's Understanding Of The Human Experience, The Better Design We Will Have.

It's Very Simple: The More Successful You Are, The More You'll Earn. But If You're Not Successful, You Will Not Earn A Dime.

There Are Times When You Run A Marathon And You Wonder, Why Am I Doing This? But You Take A Drink Of Water, And Around The Next Bend, You Get Your Wind Back, Remember The Finish Line, And Keep Going.

If It Could Save A Person's Life, Could You Find A Way To Save Ten Seconds Off The Boot Time? If There Were Five Million People Using The Mac, And It Took Ten Seconds Extra To Turn It On Every Day, That Added Up To Three Hundred Million Or So Hours Per Year People Would Save, Which Was The Equivalent Of At Least One Hundred Lifetimes Saved Per Year.

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.

Our Dna Is As A Consumer Company - For That Individual Customer Who's Voting Thumbs Up Or Thumbs Down. That's Who We Think About. And We Think That Our Job Is To Take Responsibility For The Complete User Experience. And If It's Not Up To Par, It's Our Fault, Plain And Simply.

The System Is That There Is No System. That Doesn't Mean We Don't Have Process. Apple Is A Very Disciplined Company, And We Have Great Processes. But That's Not What It's About. Process Makes You More Efficient.

It Took Us Three Years To Build The Next Computer. If We'd Given Customers What They Said They Wanted, We'd Have Built A Computer They'd Have Been Happy With A Year After We Spoke To Them - Not Something They'd Want Now.

You Can't Look At The Competition And Say You're Going To Do It Better. You Have To Look At The Competition And Say You're Going To Do It Differently.

You Know, You Keep On Innovating, You Keep On Making Better Stuff. And If You Always Want The Latest And Greatest, Then You Have To Buy A New Ipod At Least Once A Year.

My Job Is To Make The Whole Executive Team Good Enough To Be Successors, So That's What I Try To Do.

After All The Statistics And Calculations Are Formulated, The One Element That Breathes Life Into Marketing Is Good Design.

That's What Walt Disney Did, And Hewlett And Packard, And The People Who Built Intel. They Created A Company To Last, Not Just To Make Money. That's What I Want Apple To Be.

Creativity Is Just Connecting Things.

I Make 50 Cents For Showing Up... And The Other 50 Cents Is Based On My Performance.

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