By thinking really hard we can build beautiful things that work so well that they change people's lives forever.
Excerpts from the Steve Jobs Biography by Walter Issacson.
"His personality was reflected in the products he created. His passion, perfectism, demons, desire, artistry devilry and obsession for control were integrally connected to his approach to business and the products that resulted."
Jobs always wanted a flawless product. His colleagues referred to him as the hero/shithead dichotomy. The same was true of products, ideas, even food: Something was either "the best thing ever" or it was shitty, brain-dead, inedible. If he was working on something, he wanted it to be perfect, and would never give up until it was.
"The finish on a piece of metal, the curve of the head of a screw, the shade of blue on a box, the intuitiveness of a navigation screen—he would declare them to 'completely suck' until that moment when he suddenly pronounced them 'absolutely perfect.'"
For him, belief in an integrated approach was a matter of righteousness. "We do things not because we are control freaks," he explained. "We do them because we want to make great products, because we care about the user, and because we like to take responsibility for the entire experience rather than turn out the crap that other people make." He believed that he was doing people a service.
He had an extreme ability to focus and a passion for cutting away what he didn't want, both in allocating his own time and in designing products. His intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. This empowered but also crippled him. He could, for example, totally ignore family. (He almost never came to see his first daughter, Lisa, until she was about eight; "I didn't want to be a father, so I wasn't," he explained.) And, according to Isaacson, Jobs tarried in dealing with his cancer diagnosis.
"He attributed his ability to focus and his love of simplicity to his Zen training. It honed his appreciation for intuition, showed him how to filter out anything that was distracting or unnecessary, and nurtured in him an aesthetic based on minimalism."
Unfortunately, his Zen training never quite produced in him a Zen-like Calm or inner serenity, which also became a part of his Legacy! He made a point of being brutally honest. "My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it." This made him charismatic and inspiring, and sometimes, an asshole for some.
His mean side made dozens of his colleagues, whom Jobs most abused, end up their litany of horror stories by saying that he he got them to do things they never dreamed possible.
"The saga of Steve Jobs is the Silicon Valley creation myth writ large: launching a startup in his parents' garage and building it into the world's most valuable company. He didn't invent many things outright, but he was a master at putting together ideas, art, and technology in ways that invented the future. He designed the Mac after appreciating the power of graphical interfaces in a way that Xerox was unable to do, and he created the iPod after grasping the joy of having a thousand songs in your pocket in a way that Sony, which had all the assets and heritage, could never accomplish. Some leaders push innovations by being good at the big picture. Others do so by mastering details. Jobs did both, relentlessly."
Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times, magical.
Follow @EkAurBottleLa
Excerpts from the Steve Jobs Biography by Walter Issacson.
"His personality was reflected in the products he created. His passion, perfectism, demons, desire, artistry devilry and obsession for control were integrally connected to his approach to business and the products that resulted."
Jobs always wanted a flawless product. His colleagues referred to him as the hero/shithead dichotomy. The same was true of products, ideas, even food: Something was either "the best thing ever" or it was shitty, brain-dead, inedible. If he was working on something, he wanted it to be perfect, and would never give up until it was.
"The finish on a piece of metal, the curve of the head of a screw, the shade of blue on a box, the intuitiveness of a navigation screen—he would declare them to 'completely suck' until that moment when he suddenly pronounced them 'absolutely perfect.'"
For him, belief in an integrated approach was a matter of righteousness. "We do things not because we are control freaks," he explained. "We do them because we want to make great products, because we care about the user, and because we like to take responsibility for the entire experience rather than turn out the crap that other people make." He believed that he was doing people a service.
He had an extreme ability to focus and a passion for cutting away what he didn't want, both in allocating his own time and in designing products. His intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. This empowered but also crippled him. He could, for example, totally ignore family. (He almost never came to see his first daughter, Lisa, until she was about eight; "I didn't want to be a father, so I wasn't," he explained.) And, according to Isaacson, Jobs tarried in dealing with his cancer diagnosis.
"He attributed his ability to focus and his love of simplicity to his Zen training. It honed his appreciation for intuition, showed him how to filter out anything that was distracting or unnecessary, and nurtured in him an aesthetic based on minimalism."
Unfortunately, his Zen training never quite produced in him a Zen-like Calm or inner serenity, which also became a part of his Legacy! He made a point of being brutally honest. "My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it." This made him charismatic and inspiring, and sometimes, an asshole for some.
His mean side made dozens of his colleagues, whom Jobs most abused, end up their litany of horror stories by saying that he he got them to do things they never dreamed possible.
"The saga of Steve Jobs is the Silicon Valley creation myth writ large: launching a startup in his parents' garage and building it into the world's most valuable company. He didn't invent many things outright, but he was a master at putting together ideas, art, and technology in ways that invented the future. He designed the Mac after appreciating the power of graphical interfaces in a way that Xerox was unable to do, and he created the iPod after grasping the joy of having a thousand songs in your pocket in a way that Sony, which had all the assets and heritage, could never accomplish. Some leaders push innovations by being good at the big picture. Others do so by mastering details. Jobs did both, relentlessly."
Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times, magical.
"I like to think that something survives after you die. It's strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures."
"But on the other hand, perhaps it's like an on-off switch, Click! And you're gone."
No comments:
Post a Comment