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Author: Walter Isaacson
Recommended rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

• Steve Jobs was deeply influenced by a series of books on spirituality and enlightenment, especially "Be Here Now," which is a book about meditation and psychedelics by Baba Ram Dass, also known as Richard Alpert.

• I learned about serif and sans-serif fonts, how to adjust spacing between different letter combinations, and how to create perfect layouts. The beauty, historical significance, and artistic subtlety involved in this cannot be captured by science, which fascinated me.

• Throughout his life, he followed and adhered to many fundamental precepts of Eastern religions, such as the emphasis on "prajna" - wisdom and cognition obtained through concentrated and intuitive experiences.

• People in rural India are different from us. We use thinking, while they use intuition. Their intuition is much more developed than people in other parts of the world. Intuition is very powerful, in my opinion even more powerful than thinking. Intuition has a great impact on my work.

• After spending 7 months in Indian villages and returning to the United States, I saw the madness of the Western world and the limitations of rational thinking. If you sit down and observe quietly, you will realize how restless your mind is. If you try to calm down, the situation will only get worse, but after a while, it will calm down, and there will be space in your mind to listen to more subtle things - this is when your intuition starts to develop, and you will see things more clearly and feel the reality of the environment. Your mind gradually calms down, and your vision expands greatly. You can see things you couldn't see before. This is a practice that you must constantly practice.

• Specifically, what he wanted - and what he pursued throughout his career - was to power devices without using fans. Internal fans in computers contradict the Zen philosophy, and their noise makes it difficult to concentrate.

• Among the dreamers who worked here was a scientist named Alan Kay, who had two sayings that Jobs identified with: "The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself" and "People who take software seriously should make their own hardware."

• I saw some people at Apple who, after making a lot of money, felt that they needed to live a different life. They bought Rolls-Royces and many houses, each with a butler, and then hired someone to manage all the butlers. Their wives underwent plastic surgery and became strange. That's not the life I wanted. It's too crazy. I promised myself that I wouldn't let money ruin my life.

• He wanted the title bar on the Mac to be smoother and have some fine stripes. "We made 20 different title bars before he was satisfied," Atkinson recalled. Both Carey and Atkinson complained that Jobs spent too much time on modifying the title bar when they had more important things to do. Jobs got angry. "Can you imagine what it's like to look at it every day?" he shouted, "This is not a trivial matter, this is something we must do well!"

• He believed that the best products are "integrated," end-to-end, where software is tailor-made for hardware, and hardware is tailor-made for software. It is this belief that sets Mac apart from the environment created by Microsoft (and later Google's Android), where the operating system used on Mac can only run on its own hardware, while Microsoft and Android's operating systems can run on hardware manufactured by many different companies.

• "He is a marketer, and that's the nature of marketers: to make money by pretending,"

• "1984" advertisement True artists always complete their works

• Jobs used his reality distortion field to make team members accomplish tasks they thought were impossible. On Friday, to survive the last three all-nighters, Randy Wigginton brought a large bag of chocolate-flavored espresso beans.

• Jobs responded with a mocking tone, "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before inventing the telephone?"

• "The rule is simple: when a team expands, if it absorbs a few second-rate players, it will attract more second-rate players, and soon there will even be third-rate players in your team," he recalled, "The experience of Macintosh tells me that first-rate players only like to work with other first-rate players, which means you can't tolerate second-rate players."

• Time and rhythm are important in storytelling. When creating frame-by-frame animations, it is important to master this concept, but it is not easy.

• "Austerity and minimalism make people more sensitive. "He believes that scarcity is abundance, and self-discipline brings joy," she said, "He knows something that most people don't know: extremes produce reversals."

• "I hope we can traverse the dark abyss of your shattered world, come out, live incognito, start over, live a simple life. I will make dinner for you, and we can be together every day, like children playing a wonderful game, without any purpose, just for the joy of the game."

• The first thing Jobs did in the product evaluation process was to ban the use of PowerPoint. "I hate it when people use slides instead of their brains," Jobs later recalled, "Every time they encounter a problem, they make slides. I want them to get involved, come up with solutions on the spot, instead of putting up a bunch of slides. People who know what they are talking about don't need PowerPoint."

• "In many other companies, creativity and outstanding design often get lost in processes," he said, "If it weren't for Steve pushing us, working with us, and overcoming all obstacles to turn our ideas into products, the ideas my team and I came up with would have been long gone."

• He would arrange for candidates to meet directly with the company's key executives - Cook, Tevanian, Schiller, Rubinstein, and Ive - instead of just meeting with department managers. "Then we will discuss whether they can be selected," Jobs said. He did this to avoid a "bozo explosion" and prevent the company from being filled with "second-rate talent."

• A collaborative recruitment process is needed first. When we recruit, even if the person is going to the marketing department, I will let him talk to the people in the design department and the engineers. I have always regarded J. Robert Oppenheimer as a role model. I know the recruitment requirements he had when he established the atomic bomb project team. I am not as excellent as him, but that is the goal I aspire to.

• "I believe this is one of the most important influences that Steve Jobs brought to Apple. He couldn't tolerate his own imperfections and the imperfections of others."

• Jobs bit his lip, adjusted his wireframe glasses, and put on an elegant and humble face, saying, "You make me feel a little embarrassed. I work with the smartest people in the world every day, whether it's at Apple or Pixar. But these achievements are the result of teamwork. I represent everyone at Apple and accept your thanks."

• Jobs didn't like losing control over anything, especially when it came to customer experience.

• Jobs described to him Mike Markkula's saying: a good company must learn to "impart" - it must do everything possible to convey its values and importance, from packaging to marketing.

• Johnson also said, "Once there is a technological breakthrough, he will use it. And, for Steve, 'less' always means 'more,' the simpler the better. So

• It is best to build a glass house with fewer elements, not only more minimalist but also at the forefront of technology. This is what Steve likes to do, whether it is for his products or his retail stores.

• An innovative company not only needs to innovate but also needs to know how to catch up when it falls behind.

• The most mysterious aspect of all "simplicity" is the surprising decision that Jobs made that there should be no power switch on the iPod. This was implemented in most Apple products thereafter. The power switch was unnecessary and, from an aesthetic and theological perspective, it was unpleasant. If it is not operated for a period of time, it will automatically enter sleep mode; when you touch any button, it will automatically "wake up" again. But there is no need to specifically set up such a process: press it - wait for shutdown - goodbye.

• He said that during that time, he thought more about growth than about his own background. During this time, he chose Joni Mitchell's most famous song "Both Sides Now," which is about growth and wisdom: "Now I see life, see both sides. See gain and loss, but still confused. What I thought was life, maybe an illusion. Life, I really don't know." Just like Glenn Gould recorded "Goldberg Variations" twice, Mitchell also recorded "Both Sides Now" again many years later. After the first version in 1969, she recorded a melancholic version in 2000. He played the second version and said, "The process of aging is really interesting."

• The leader's character determines the style of the entire company, just as Apple carries the shadow of Steve Jobs, and Pixar is deeply influenced by John Lasseter.

• People in Hollywood often lie, it's a strange phenomenon. They lie because they don't have to be accountable for their actions in this industry. Zero responsibility. So, they can get away with it.

• We believe that our purpose on Earth is to create great products, and that will not change. We have always focused on innovation. We advocate simplicity rather than complexity. We believe that we need to have and control the important technology behind the products we make, and only participate in markets where we can make significant contributions. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can truly focus on the few projects that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and mutual inspiration between teams, which allows us to innovate in ways that others cannot. Honestly, these values are deeply rooted in this company, and Apple will perform extraordinarily no matter who is doing what job.

• Leon wrote, "A closed system may be the only way to convey Apple's technical Zen."

• Closed systems may have a bad reputation, but they are user-friendly and beneficial to users. In the field of technology, perhaps no one can prove this better than Steve Jobs. Apple has been able to surpass its competitors and launch beautiful products by bundling hardware, software, and services and tightly controlling them.

• The problem lies in whether the dual policy of prioritizing design over engineering and keeping unreleased products highly confidential is beneficial to Apple. "Overall, it has its benefits; but unlimited power is a bad thing, and that's how things are."

• Just like the "innovator's dilemma" described by Clayton Christensen, the person who invents something is often the last one to see it become obsolete, and we certainly don't want to be left behind.

• Everything works seamlessly only when you use an Apple device and stay within Apple's closed ecosystem. This brings another advantage to Apple: consumers are stuck. Once you start using iCloud, it is difficult to switch to Kindle or Android devices. Your music and other content cannot be synced to those devices; in fact, they may not work. Apple's efforts to resist open systems have reached a climax in the past 30 years.

• She is too smart, she is better than others, unconsciously alienating others, and then finding that she has no friends. She is still learning how to be herself, but at the same time, she needs to sharpen her edges in order to gain the friends she needs.

• He doesn't have social grace, doesn't consider others from their perspective, but he is highly concerned about how to harness the power of humanity, empower people, advance humanity, and create the right tools for humanity to pursue progress.

• About focus, we have talked a lot. And people's choices. How to know who to trust, and how he built a team that can be relied upon. I told him that we must adopt interception tactics to prevent the company from becoming loose or filled with second-rate players. The main issue I emphasized was focus. You have to think clearly about what Google wants to be when it matures. Now the company is everywhere, what are the 5 products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they will hold you back and turn you into Microsoft, producing products that meet requirements but are not great. I did what I could. I will continue to do things like this with people like Mark Zuckerberg. Part of my remaining life will be devoted to this. I can help the next generation remember the lineage of great companies in the present and how to carry forward these traditions. Silicon Valley has always supported me very much. I should do my best to give back.

• Just like Apple's core philosophy, from the initial Macintosh in 1984 to the iPad of a whole generation, it has always been about end-to-end integration of software and hardware. Jobs himself is the same: his personality, passion, perfectionism, dark side, desires, artistic temperament, cruelty, and control are all intertwined with his business philosophy and ultimate innovative products.

• He didn't directly invent many things, but he used masterful techniques to integrate ideas, art, and technology, creating the future.

• My passion lies in creating a company that can last for generations, where people are motivated to create great products. Everything else is secondary. Of course, making money is great because it allows you to create great products. But the motivation comes from the product, not the profit. Scalie reversed the order and treated making money as the goal. This subtle difference affects everything: who you hire, who you promote, what you discuss in meetings.

• The reason Apple resonates with people is because there is a humanistic spirit hidden in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar in that they both have a desire for self-expression.

• People pay us to integrate things for them because they can't think about these things 24/7. If you have great passion for producing great products, it will push you to pursue integration, to integrate your hardware, software, and content management. If you want to open your product to other hardware or software, you can only give up some vision.

• Companies like IBM or Microsoft decline for a reason, and I have my own insights. These companies do well, they innovate, become or approach monopolies in a certain field, and then the quality of the products becomes less important. These companies start to value excellent salespeople because they are the ones who drive sales and rewrite revenue numbers, not the engineers and designers of the products. Therefore, salespeople eventually become the managers of the company. John Akers of IBM is a smart, eloquent, and great salesperson, but he knows nothing about the product. The same thing happened at Xerox. People who do sales run the company, and people who do products are no longer that important, and many of them lose their passion for creation. This happened to Apple after Sculley joined, which was my mistake; the same thing happened after Ballmer took over Microsoft. Apple was lucky enough to make a comeback, but I don't think Microsoft will improve as long as Ballmer is at the helm.

• I hate a certain type of person who calls themselves "entrepreneurs," but what they really want to do is create a company and then sell it or go public so they can cash out and leave. They are not willing to put in the hard work of building a real company, which is the hardest work in the business world. Only by doing this can you truly make a contribution and add to the legacy left by previous generations. You have to build a company that will stand tall for another one or two generations. That's what Walt Disney, Hewlett and Packard, and the people who created Intel did. They created enduring companies, not just making money. That's what I expect from Apple.

• My motivation? I think most creators want to express gratitude for the achievements we benefit from our predecessors. I didn't invent the language or mathematics I use. I didn't make most of the food I eat, and I haven't made a single piece of clothing. Everything I do relies on other members of our human race and their contributions and achievements. Many of us want to give back to society and add something to the river of history.

• Playing with the Lisa computer. "Didn't Picasso say: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' We have always been shameless in stealing great inspiration."

Note: The translation may not be perfect and may vary depending on the context.