Quotes about Steve Jobs

23 Sourced Quotes

If you just want to say, "Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along," that's fine. If you're interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is. … Let's be realistic, who came up with "File/Edit/View/Help"? Do you want to go back to the original Mac and think about where those interface concepts came from?

He [Steve Jobs] showed me the boat he was working on … and talked about how he's looking forward to being on it, even though we both knew there was a good chance that wouldn't happen.

Everybody should have a real failure, ideally when they are pretty young, that gives them a sense of confidence. I think that was one of Steve Jobs's problems. He was successful for way too long before it finally hit him. There's nothing to build confidence like real achievement, but also like real failure.

Steve Jobs has created his own precious little walled garden. He's looking more and more like Howard Hughes, holed up in his penthouse, making sure he doesn't come in contact with any germs. Now Google is saying, hey, nice garden, have fun sitting in it. By yourself.

Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs. In fact, he's about as thrilling as dental floss.

[Steve Jobs] is not somebody [who] any one of us would want watching our kids, but, in terms of running the company, he's excellent.

Given Steve Jobs, for instance, is critical to Apple's success is there anything short of eating live babies on national TV that he should be fired for? Where would you draw that line or should he be held to the same rules and laws that the rest of us are held to?

I discovered that the best innovation is sometimes the company, the way you organize a company. The whole notion of how you build a company is fascinating." Steve Jobs

Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs is the Ronald McDonald of Apple, he is the face.

[Apple] carries a valuation of an image that is over-inflated due largely to the powerful efforts of Steve Jobs who made the company appear magical. As we end the year, the valuation of the company appears to have massive downward pressure and this is largely because the architect of that massively powerful image has passed — and along with that passing Apple's apparent leadership.

Microsoft fully understands it can't beat Apple, Amazon or Google by chasing them, but it can beat them if it both revisits its old embrace and extend strategy, and then pulls a Steve Jobs to change the market.

Once Steve Jobs goes away, which is probably not far away, then Apple will have to make a strategic decision on whether to open up the platform. Ultimately a closed system just can't go that far.

We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn't care about China. If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble.

I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don't. It's the great mystery. (Steve Jobs)

Walter Isaacson

Then, in 1998, I had the chance to talk with Steve Jobs after he'd come back and turned Apple around. I was there to help Telecom Italia try to do a deal with Apple, but after that business was completed I couldn't help asking a question. Steve, I said, this turnaround at Apple has been impressive. But everything we know about the personal-computer business says that Apple will always have a small niche position. The network externalities are just too strong to upset the de facto Wintel standard. So what are you trying to do? What's the longer-term strategy?

Creative things have to sell to get acknowledged as such. Steve Jobs didn't really set the direction of my Apple I and Apple II designs but he did the more important part of turning them into a product that would change the world. I don't deny that.

The iPad is the ultimate Steve Jobs device – so hypnotic that not only do people buy one without knowing what it's good for, they keep feeling like they ought to use it even when they have better alternatives for everything it does. It's a triumph of style over substance, cool over utility, form over actual function.

Eric S. Raymond

Given that background, I was interested in what Steve Jobs might say about the future of Apple. His survival strategy for Apple, for all its skill and drama, was not going to propel Apple into the future. At that moment in time, Apple had less than 4 percent of the personal computer market. The de facto standard was Windows-Intel and there seemed to be no way for Apple to do more than just hang on to a tiny niche.

What I proposed was a computer that would be easy to use, mix text and graphics, and sell for about $1,000. Steve Jobs said that it was a crazy idea, that it would never sell, and we didn't want anything like it. He tried to shoot the project down.

The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn't build Apple, that Henry Ford didn't build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn't build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn't build McDonald's, that Bill Gates didn't build Microsoft, you go on the list, that Joe and his colleagues didn't build this enterprise, to say something like that is not just foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America and it's wrong.

With the tragic death of Steve Jobs, Apple has lost its ability to innovate.

Steve Jobs doesn't use a Mac, and won't, because it's too crappy in his opinion.

Successful people never forget what they love to do and are passionate about. They quickly learn to follow their own path and to make the right choices, no matter how crazy or unpopular they might appear to others. Just look at Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, who quit studying at a prestigious university to pursue his dreams.

Nigel Cumberland