Jef Raskin Quotes

Steve Jobs did not start started Apple as a scam. But he understood early on the power of marketing. The idea of the computer as a bicycle for the human mind - I think that was something he believed. He believed in making people comfortable with these machines, which is why he spent so much time thinking about how to design them a certain way, how to make them so user-friendly and interactive, and why he spent so much time studying the Zeitgeist.

Having made up my mind, I went to see Steve [Jobs]. I brought a hand-drawn sketch with me, and I said, "Please make something like this." He said, "Don't show me such an ugly design sketch." But he also said, "You've got the right idea. I totally agree that the time has come when we can make the ultimate mobile machine."

Steve was perfectly aware of the Dynabook. That was one of the reasons he wanted me to come to Apple.

The iPod is a perfect example of Steve's [Jobs] methodology of starting with the user and looking at the entire end-to-end system.

I learned that as a director, you're around all these talented people, so you have this window that all these really good ideas can come in to help your movie, so you're crazy to close them. You need to be inspiring people, engaging people. There are lots of people who are really good at their jobs but might not know or feel like they want to come up to people and get them to participate and want to do their best.

You know, Steve Jobs came to the music industry and pitched them the idea and they kept shootin' him down and shootin' him down, and now he makes money off the whole music industry regardless. Which is a minor part of his empire, 'cause obviously it's gadgets that make him all of his money. But regardless, he has basically monopolized the music game.

Apple has a passion to deliver the most amazing, innovative - and, in fact, I got criticized because in "Win," there are at least 10 references to what Steve Jobs has done, and Apple's done, in that my editor said it's too much. But Apple is a passionate company.

I started passing out the schematics and the code listings for the computer, telling everyone here it is. It's small, it's simple, it's inexpensive: Build your own. No idea to start a company. Steve Jobs came by later and say, you know, people are interested. Why don't we start a company?

Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to some independent record label people. My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying, "Does it do [x]?", "Do you plan to add [y]?". Finally Jobs said, "Wait wait - put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes could have. So do we. But we don't want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.

Microsoft's philosophy is to get it out there and fix it later. Steve [Jobs] would never do that. He doesn't get anything out there until it is perfected.

My crazy parents and those crazy Catholic nuns didn't do a good job of forcing me to keep the Ten Commandments, but they kept me forever fixated on the very idea of a taboo.

Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor since Thomas Edison. He put the world at our fingertips.

I grew up going to punk shows, that kind of thing - I don't wanna make pop punk! - but I like the idea of people going totally crazy and it being really intimate, loud and super-aggressive, but combining that with pop music.

I am a fruitarian and I will only eat leaves picked by virgins in the moonlight - Steve Jobs

A solid process lays the foundation for a healthy culture, one where ideas are evaluated by merit and not by job title.

We realized we weren't really using Odeo, we weren't investing our own time creating podcasts. We were building a tool that was a great idea for some other people. That's a dangerous way to go because if you don't actually use it yourself and love it, then you aren't going to be as fully invested in it from the start. That's what leads you to doing side projects.

By tomorrow at this time, I think you're going to have a much better idea of what crazy is. -- Ev Hillman

but can everyone simply choose the path he loves? someone has to take the ordinary jobs. all i know is, that worked for me. and it didn't work for other people i know to get a so-called safe job, because there's no such thing anymore. the only thing that stays constant is the idea that people have to escape.

The idea began to sink in, more than it ever had, that I might be crazy, in the traditional sense of the word. That I might be, forever and ever amen, a Crazy Person. That's what we'd suspected all along, what I'd been working so hard to disprove, what might be true. I preferred, by far, being dead.

Your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur is not concealing your idea from others or keeping your idea a secret, it is actually convincing people that you're not crazy and that you can pull this off.

The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job. A pretty scary idea, I'd say.

If you're a leader at any level and your people aren't challenging you, you've got to change that or you can't be a leader here because you're not going to be using ideas, you're not going to have innovation, you're not going to fully develop your people. And if you're working in a group and you don't challenge, then you're not really doing your job.

Get a job and when you earn a little bit of money, then you can do more good. Then bringing your values doesn't mean you have to compromise yourself. You got to get over this idea that you can't work for a big corporation, or for big oil or bigger pharma, because actually, those are some of the great jobs are and you can do good there.

You don't want to do what your parents want you to do. You got your own things. And the whole idea of getting a job because of who your father is - that didn't isn't right.

I will say this: basically there in [MacGyver] was an idea and it was executed with a bunch of different things in mind, and that's where I will stop talking, because if I were to continue it might sound like I would be slagging off all of these people that I worked closely with, who did such a great and amazing job in their own right.