Steve Jobs hat nicht nur Apple geformt, sondern auch maßgebliche Innovationen in der Musik- und Filmindustrie vorangetrieben. Am 5. Oktober 2011 ist er nach langer, schwerer Krankheit gestorben. In Erinnerung an Steve Jobs die markantesten Zitate des genialen und charismatischen Unternehmensführers.
It’s better to be a pirate than join the navy.
— Steve Jobs trieb die Macintosh-Entwickler Anfang der 80er Jahre mit allen Mitteln an.
„There have only been two milestone products in our industry – the Apple 2 in 1977 and the IBM PC in 1981. Today…one year after LISA we are introducing the third industry milestone product…Macintosh. Many of us have been working on Macintosh for over two years now and it has turned out insanely great. You’ve just seen some pictures of Macintosh now I’d like to show you Macintosh in person.“
— Steve Jobs zum Launch des Apple Macintosh am 24. Januar 1984.
„Ultimately it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing. I mean Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas ehm and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.“
— Steve Jobs im Interview mit Robert X. Cringley
PLAYBOY: We survived 1984, and computers did not take over the world, though some people might find that hard to believe. If there’s any one individual who can be either blamed or praised for the proliferation of computers, you, the 29-year-old father of the computer revolution, are the prime contender. It has also made you wealthy beyond dreams—your stock was worth almost a half billion dollars at one point, wasn’t it?
JOBS: I actually lost $250,000,000 in one year when the stock went down. [Laughs]
PLAYBOY: You can laugh about it?
JOBS: I’m not going to let it ruin my life. Isn’t it kind of funny? You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me in the past ten years. But it makes me feel old, sometimes, when I speak at a campus and I find that what students are most in awe of is the fact that I’m a millionaire.
— Steve Jobs im berühmten Playboy-Interview (Februar 1985) über die Bedeutung von Geld in seinem Leben.
„The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is – I don’t mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they they don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture into their product ehm and you say why is that important – well you know proportionally spaced fonts come from type setting and beautiful books, that’s where one gets the idea – if it weren’t for the Mac they would never have that in their products and ehm so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s success – I have no problem with their success, they’ve earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.“
— Für diese Äußerung über Microsoft hat sich Steve Jobs später bei Bill Gates entschuldigt.
„Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?“
— Mit diesem Spruch überzeugte Steve Jobs 1982 den damaligen Pespi-Marketing-Chef John Sculley, die Aufgabe als Apple-CEO zu übernehmen (Quelle: Odyssey. Pepsi to Apple, by John Sculley and John Byrne)
„What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.“
„John Sculley ruined Apple and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place—which was making great computers for people to use.“
— 1985 hatte John Sculley Steve Jobs feuern lassen. Zehn Jahre später rechnete Jobs mit ihm öffentlich ab. (Quelle: Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program oral history, 20. April 1995)
„The G4 Cube is simply the coolest computer ever. An entirely new class of computer, it marries the Pentium-crushing performance of the Power Mac G4 with the miniaturization, silent operation and elegant desktop design of the iMac. It is an amazing engineering and design feat, and we’re thrilled to finally unveil it to our customers.“
— Steve Jobs bei der Vorstellung des Design-Computers Power Mac G4 Cube auf der Macworld Expo am 19. Juli 2000. Knapp ein jahr später wurde die Produktion des Cubes eingestellt, da sich zu wenige Kunden fanden, die 1799 Dollar für den Würfel-Rechner bezahlen wollten. Heute ist der Cube Kult (und ich bin froh, dass ich mir im Sommer 2001 noch eines der letzten Expemplare gekauft habe).
„Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?“
— Steve Jobs zum 20. Geburtstag des Macs in einem Interview mit MacWorld
„Pretty much, us and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.“
— Steve Jobs auf der MacWorld Expo am 7. Januar 2002.
„If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own.“
— Steve Jobs im März 2002 in einem Interview mit MacWorld
„You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. “
— Steve Jobs vor Absolventen der Stanford University am 12. Juni 2005.
„Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.“
— Steve Jobs vor Absolventen der Stanford University am 12. Juni 2005.
Ich glaube, dass die besten und innovativsten Tage noch vor Apple liegen. Und ich freue mich darauf, den Erfolg von Apple in einer neuen Rolle zu sehen und dazu beizutragen. Ich habe bei Apple einige der besten Freunde in meinem Leben gefunden und ich danke Euch allen für die vielen Jahre, die ich neben Euch arbeiten konnte.
— Übersetzung aus dem Abschiedsschreibens von Steve Jobs (August 2011)
