"Reading Notes on the Biography of Steve Jobs"

Author: Walter Isaacson
Recommended Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Jobs was deeply influenced by a series of books on spirituality and enlightenment, especially "Be Here Now," which is a book about meditation and psychedelics by Baba Ram Dass, whose real name is Richard Alpert.
I learned about serif and sans-serif fonts, how to adjust spacing between different letter combinations, and how to create perfect layouts. The beauty, historical significance, and artistic subtleties involved in this are beyond the grasp of science, which fascinated me.
Throughout his life, he followed and adhered to many fundamental precepts of Eastern religions, such as the emphasis on "prajna" - the wisdom and knowledge gained through concentrated and intuitive experiences.
People in rural India are different from us. We use our minds, while they use intuition. Their intuition is much more developed than people in other parts of the world. Intuition is very powerful, in my opinion even more powerful than thinking. Intuition has a great impact on my work.
After spending 7 months in Indian villages, I returned to the United States and saw the madness and limitations of Western thinking. If you sit down and observe quietly, you will realize how restless your mind is. If you try to calm down, the situation will only get worse, but after a while, it will calm down and there will be space in your mind to listen to more subtle things - this is when your intuition starts to develop, and you will see things more clearly and feel the environment more deeply. Your mind gradually calms down and your vision expands greatly. You can see things you couldn't see before. This is a practice that you must constantly practice.
Specifically, what he wanted - and what he pursued throughout his career - was to power devices without using fans. Fans inside computers were contrary to Zen, and their noise made it difficult to concentrate.
Among the dreamers who worked here was a scientist named Alan Kay, who had two sayings that Jobs agreed with: "The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself" and "People who take software seriously should make their own hardware."
I saw some people at Apple who made a lot of money and thought they should live a different life. They bought Rolls-Royces and many houses, each with a butler, and then hired someone to manage all the butlers. Their wives underwent plastic surgery and became strange. This is not the life I want. It's too crazy. I promised myself that I wouldn't let money ruin my life.
He wanted the title bar on the Mac to be smoother and have some fine stripes. "We made 20 different title bars before he was satisfied," Atkinson recalled. Both Kare and Atkinson complained that Jobs spent too much time modifying the title bar when they had more important things to do. Jobs got angry. "Can you imagine what it feels like to look at it every day?" he shouted, "This is not a small matter, this is something we must do well!"
He believed that the best products are "integrated," end-to-end, where software is tailor-made for hardware and hardware is tailor-made for software. It is because of this that the Macintosh is different from the environment created by Microsoft (and later Google's Android), where the operating system used on the Macintosh can only run on its own hardware, while Microsoft and Android's operating systems can run on hardware manufactured by many different companies.
"He is a marketer, and that's the nature of marketers: making money by pretending,"
"1984" advertisement True artists can always complete their works
Jobs used his reality distortion field to make team members accomplish tasks they thought were impossible. On Friday, to get through the last three all-nighters, Randy Wigginton brought a large bag of chocolate-flavored espresso beans.
Jobs responded with a mocking tone, "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before inventing the telephone?"
"The rule is simple: when a team expands, if it absorbs a few second-rate players, it will attract more second-rate players, and soon there will even be third-rate players in your team," he recalled. "The experience of the Macintosh tells me that first-rate players only like to work with other first-rate players, which means you cannot tolerate second-rate players."
Time and rhythm are important in storytelling. When creating frame by frame animations, it is important to grasp this concept, but it is not easy.
"Asceticism and minimalism will make people more sensitive. "He believed that scarcity is abundance, and self-discipline brings joy," she said. "He knew something that most people don't know: excess leads to backlash."
I hope we can transcend the dark abyss of your shattered world, come out, change our names, and start over, living a simple life. I will cook dinner for you, and we can be together every day, like children playing a wonderful game, without any purpose, just for the joy of the game itself.
The first thing Jobs did in the product evaluation process was to prohibit the use of PowerPoint. "I hate it when people use slides instead of their brains," Jobs later recalled. "Every time they encounter a problem, they make slides. I want them to get involved, come up with solutions on the spot, instead of putting up a bunch of slides. People who know what they are talking about don't need PowerPoint."
"In many other companies, creativity and outstanding design often get lost in the process," he said. "If it weren't for Steve pushing us, working with us, and overcoming all obstacles to turn our ideas into products, my team and I would have come up with great ideas long ago."
He arranged for candidates to meet directly with key executives of the company - Cook, Tevanian, Schiller, Rubinstein, and Ive - instead of just meeting with department managers. "Then we would discuss whether they could be selected," Jobs said. He did this to avoid the "bozo explosion" and prevent the company from being filled with "second-rate talent."
A collaborative recruitment process is needed first. When we recruit, even if the person is going to the marketing department, I will let him talk to the people in the design department and the engineers. I have always regarded J. Robert Oppenheimer as a role model. I know what his recruitment requirements were when he established the atomic bomb project team. I am not as excellent as him, but that is the goal I aspire to.
"I believe this is one of the most important influences Steve Jobs brought to Apple. He couldn't tolerate his own and others' imperfections."
Jobs bit his lip, adjusted his wireframe glasses, and put on an elegant and humble face, saying, "You make me feel a little embarrassed. I work with the smartest people in the world every day, whether it's at Apple or Pixar. But these achievements are the result of teamwork. I represent everyone at Apple and accept your thanks."
Jobs didn't like losing control over anything, especially when it came to customer experience.
Jobs described to him Mike Markkula's saying: a good company must learn to "indoctrinate" - it must do everything possible to convey its values and importance, from packaging to marketing.
Johnson also said, "Once there is a technological breakthrough, he will use it. And for Steve, 'less' always means 'more', the simpler the better. So
It is best to build a glass house with fewer elements, which is not only more concise but also at the forefront of technology. This is what Steve likes to do, whether it is for his products or his retail stores.
An innovative company not only needs to innovate, but also needs to know how to catch up when it falls behind.
The most mysterious aspect of all "simplicity" is the decision that surprised Jobs' colleagues: there should be no power switch on the iPod. This was implemented in most Apple products afterwards. The power switch is unnecessary and, from an aesthetic and theological perspective, it is unpleasant. If it is not operated for a period of time, it will automatically enter sleep mode; when you touch any button, it will automatically "wake up" again. But there is no need to specifically set up such a process: press it - wait for shutdown - goodbye.
He said that during that time, he thought more about growth than his own background. At this time, he chose Joni Mitchell's most famous song "Both Sides Now," which is about growth and wisdom: "Now I see life, I see both sides. I see gain and loss, but still confused. What I thought was life at that time, maybe it was an illusion. Life, I really don't know." Just like Glenn Gould recorded "Goldberg Variations" twice, Mitchell also recorded "Both Sides Now" again many years later. After the first version in 1969, she recorded a melancholic version in 2000. He played the second version and said, "The process of aging is really interesting."
The leader's character sets the style of the entire company, just like Apple carries Jobs' shadow, and Pixar is deeply influenced by Lasseter.
People in Hollywood often lie, it's a strange phenomenon. They lie because they don't have to be responsible for their actions in this industry. Zero responsibility. So, they can get away with it.
We believe that our purpose on Earth is to create great products, and that will not change. We have always focused on innovation. We advocate simplicity rather than complexity. We believe that we need to have and control the important technology behind the products we manufacture, and only participate in markets where we can make significant contributions. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can truly focus on the few projects that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and mutual inspiration among teams, which allows us to innovate in ways that others cannot. Frankly speaking, every team in this company has been tirelessly pursuing perfection, and we can honestly treat ourselves, admit mistakes, and have the courage to change. I think these values have deeply rooted in this company, and Apple will perform extraordinarily.
Leon wrote, "A closed system may be the only way to convey Apple's technological Zen."
Although closed systems have a bad reputation, they are user-friendly and beneficial to users. In the field of technology, perhaps no one can prove this better than Steve Jobs. Apple has been able to surpass its competitors and launch beautiful products by bundling hardware, software, and services and tightly controlling them.
The question is whether the dual policy of prioritizing design over engineering and keeping unreleased products highly confidential is beneficial to Apple. "Overall, there are benefits to doing this; but unrestrained power is a bad thing, and that's how things are.
As Apple's core philosophy, from the initial Macintosh in 1984 to the iPad of an entire generation, it has always been end-to-end integration of software and hardware. Jobs himself is the same: his personality, passion, perfectionism, dark side, desires, artistic temperament, cruelty, and control are all intertwined with his business philosophy and ultimate innovative products.
He didn't directly invent many things, but he used masterful techniques to integrate ideas, art, and technology, creating the future.
My passion lies in creating a company that can last for generations, where people are motivated to create great products. Everything else is secondary. Of course, making money is great because it allows you to create great products. But the motivation comes from the product, not the profit. Scully got it backwards and made money the goal. This subtle difference affects everything: who you hire, who you promote, what you discuss in meetings.
Apple resonates with people because there is a humanistic spirit hidden in our innovation. I believe that great artists and great engineers are similar in that they both have a desire for self-expression.
People pay us to integrate things for them because they can't think about these things 24/7. If you have great passion for producing great products, it will push you to pursue integration, to integrate your hardware, software, and content management. If you want to open your product to other hardware or software, you have to give up some vision.
Bill likes to call himself a product person, but he really isn't. He's a businessman. Winning business is more important than making great products. He eventually became the richest person, and if that was his goal, then he achieved it. But that was never my goal, and I doubt if it was his goal in the end. I admire him, I admire the company he created, it's great, and I like working with him. He is smart and actually has a sense of humor. But Microsoft's genes have never had a humanistic spirit and artistic temperament. Even after seeing the Mac, they couldn't imitate it well. They completely misunderstood what it was all about.
Companies like IBM or Microsoft decline for a reason, and I have my own insights. These companies do well, they innovate, become or approach monopolies in a certain field, and then the quality of the products becomes less important. These companies start to value excellent salespeople because they are the ones who drive sales and rewrite revenue figures, not the engineers and designers of the products. Therefore, salespeople eventually become the managers of the company. John Akers of IBM is smart, eloquent, and a great salesperson, but he knows nothing about the product. The same thing happened at Xerox. People who do sales run the company, and people who do products are no longer important, and many of them lose their passion for creation. This happened to Apple after Sculley joined, which was my mistake; the same thing happened after Ballmer took over Microsoft. Apple was lucky enough to make a comeback, but I don't think Microsoft will improve as long as Ballmer is in charge.
I hate a kind of person who calls himself an "entrepreneur" but actually wants to create a company and then sell it or go public so they can cash out and leave. They are not willing to work hard to build a real company, which is the most difficult work in the business field. Only by doing this can you truly make a contribution and contribute to the legacy left by previous generations. You have to build a company that will still stand tall after another one or two generations. That's what Walt Disney, Hewlett and Packard, and the people who created Intel did. They created enduring companies, not just making money. That's what I expect from Apple.
My motivation is, I think most creators want to express gratitude for the achievements we benefit from our predecessors. I didn't invent the language or mathematics I use. I didn't make most of the food I eat, and I haven't made a single piece of clothing. Everything I do relies on other members of our human race and their contributions and achievements. Many of us want to give back to society and add another stroke to the long river of history.
Playing with the Lisa computer. "Didn't Picasso say: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' We have always been shameless in stealing great inspiration."