Industrial Designer Quotes

At Apple, people are putting in 18-hour days. We attract a different type of person—a person who doesn’t want to wait five or ten years to have someone take a giant risk on him or her. Someone who really wants to get in a little over his head and make a little dent in the universe. We are aware that we are doing something significant. We’re here at the beginning of it and we’re able to shape how it goes. Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.

Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could.

I think this is the start of something really big. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one, and we've just taken it.

The things I've done in my life have required a lot of yearsof work before they took off.

All we are is our ideas, or people. That's what keeps us going to work in the morning, to hang around these great bright people. I've always thought that recruiting is the heart and soul of what we do.

It gave a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in one's environment.

That's my job - to make sure everything is great.

Marketing is about values. It's a complicated and noisy world, and we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.

We're cautious. We'd rather exceed expectations than miss but I think it's going to be a continued difficult economy. Apple is trying a different way to navigate out of this, we're trying to innovate.

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact — everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.

Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life.

Life can be much broader. You can embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they're gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

If today were my last day, would I do what I'm doing?...If the answer was 'No' too many days in a row, I'd make a change.

Learn continually - there's always "one more thing" to learn!

Many companies forget what it means to make great products. After initial success, sales and marketing people take over and the product people eventually make their way out.

The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work

But it's a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light - that it's going to change everything. Things don't have to change the world to be important.

This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that's what I had.

I don't view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.

Bottom line is, I didn't return to Apple to make a fortune. I've been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn't going to let it ruin my life. There's no way you could ever spend it all, and I don't view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.

We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best.

I was at Reed [College] for only a few months. My parents intended for me to stay there for all four years but I decided that college wasn't right for me. I had no idea what I wanted to do I didn't see how college was going to help me.

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.

The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it.

I'm not dismissing the value of higher education; I'm simply saying it comes at the expense of experience.

To have your whole music library with you at all times is a quantum leap in listening to music. How do we possibly do this?

By honoring the lives of those we admire, we make our own values known.

Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions.

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Ask for feedback from people with diverse backgrounds. Each one will tell you one useful thing. If you're at the top of the chain, sometimes people won't give you honest feedback because they're afraid. In this case, disguise yourself, or get feedback from other sources.

That's always been in my mind my metaphor for a team working really hard on something they're passionate about. It's that 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.

We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise and the software expertise, including iTunes. One of the biggest insights we have was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless.

Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.

A computer is the most incredible tool we've ever seen. It can be a writing tool, a communications center, a supercalculator, a planner, a filer and an artistic instrument all in one, just by being given new instructions, or software, to work from. There are no other tools that have the power and versatility of a computer.

I'm convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

Be ready to catch the ball when it is thrown by life.

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.

[My teacher] basically bribed me back into learning with candy and money and what was really remarkable was before very long I had such a respect for her that it sort of re-ignited my desire to learn.

That's 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's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done. And then try to bring those things in to what you're doing.

The technology companies don't understand creative things at all. Silicon Valley's view of the creative process in Hollywood is a bunch of guys in their young thirties sitting on a couch, drinking beer, and thinking up jokes.

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.

I think the biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning.

Fear of failure falls away in the face of death.

I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance... Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through.

A lot of people think big business in America is a bad thing. I think it's a really good thing. Most people in business are ethical, hard-working, good people. And it's a meritocracy.

When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple, you don't really understand the complexity of the problem. Then you get into the problem, and you see that it's really complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That's sort of the middle, and that's where most people stop... But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem - and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works.

The most powerful person in the world is the story teller.The storyteller sets the vision, values and agendaof an entire generation that is to come.

If Macintosh hadn't been successful, then I should have just thrown in the towel, because my vision of the whole industry would have been totally wrong.

We live in an information economy. The problem is that information's usually impossible to get, at least in the right place, at the right time.

Who wants a stylus. You have to get em and put em away, and you lose em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus.

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

I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do.

Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.

Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?

Let them know precisely what you are going to do with their data

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me ... Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.