October 8, 2012 (AAPLTrader)

Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985

"It takes these very simple-minded instructions--'Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it's greater than this other number'----but executes them at a rate of, let's say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic."

"The problem is I'm older now, I'm 40 years old, and this stuff doesn't change the world. It really doesn't."

"I'm sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much -- if at all."

"These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I'm not downplaying that."

Wired, February 1996

"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."

Rolling Stone, Dec. 3, 2003

"I think it's brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television -- but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent."

"We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn't build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build."

Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985

"When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through."

"Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. 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. Most people don't take the time to do that."

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people."

Wired, February 1996

"Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

"For something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

BusinessWeek, May 25, 1998

"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."

Fortune, January 24 2000

"This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it. Take desktop video editing. I never got one request from someone who wanted to edit movies on his computer. Yet now that people see it, they say, 'Oh my God, that's great!"

MSNBC and Newsweek interview, Oct. 14, 2006

"Look at the design of a lot of consumer products -- they're really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe

Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985

"I don't think I've ever worked so hard on something, but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn't be ours anymore. When we finally presented it at the shareholders' meeting, everyone in the auditorium gave it a five-minute ovation. What was incredible to me was that I could see the Mac team in the first few rows. It was as though none of us could believe we'd actually finished it. Everyone started crying."

On Mac OS X, Fortune, Jan. 24, 2000

"We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them."

On the iTunes Music Store, Fortune, May 12, 2003

"It will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry. This is landmark stuff. I can't overestimate it!"

Announcement of the iPhone, Jan. 9, 2007

"Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. ... One is very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple's been very fortunate it's been able to introduce a few of these into the world."

Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985

"You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it's humorous, all the attention to it, because it's hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that's happened to me."

The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993

"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."

BusinessWeek, May 25, 1998

Q: There's a lot of symbolism to your return. Is that going to be enough to reinvigorate the company with a sense of magic?

"You're missing it. This is not a one-man show. What's reinvigorating this company is two things: One, there's a lot of really talented people in this company who listened to the world tell them they were losers for a couple of years, and some of them were on the verge of starting to believe it themselves. But they're not losers. What they didn't have was a good set of coaches, a good plan. A good senior management team. But they have that now."

Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998

"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it."

Apple Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer Inc., May 1999

"The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament."

"The problem with the Internet startup craze isn't that too many people are starting companies; it's that too many people aren't sticking with it. That's somewhat understandable, because there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That's when you find out who you are and what your values are."

Fortune, Jan. 24, 2000

"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."

"The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more efficient."

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Trade On,
Eric Consiglio
AAPLTrader Technical Strategist