The best quotes from arguably America's greatest entrepreneur and ex-CEO...

[Dien Rice]

Now that Steve Jobs is no longer the CEO of Apple, a whole slew of articles about him have materialized in the media...

However, one worth reading is not an article at all - yet it's positively inspirational...

The Wall Street Journal has put together a bunch of "Steve Jobs' Best Quotes"...

Well worth reading, in my opinion!

Remember, this is the guy who (in his second shot at heading Apple) took what was a struggling company, to being the most valuable company in the world!

Here are the quotes (click on this link)...

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/08/...s-best-quotes/

Best wishes,

Dien

Dien,

Definitely correct...

You and Gordon should [Hookup] with Steve Jobs (Or) an ''Imaginary'' and Start Spinning misc. Versions of Copyright and Trademark {safe} Steve Jobs related HOTSHEETS...

How Jobs sold Conformity to the Hipsters...

Good stuff Worth Applying into Everyday businesses! ....
http://news.google.com/news/story?q=...ed=0CB4QqgIwAA

Phil

Out of the [Box Thinking] on Hipster(s)... Related information, Specialty product(s) and All Sorts of Innovative & Creative idea(s) could be the ''Key'' to some Very interesting ideas...

What is a Hipster? ...
http://www.isthmus.com/isthmus/artic...?article=34485

Phil

[Dien Rice]

Originally Posted by Phil

Dien,

Definitely correct...

You and Gordon should [Hookup] with Steve Jobs (Or) an ''Imaginary'' and Start Spinning misc. Versions of Copyright and Trademark {safe} Steve Jobs related HOTSHEETS...

How Jobs sold Conformity to the Hipsters...

Good stuff Worth Applying into Everyday businesses! ....
http://news.google.com/news/story?q=...ed=0CB4QqgIwAA

Hi Phil,

Great article! Thanks for pointing it out...

I have a Macbook... It's about 5 years old now. But it still works! I'm typing on it right now...

Every laptop I've had before that was a Windows laptop (mostly Dells or Toshibas). But the thing is, none of them lasted beyond about two years!

(By the way, I installed Windows on my Macbook too, so I have both Windows and Mac OS X on my laptop.)

In most cases with my previous laptops, something went wrong with the screen after about 2 years. I'd get it fixed, but then a month or two later, it would happen again. After spending a few hundred bucks on constantly repairing the screen, I'd figure - it's probably time for a new laptop.

Now, my Macbook isn't perfect. My hard drive died once (luckily I had just backed it up) - and I replaced it with a bigger hard drive. My wi-fi connector (called "Airport" in Apple lingo) died, but I have a replacement. The thing is, it was fixable. And, it was simple enough that I did it myself. (For the wi-fi, I just bought an external wi-fi device I plug in my USB port, which works. For the hard drive, it was no longer under warranty, but the "Apple Genius" guy at the Apple store told me how to do it, and it wasn't hard to replace myself...)

So, I agree with this quote from the article Phil linked to...

"As The Economist pointed out in an editorial a few years ago, the most salient feature of Apple products is that they work."

I can say my Macbook "works" better than any of my previous (non-Apple) laptops.

Of course, Apple's designs are nice too. But the attraction of Apple products is more than just how "pretty" they are. There is "substance" behind it too.

I like this quote from Steve Jobs, from 1985...

"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.

"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."

I find it fascinating that he seems to look at technology the way an old fashioned craftsman (or craftswoman) would look at producing "beauty" along with functionality and quality in their craft.

It makes me think of the "beauty" of Shaker furniture, or of the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright. They combine functionality with beauty and quality.

Why not do the same with technology? Apple has managed to do so - and reaped the financial rewards as a result!

(They also made things "easy". MP3 players were complicated to use - until the iPod, with iTunes software, came along. The fact I could replace my own Macbook hard drive is only because Apple designed it in a way so it was easier to do, compared to other computers.)

I think there are probably HUGE opportunities in applying these kinds of ideas to other areas too...

(Okay - I'll climb down off my soap box now! )

Best wishes,

Dien

Here's another article about Jobs that's relevant and motivating to us entrepreneurs:

(I had to paste this because I can't yet post links...)

Steve Jobs' announcement that he is stepping down as chief executive of Apple is not surprising. He's a very sick man, and running the world's largest technology firm in market capitalization can't be easy for someone with pancreatic cancer and who knows what other ailments.

Lots of digital ink will be spilled about Jobs, most of it focusing on his truly marvelous successes.

It's better to focus on his failures.

Jobs failed better than anyone else in Silicon Valley, maybe better than anyone in corporate America. By that I mean Jobs did what only the greatest entrepreneurs can do: learn from their failures. I don't mean learn from their mistakes. I mean learn from their abject, humiliating, bonehead, epic fails.

Everyone today thinks of Jobs as the genius who gave us the iPod, the MacBook, the iTunes store, the iPhone, the iPad, and so on. Yes, he transformed personal computing and multimedia. But let's not forget what else Jobs did.

Jobs (with Steve Wozniak) brought us the Apple I and Apple II computers, early iterations of which sold in the mere hundreds and were complete failures. Not until the floppy disk was introduced and sufficient RAM added did the Apple II take off as a product.

Jobs was the architect of Lisa, introduced in the early 1980s. You remember Lisa, don't you? Of course you don't. This computer, which cost tens of millions of dollars to develop, was another epic failure.

Apple tossed Jobs aside, and he went on to found NeXT Computer, which was a big nothing-burger of a company. Its greatest success was that it was purchased by Apple - paving the way for the serial failure Jobs to return to his natural home.

Jobs is a great entrepreneur for another reason. Lots of ninnies can give customers products they want. Jobs gave people products they didn't know they wanted, and then made those products indispensable to their lives.

I didn't know I needed the ability to read the Wall Street Journal on a handsome handheld device at my breakfast table, on the Metro, on the Acela, or in any Starbucks I entered. But Steve Jobs did. I didn't know I wanted to mix and match my music collection on a computer and take it with me wherever I went, but Steve Jobs did. I didn't know I wanted a portable multimedia platform that would permit my kids and me to hurl angry birds out of a slingshot at thieving pigs. But Steve Jobs did.

All those successes were made possible by failure after failure after failure and the lessons

My favourite quote from Steve Jobs is "Let's invent tomorrow" he spoke about it in an interview with Bill Gates and you can watch that interview at: http://youtu.be/cCvLTlQWT6A

Hipsters are great to market to - they are usually upper-middle-class and willing to SPEND MONEY!