Steve Jobs on Designing the Mouse
What Jobs talks about
This short recording describes Steve Jobs giving a very specific design brief for the mouse. He pushes it beyond Xerox’s business-computer context and treats it as a consumer product.
The transcript emphasizes Jobs’s insistence on practical constraints: cost, durability, and usability on everyday surfaces. That kind of focus shows how he translated abstract technology into something people could actually use.
It also captures his attention to real-world details, right down to whether it would work on his Levi's. The story is a small but vivid example of Jobs’s product vision and exacting standards.
Dean Hovey speaks, recounting the conversation; Jobs is quoted within the story.
In his words
“I know exactly what we need to do.”
“A mouse”
“The mouse had to have four things.”
“We had to be able to build it for less than $15”
“And work on my Levi's”
Key points
- Jobs immediately identifies the mouse as the right product direction.
- He frames the mouse as a low-cost consumer product, not an expensive business accessory.
- He sets a durability target of two years.
- He specifies that it must work on a regular desktop surface.
- He even insists it should work on his Levi's.
Full transcript
I went into his office, sat down, and I said, Steve, I've been thinking about a a few product ideas, and hardly had I gotten the sentence out. And he said, stop, Dean. I know exactly what we need to do. When he said, a mouse, I I looked at him and said, a mouse? I had no clue what a mouse was. Xerox saw the mouse as part of an expensive business computer. Jobs saw it very differently. He gave me a very clear design brief. The mouse had to have four things. The first was we had to be able to build it for less than $15 low cost consumer product. Secondly, it had to last for two years. Third, it needed to work on a regular desktop before Maiko or metal. And then finally, he leaned back in his chair and put his hand on his knees and he said, and work on my Levi's.
Transcribed from the audio by speech recognition (Deepgram). Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.