Author: Walter Isaacson

ISBN: 978-1451648539

I really enjoyed a realistic (or at least much more realistic than other books and movies) insight into the life of one of the greatest creative geniouses of the 21st century. The book is full of practical wisdom about life and business. True to himself, Walter Isaacson leves no stone unturned, which can make a book to lengthy if you're not a true fan of the depicted (this one has 570 pages)!

EXCERPTS

Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.

 

Drive for perfection meant caring about the craftsmanship even of the parts unseen.

 

You should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.

 

People DO judge a book by its cover. We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.

 

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

 

People who are serious about software should make their own hardware.

 

The journey is the reward.

 

The customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.

 

Let’s have a renegade feeling to our group.

 

[On Jobs] If they knew what they were talking about, he would tolerate the pushback, even admire it.

 

Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?

 

Great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from restraint.

Things led to their opposites.

 

Lasting companies know how to reinvent themselves.

 

Think Different: celebrate not what the computers could do, but what creative people could do with the computers.

 

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.

 

That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.

 

People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.

 

You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential. [Unique Added Value]

 

He got Apple back on track by cutting all except for a few core products. He made devices simpler by eliminating buttons, software simpler by eliminating features and interfaces simpler by eliminating options.

 

Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

 

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. - Memento mori.

 

Even though he was now running a large company, he kept making bold moves that I don’t think anybody else would have done.

 

Having trouble leading because he’s reluctant to offend people or piss them off.

 

I hate it when people call themselves “ entrepreneurs ” when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business.

 

I remember the time when Reed was six years old, coming home, and I had just fired somebody that day, and I imagined what it was like for that person to tell his family and his young son that he had lost his job. It was hard. But somebody’s got to do it. I figured that it was always my job to make sure that the team was excellent, and if I didn’t do it, nobody was going to do it.

 

While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

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