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Steve Jobs' Best Quotes

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Re: Steve Jobs' Best Quotes

#61

Post by jbooth »

lionhearted wrote: post #41

This one, too - -- “When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in b…

That quote's crap.

We used to have Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. Now we have CNN and Fox News. Can you picture anyone from either of those networks calling out McCarthy?

It's not so much an active conspiracy of mendacious bootlickers, as it is the lack of a conspiracy to strive for something better. Steve Jobs of all people should know better.

Re: Steve Jobs' Best Quotes

#62

Post by f7u12 »

arst829 wrote: post #3

Perhaps the most pertinent to startup life: "“It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.”

I'm really digging that quote. I never thought about the paths I have chosen away from corporate life (assuming that is what he is referring to by "navy") to be fun, just that they were more interesting. In the end, I like to think that it is about fun.

Re: Steve Jobs' Best Quotes

#64

Post by rbanffy »

T-hawk wrote: post #56
rbanffy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was the first true mass-produced portable PC Erm... "portable" is not the word I'd use. Most would settle for "transportable". I'd rather use "draggable".

I remember "luggable" as the adjective of choice for such machines through the late 80's and early 90's. The PC Magazine columnists (Dvorak and Seymour and others) were fond of it.

I remember "luggable". There was an April fool's section in BYTE in the late 80's advertising a line of hand luggage made to look like portable computers. The text said something about the size being painfully realistic and not fitting under an airplane seat.

Re: Steve Jobs' Best Quotes

#65

Post by dreamdu5t »

super_mario wrote: post #58
bonzoesc wrote: post #25

Sums up my thoughts on vi: > Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in America to improve productivity. It won’t work. The special incantations you have to learn this time are the “slash q-zs” and things like that.

Yeah, but a good portion of Mac users would never use it if it weren't UNIX under the covers and if it didn't enable them to work they way they like (from command line and vi). Without these people advocating the platform, it would be a lot less successful.

Agreed. The sole reason I use a Mac is because it's BSD + a far far superior replacement to X Windows. Among countless other subtle perfections.

Re: Steve Jobs' Best Quotes

#66

Post by dreamdu5t »

pbreit wrote: post #14
mateo42 wrote: post #5

His answer the 1996 interview question with Wired about technology revolutionizing our lives definitely seems at odds with what we've listened to him tout about such things as the iPad.

I'm guessing you are referring to this passage, but I can only guess since you forgot to specify: "Q: What's the biggest surprise this technology will deliver? A: The problem is I'm older now, I'm 40 years old, and this stuff doesn't change the world. It really doesn't. Q: That's going to break people's hearts. A: I'm sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We're born, we live for…

I agree with this. Especially as we drift further away from Tim Berners-Lee's web towards the web as the evolution of network television and the entertainment industry.

Re: Steve Jobs' Best Quotes

#67

Post by jpwagner »

rbanffy wrote: post #9

Two of my favorites are not there: "I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something." and "I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success — I have no problem with their success. They've earned their success, for the most par…

both of those are there

Re: Steve Jobs' Best Quotes

#68

Post by cyrus_ »

lionhearted wrote: post #41

This one, too - -- “When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in b…

Steve Jobs of all people should realize the value of choosing not to give the viewers exactly what they want and instead pushing them toward a higher standard, even if it costs a bit of money in the short run.

Re: Steve Jobs' Best Quotes

#69

Post by jballanc »

ajays wrote: post #59
jballanc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To continue on this thread, I once heard Steve describe it this way: "When I returned to Apple, I went to every engineering team and fired all the managers. Then, I went to the smartest engineer on each team and told them they were going to be the new manager. Of course, being the smartest engineers, they all immediately said, 'No'! So I told them, 'Look, either you're going to be the new manager, or I'll go hire som…

Do you have a reference for this? I'd like to send it out to a few people, but "I read it on HN" doesn't seem to have the same cache' (yet.. ;) ).

Unfortunately, this was from a talk Steve gave when I was working at Apple, so I'm quoting from memory...
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