Steve Jobs

Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there__ another side to the coin, and you can__ remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important__reating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.

for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it__ better, it__ simpler, and it__ at the forefront of technology. That__ where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.

So that__ our approach. Very simple, and we__e really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we__e running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let__ make it simple. Really simple._ Apple__ design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: __implicity is the ultimate sophistication.

If you keep your eye on the profit, you__e going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, then the profits will follow.

On its first over was the famous picture of Earth taken from space; its subtitle was "Access to Tools." The underlying philosophy was that technology could be our friend. Brand wrote on the first page of the first edition, "A realm of intimate, personal power is developing- power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the Whole Earth Catalog.

Design is not limited to fancy new gadgets. Our family just bought a new washing machine and dryer. We didn__ have a very good one so we spent a little time looking at them. It turns out that the Americans make washers and dryers all wrong. The Europeans make them much better _ but they take twice as long to do clothes! It turns out that they wash them with about a quarter as much water and your clothes end up with a lot less detergent on them. Most important, they don__ trash your clothes. They use a lot less soap, a lot less water, but they come out much cleaner, much softer, and they last a lot longer. We spent some time in our family talking about what__ the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table. We__ get around to that old washer-dryer discussion. And the talk was about design. We ended up opting for these Miele appliances, made in Germany. They__e too expensive, but that__ just because nobody buys them in this country. They are really wonderfully made and one of the few products we__e bought over the last few years that we__e all really happy about. These guys really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years.

What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

Everything around you that you call life was made up by people, and you can change it.

If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you'll be right.

Although Jobs later said that he was not plotting to take over Apple at the time, Ellison thought it was inevitable. " Anyone who spent more than a half hour with Amelio would realize that he couldn't do anything but self destruct," he later said

One sticking point was that Jobs wanted his payout to be in cash. Amelio insisted that he needed to "have skin in the game" and take the payout in stock that he would agree to hold for at least a year._ Jobs resisted. Finally, they compromised: Jobs would take $120 million in cash and $37 million in stock, and he pledged to hold the stock for at least six months.

That__ been one of my mantras _ focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it__ worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. [BusinessWeek, May 25 1998]

Focus is saying no to 1,000 good ideas.

What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they__e dragging you down. They__e turning you into Microsoft. They__e causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.

Jobs's intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions. If something engaged him- the user interface for the original Macintosh, the design of the iPod and iPhone, getting music companies into the iTunes Store-he was relentless. But if he did not want to deal with something - a legal annoyance, a business issue, his cancer diagnosis, a family tug- he would resolutely ignore it. That focus allowed him to say no. He got Apple back on track by cutting all except a few core products. He made devices simpler by eliminating buttons, software simpler by eliminating features, and interfaces simpler by eliminating options. He attributed his ability to focus and his love of simplicity to his Zen training. It honed his appreciation for intuition, showed him how to filter out anything that was distracting or unnecessary, and nurtured in him an aesthetic based on minimalism.

Focusing is about saying No.

One of Job's great strengths was knowing how to focus. " Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do, " he said. " That's true for companies, and it's true for products.

Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. __here is no one better at turning off the noise that is going on around him,_ Cook said. __hat allows him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that.