Kevin Rollins Quotes

I never thought radio would fizzle out.

When the Walkman was the craze in my generation, I was one of the first to have it.

The iPod completely changed the way people approach music.

Obsolescence is a fate devoutly to be wished, lest science stagnate and die.

Music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment.

The music industry is an interesting lens through which to look at change, because it has had such a difficult time adjusting to the digital age.

I'm wide open and will entertain anything anybody has to say, but if it's MTV and radio, well, they're great things, but can't be the only thing. I don't know that it would work even for the Beatles.

I think that a lot of guys reach for electronics first, but the truth is that you can never keep up with electronics. You buy a flat-screen TV, and then six months later, there's one that has 3D and Blu-ray and all this business, and that is just going to keep continuing.

IPods just made music about how many songs you could have on you at all times.

If there's another iPhone that's better, that's sad for my old iPhone. But it means we get to use a better one.

By the time one song gains popularity, another one is introduced.

Well, rock used to be the only game in town in terms of radio and what the kids listen to. Now I think there was a big hip-hop takeover, and pop music, it became mechanical and computer-y.

When I was a kid, when the Walkman came out, I was sold. I listened to music 24 hours a day.

You can't uninvent things, you can only make them obsolete... Ronald Reagan understood that the surest method of neutralising any weapon is to make it obsolete.

Over my career, I'd say the last 25 years; we've gone from music and computer being for 10 people in the world to having personal computers, to now being able to do amazing things on your iPhone, or with Rock Band. So, right now there's enormous capability with technology in our devices that everybody has access to.

In an age of multiple and massive innovations, obsolescence becomes the major obsession.

No amount of artificial protection can permanently maintain an obsolete product, an inferior process or a moribund organization against competitors which are based on scientifically improved products or methods.

That's why I think death is the most wonderful invention of life. It purges the system of these old models that are obsolete. I think that's one of Apple's challenges, really. When two young people walk in with the next thing, are we going to embrace it and say this is fantastic? Are you going to be willing to drop our models, or are we going to explain it away? I think we'll do better, because we're completely aware of it and we make it a priority.

You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.

An era similar to the one in which the black rotary phone dominated its product category may not recur anytime soon.

Big breakthroughs happen when what is suddenly possible meets what is desperately needed

The world is littered with corpses that predicted technology in a particular arena was done. If there's another gigantic step change out there, we don't yet know what it is.

When you innovate, the jobs can't go overseas because other countries haven't figured out how to do it yet.

Technology will always win. You can delay technology by legal interference, but technology will flow around legal barriers.

This whole thing called the internet and all this other kind of stuff is about to go crazy. It's all going to change. But, you know what's not going to change? The talented people.