my entire life’s been spent only in one
industry which is this one and but I’ve
been in it now for about 15 years and
I’ve seen a lot of people make a lot of
things I’ve seen a lot of people fail a
lot of things and my my point of view on
this or my observation is that the doers
are the major thinkers the people that
really create the things that change
this industry are both the thinker doer
in one person and if we really go back
and we examine you know did Leonardo
have a guy off to the side that was
thinking five years out in the future
what he would paint or the technology he
would use to paint it of course not
Leonardo was the artist but he also
mixed all his own paints he also was a
fairly good chemist knew about pigments
knew about human anatomy and combining
all of those skills together the art and
the science the thinking and the doing
was what resulted in the exceptional
result and there is no difference in our
industry the people that really made the
contributions have been the thinkers and
the doers a lot of people of course it’s
very easy to take credit for the
thinking the doing is more concrete but
somebody is very easy for somebody say
oh I thought of this three years ago but
usually when you dig a little deeper you
find that the people that really did it
we’re also the people that really work
through the hard intellectual problems
as well we try to hire really smart
people but we have a very simple
organization and we try to focus and do
very few things well and focusing is
hard because focusing doesn’t mean
saying yes it means saying no so we say
we decide not to do a lot of things so
we can focus on a few handfuls of things
and do them well and I think you know
everybody working the company wants to
do something great they want to be
excited about what they’re working on
and and they want to be recognized for
it when if they do a really great job so
we just try to allow people to do the
best work of their lives at Apple and
get it out to 25 million customers that
we have and that’s very exciting and
when you’re working on something you
know if this works out up to 25 million
people are going to use this it’s very
motivating
and it’s not just 25 million of our
customers but other companies tend to
follow us you know it takes them a few
years but other companies tend to copy
what we do if it works and and so we can
influence the whole industry
when I was a young kid there was a
widowed man that lived up the street and
he was in his 80s he’s a little
scary-looking and and I got to know him
a little bit I think he might have paid
me to cut his lawn or something and one
day he said come on into my garage I
want to show you something and he pulled
out this dusty old rock tumbler it was a
motor and a and I’m in a coffee can and
a little you know band between and he
said come on with me we went out to the
back and we got some just some rocks
some regular old ugly rocks and he and
we put them in the can with a little bit
of liquid and a little bit of ugh of
grit powder and we closed the can up and
he turned this motor on he said come
back tomorrow and as Ken was making a
you know racket as the stones were and I
came back the next day and we took we
open the can and we took out these
amazingly beautiful polished rocks the
same common stones that had gone in
through rubbing against each other like
this create a little bit of friction
creating a lit of noise had come out
these beautiful polished rocks and
that’s always been in my mind my
metaphor for a team working really hard
on something they’re passionate about is
is that it’s through the team through
that group of incredibly talented people
bumping up against each other having
arguments having fights sometimes making
some noise and working together they
polish each other and they polish the
ideas and what comes out are these
really beautiful stones so it’s hard to
explain and it’s certainly not the
result of one person I mean people like
symbols so I’m the symbol of certain
things but it really is it was a team
effort on the Mac
one of the things that really hurt Apple
was after I left John Sculley got a very
serious disease and that disease I’ve
seen other people get it too
it’s um it’s the disease of thinking
that a really great idea is 90 percent
of the work and that if you just tell
your all these other people you know
here’s this great idea then of course
they can go off and make it happen
and the problem with that is is that
there’s a just a tremendous amount of
craftsmanship in in-between a great idea
and a great product and as you evolve
that great idea it changes and grows it
never comes out like it starts because
you learn a lot more as you get into the
subtleties of it and you also find
there’s tremendous trade-offs that you
have to make I mean you know there are
there are just certain things you you
can’t make electrons do there are
certain things you can’t make plastic do
or glass do and and and as you get into
or factories do or robots do and as you
get into all these things designing a
product is keeping 5,000 things in your
brain these concepts and fit fitting
them all together in in kind of
continuing to push to fit them together
in new and different ways to get what
you want and every day you discover
something new that is a new problem or a
new opportunity to fit these things
together a little differently and
that process that is the magic there
needs to be someone who is sort of the
keeper and reiterate er of the vision
because there’s just a ton of work to do
and a lot of times you know when you
have to walk a thousand miles and you
take the first step it looks like a long
ways and it really helps if there’s
someone there saying well we’re one step
closer you know that the goal definitely
exists it’s not just a mirage out there
so in a thousand and one little and
sometimes larger ways the vision needs
to be reiterated I do that a lot and
it’ll all work itself out a lot of
people come to me they say well I want
to be an entrepreneur and I go that’s
great what’s your idea they go well I
don’t have one yet and I say well I
think you should go get a job as a
busboy or something until you find
something you’re really passionate about
because it’s a lot of work and I’m
convinced that about half of what
separates the successful entrepreneurs
from the non successful ones is pure
perseverance it is so hard you pour so
much your life into this thing there are
such rough moments in time that most
people give up I don’t blame them it’s
really tough and it consumes your life I
mean if you’re if you’ve got a family
and you’re in the early days of a
company it’s I can’t imagine how one
could do it I’m sure it’s it’s been done
but it’s rough because it’s a pretty
much you know an 18 hour a day job seven
days a week for a while so unless you
have a lot of passion about this you’re
going to not survive you’re going to
give it up so you got to have an idea
or a problem or a long that you want to
write that you’re passionate about
otherwise you’re not going to have the
perseverance to stick it through and I
think that’s half the battle right there
that’s why you need to do it young
that’s why we started out but we said
you know we have absolutely nothing to
lose I was twenty years old at the time
woz was twenty four or five two we have
nothing to lose I mean we have no
families no children no houses woz had
an old car you know I had a Volkswagen
van I mean oh we were gonna lose is that
our cars and the shirts off our back we
had nothing to lose and we had
everything to gain and we figured even
if we crash and burn and lose everything
the experience will have been worth 10
times the cost
so what did we have to lose there was no
risk and that’s you know I think that’s
a very healthy way to look at it some
people say well you could have gone to
college and been a lawyer well you’re
right but you can go to college and be a
lawyer when you’re 25 there’s nothing
that stops you from doing that you
really the only thing you really have in
your life is time and if you invest that
time in yourself to have great
experiences that are going to enrich you
then you can’t possibly lose so I always
advise people don’t wait do something
when you’re young when you have nothing
to lose and keep that in mind and I
think that’s the best way not that
people can’t start companies when
they’re 50 I’ve seen that very
successful companies but it’s a lot
easier when you’re young and have
nothing to lose and don’t have the
responsibilities to other people that
you will acquire later on in your life
it’s hard to remember how bad it was
you know in 1980s with IBM taking over
the world with the PC with das out there
it was it was far worse than the Apple –
they tried to copy the Apple – and they
done a pretty bad job and if you needed
to know a lot and so things were kind of
slipping backwards and Macintosh was you
saw the 1984 commercial put that I hope
you have that in your archives
you know Macintosh was basically this
this relatively small company you know
in Cupertino California taking on the
Goliath IBM and saying wait a minute
your way is wrong this is not the way we
want computers to go this is not the
legacy we want to leave this is not what
we want our kids to be learning this is
wrong and we are going to show you the
right way to do it and here it is it’s
called Macintosh and this is so much
better that it’s going to beat you and
we are going to do it and that’s what
Apple stood for
things are packages of emphasis some
things are emphasized in a product some
things are not done as well in a product
some things are chosen not to be done at
all in a product and so different people
make different choices and if the market
tells us we’re making the wrong choices
we listen to the market we’re just we’re
just people running this company we’re
trying to make great products for people
and so we’re we have at least the
courage of our convictions to say we
don’t think this is part of what makes a
great product we’re going to leave it
out some people are gonna not like that
they’re going to call us names it’s not
going to be in certain companies vested
interests that we do that but we’re
going to take the heat because we want
to make the best product in the world
for customers we’re going to instead
focus our energy on these technologies
which we think are in their ascendency
and we think are going to be the right
technologies for customers and you know
what they’re paying us to make those
choices that’s what a lot of customers
pay us to do is to try to make the best
products we can and if we succeed
they’ll buy them and if we don’t they
won’t
yeah I didn’t know how to explain it
then but I felt a lot about it since if
you most things in life the dynamic
range between average and the best is it
most two to one
all right like if you go to New York
City and you get an average taxi cab
driver versus the best taxi cab driver
you know you’re probably gonna get to
your destination with the best taxi cab
maybe 30% faster you know in an
automobile what’s the difference between
an average and the best maybe how 20%
the best CD player and an average CD
player I don’t 20% so 201 is a big big
dynamic range in in most ‘life in
software and it used to be the case in
hardware to the difference between
average and the best is 50 to 1 maybe a
hundred to one easy
ok I’ve very few things in life for like
this but what I was lucky enough to
spend my life in he is like this and so
I’ve built
a lot of my success off finding these
truly gifted people and not settling for
B and C players but really going for the
a players and I found something I found
that when you get enough a players
together when you go to through the
incredible work to find you know five of
these eight players they really like
working with each other because they’ve
never had a chance to do that before and
they don’t want to work with B and C
players and so it becomes self-policing
and they only want to hire more a
players and so you build up these
pockets of a players and it propagates
and that’s what the Mac team was like
they were all a players and these were
extraordinarily talented people
[Music]
when we were building our Apple ones in
the garage we knew exactly what they
cost when we got into a factory in the
Apple two days the accounting had this
notion of a standard cost where you’d
kind of set a standard cost and then at
the end of a quarter you’d adjust it
with a variance and I kept asking why do
we do this and the answer was less just
the way it’s done and after about six
months of digging into this what I
realized was the reason you do it is
because you don’t really have good
enough controls to know how much it
costs so you guess and then you fix your
guess at the end of the quarter and the
reason you don’t know how much it cost
is because your information systems
aren’t good enough so but nobody set it
that way and so later on when we
designed this automated factory for
Macintosh we were able to get rid of a
lot of these antiquated concepts and
know exactly what something cost to the
second so in business a lot of things
are I call it folklore they’re done
because they were done yesterday and the
day before and so what that means is if
you’re willing to sort of ask a lot of
questions and think about things and
work really hard you can learn business
pretty fast it’s not the heart not
rocket science it’s not rocket science
no
[Music]
you
industry which is this one and but I’ve
been in it now for about 15 years and
I’ve seen a lot of people make a lot of
things I’ve seen a lot of people fail a
lot of things and my my point of view on
this or my observation is that the doers
are the major thinkers the people that
really create the things that change
this industry are both the thinker doer
in one person and if we really go back
and we examine you know did Leonardo
have a guy off to the side that was
thinking five years out in the future
what he would paint or the technology he
would use to paint it of course not
Leonardo was the artist but he also
mixed all his own paints he also was a
fairly good chemist knew about pigments
knew about human anatomy and combining
all of those skills together the art and
the science the thinking and the doing
was what resulted in the exceptional
result and there is no difference in our
industry the people that really made the
contributions have been the thinkers and
the doers a lot of people of course it’s
very easy to take credit for the
thinking the doing is more concrete but
somebody is very easy for somebody say
oh I thought of this three years ago but
usually when you dig a little deeper you
find that the people that really did it
we’re also the people that really work
through the hard intellectual problems
as well we try to hire really smart
people but we have a very simple
organization and we try to focus and do
very few things well and focusing is
hard because focusing doesn’t mean
saying yes it means saying no so we say
we decide not to do a lot of things so
we can focus on a few handfuls of things
and do them well and I think you know
everybody working the company wants to
do something great they want to be
excited about what they’re working on
and and they want to be recognized for
it when if they do a really great job so
we just try to allow people to do the
best work of their lives at Apple and
get it out to 25 million customers that
we have and that’s very exciting and
when you’re working on something you
know if this works out up to 25 million
people are going to use this it’s very
motivating
and it’s not just 25 million of our
customers but other companies tend to
follow us you know it takes them a few
years but other companies tend to copy
what we do if it works and and so we can
influence the whole industry
when I was a young kid there was a
widowed man that lived up the street and
he was in his 80s he’s a little
scary-looking and and I got to know him
a little bit I think he might have paid
me to cut his lawn or something and one
day he said come on into my garage I
want to show you something and he pulled
out this dusty old rock tumbler it was a
motor and a and I’m in a coffee can and
a little you know band between and he
said come on with me we went out to the
back and we got some just some rocks
some regular old ugly rocks and he and
we put them in the can with a little bit
of liquid and a little bit of ugh of
grit powder and we closed the can up and
he turned this motor on he said come
back tomorrow and as Ken was making a
you know racket as the stones were and I
came back the next day and we took we
open the can and we took out these
amazingly beautiful polished rocks the
same common stones that had gone in
through rubbing against each other like
this create a little bit of friction
creating a lit of noise had come out
these beautiful polished rocks and
that’s always been in my mind my
metaphor for a team working really hard
on something they’re passionate about is
is that it’s through the team through
that group of incredibly talented people
bumping up against each other having
arguments having fights sometimes making
some noise and working together they
polish each other and they polish the
ideas and what comes out are these
really beautiful stones so it’s hard to
explain and it’s certainly not the
result of one person I mean people like
symbols so I’m the symbol of certain
things but it really is it was a team
effort on the Mac
one of the things that really hurt Apple
was after I left John Sculley got a very
serious disease and that disease I’ve
seen other people get it too
it’s um it’s the disease of thinking
that a really great idea is 90 percent
of the work and that if you just tell
your all these other people you know
here’s this great idea then of course
they can go off and make it happen
and the problem with that is is that
there’s a just a tremendous amount of
craftsmanship in in-between a great idea
and a great product and as you evolve
that great idea it changes and grows it
never comes out like it starts because
you learn a lot more as you get into the
subtleties of it and you also find
there’s tremendous trade-offs that you
have to make I mean you know there are
there are just certain things you you
can’t make electrons do there are
certain things you can’t make plastic do
or glass do and and and as you get into
or factories do or robots do and as you
get into all these things designing a
product is keeping 5,000 things in your
brain these concepts and fit fitting
them all together in in kind of
continuing to push to fit them together
in new and different ways to get what
you want and every day you discover
something new that is a new problem or a
new opportunity to fit these things
together a little differently and
that process that is the magic there
needs to be someone who is sort of the
keeper and reiterate er of the vision
because there’s just a ton of work to do
and a lot of times you know when you
have to walk a thousand miles and you
take the first step it looks like a long
ways and it really helps if there’s
someone there saying well we’re one step
closer you know that the goal definitely
exists it’s not just a mirage out there
so in a thousand and one little and
sometimes larger ways the vision needs
to be reiterated I do that a lot and
it’ll all work itself out a lot of
people come to me they say well I want
to be an entrepreneur and I go that’s
great what’s your idea they go well I
don’t have one yet and I say well I
think you should go get a job as a
busboy or something until you find
something you’re really passionate about
because it’s a lot of work and I’m
convinced that about half of what
separates the successful entrepreneurs
from the non successful ones is pure
perseverance it is so hard you pour so
much your life into this thing there are
such rough moments in time that most
people give up I don’t blame them it’s
really tough and it consumes your life I
mean if you’re if you’ve got a family
and you’re in the early days of a
company it’s I can’t imagine how one
could do it I’m sure it’s it’s been done
but it’s rough because it’s a pretty
much you know an 18 hour a day job seven
days a week for a while so unless you
have a lot of passion about this you’re
going to not survive you’re going to
give it up so you got to have an idea
or a problem or a long that you want to
write that you’re passionate about
otherwise you’re not going to have the
perseverance to stick it through and I
think that’s half the battle right there
that’s why you need to do it young
that’s why we started out but we said
you know we have absolutely nothing to
lose I was twenty years old at the time
woz was twenty four or five two we have
nothing to lose I mean we have no
families no children no houses woz had
an old car you know I had a Volkswagen
van I mean oh we were gonna lose is that
our cars and the shirts off our back we
had nothing to lose and we had
everything to gain and we figured even
if we crash and burn and lose everything
the experience will have been worth 10
times the cost
so what did we have to lose there was no
risk and that’s you know I think that’s
a very healthy way to look at it some
people say well you could have gone to
college and been a lawyer well you’re
right but you can go to college and be a
lawyer when you’re 25 there’s nothing
that stops you from doing that you
really the only thing you really have in
your life is time and if you invest that
time in yourself to have great
experiences that are going to enrich you
then you can’t possibly lose so I always
advise people don’t wait do something
when you’re young when you have nothing
to lose and keep that in mind and I
think that’s the best way not that
people can’t start companies when
they’re 50 I’ve seen that very
successful companies but it’s a lot
easier when you’re young and have
nothing to lose and don’t have the
responsibilities to other people that
you will acquire later on in your life
it’s hard to remember how bad it was
you know in 1980s with IBM taking over
the world with the PC with das out there
it was it was far worse than the Apple –
they tried to copy the Apple – and they
done a pretty bad job and if you needed
to know a lot and so things were kind of
slipping backwards and Macintosh was you
saw the 1984 commercial put that I hope
you have that in your archives
you know Macintosh was basically this
this relatively small company you know
in Cupertino California taking on the
Goliath IBM and saying wait a minute
your way is wrong this is not the way we
want computers to go this is not the
legacy we want to leave this is not what
we want our kids to be learning this is
wrong and we are going to show you the
right way to do it and here it is it’s
called Macintosh and this is so much
better that it’s going to beat you and
we are going to do it and that’s what
Apple stood for
things are packages of emphasis some
things are emphasized in a product some
things are not done as well in a product
some things are chosen not to be done at
all in a product and so different people
make different choices and if the market
tells us we’re making the wrong choices
we listen to the market we’re just we’re
just people running this company we’re
trying to make great products for people
and so we’re we have at least the
courage of our convictions to say we
don’t think this is part of what makes a
great product we’re going to leave it
out some people are gonna not like that
they’re going to call us names it’s not
going to be in certain companies vested
interests that we do that but we’re
going to take the heat because we want
to make the best product in the world
for customers we’re going to instead
focus our energy on these technologies
which we think are in their ascendency
and we think are going to be the right
technologies for customers and you know
what they’re paying us to make those
choices that’s what a lot of customers
pay us to do is to try to make the best
products we can and if we succeed
they’ll buy them and if we don’t they
won’t
yeah I didn’t know how to explain it
then but I felt a lot about it since if
you most things in life the dynamic
range between average and the best is it
most two to one
all right like if you go to New York
City and you get an average taxi cab
driver versus the best taxi cab driver
you know you’re probably gonna get to
your destination with the best taxi cab
maybe 30% faster you know in an
automobile what’s the difference between
an average and the best maybe how 20%
the best CD player and an average CD
player I don’t 20% so 201 is a big big
dynamic range in in most ‘life in
software and it used to be the case in
hardware to the difference between
average and the best is 50 to 1 maybe a
hundred to one easy
ok I’ve very few things in life for like
this but what I was lucky enough to
spend my life in he is like this and so
I’ve built
a lot of my success off finding these
truly gifted people and not settling for
B and C players but really going for the
a players and I found something I found
that when you get enough a players
together when you go to through the
incredible work to find you know five of
these eight players they really like
working with each other because they’ve
never had a chance to do that before and
they don’t want to work with B and C
players and so it becomes self-policing
and they only want to hire more a
players and so you build up these
pockets of a players and it propagates
and that’s what the Mac team was like
they were all a players and these were
extraordinarily talented people
[Music]
when we were building our Apple ones in
the garage we knew exactly what they
cost when we got into a factory in the
Apple two days the accounting had this
notion of a standard cost where you’d
kind of set a standard cost and then at
the end of a quarter you’d adjust it
with a variance and I kept asking why do
we do this and the answer was less just
the way it’s done and after about six
months of digging into this what I
realized was the reason you do it is
because you don’t really have good
enough controls to know how much it
costs so you guess and then you fix your
guess at the end of the quarter and the
reason you don’t know how much it cost
is because your information systems
aren’t good enough so but nobody set it
that way and so later on when we
designed this automated factory for
Macintosh we were able to get rid of a
lot of these antiquated concepts and
know exactly what something cost to the
second so in business a lot of things
are I call it folklore they’re done
because they were done yesterday and the
day before and so what that means is if
you’re willing to sort of ask a lot of
questions and think about things and
work really hard you can learn business
pretty fast it’s not the heart not
rocket science it’s not rocket science
no
[Music]
you
Please follow and like us: