Steve Jobs on Passion and Focus: Building Great Products

Mr. Jobs, thank you very much for joining us today. Sure, thanks for inviting us. It's been nearly 30 years since you started a company. Oh yeah, I'm an old man. Did you ever want to give up? Did you ever think of giving up? Oh, there were moments where I did think of giving up, but no, I don't think so.

The first year was a little hard. The most important thing, though, I think, is that if you're going to start something new, you have to feel passionate about it, because it's really hard. It's so hard to start a company. You have to work so hard that if you're not passionate about it, you'll give up. And most of the difference between people that succeed and people that don't is the people that don't give up. They give up soon. And you have to be passionate about it. It's so difficult. You've been called a visionary. No. How do you believe would be the role of the personal computer? What do you think would be the role the personal computer would play?

The personal computer is entering its third great age. Third great age. The first great age started around 1980. And that was the age of spreadsheets and processors and things like that. And that primarily benefited businesses. About six or seven years ago, we began the second great age, which was the age of the Internet. And all of a sudden, not only businesses were benefiting, but regular people could consume them. We could buy these for our homes and our children could get on the Internet. We could get on the Internet. It was tremendous. But now that's maturing a little bit. And we're beginning the third great age, which is the age of digital lifestyles, which is being triggered by all these wonderful digital devices, most of which are coming from Japan.

So we have digital camcorders. We have digital cameras. We have DVD players. We have handheld computers. We have cell phones. And all of these things actually, the personal computer can make them even better. This is an American Dream store that opened in Kobe. It displays products that represent the 20th century. A T-shaped Ford. A large refrigerator. And a computer that Jobs made 24 years ago. This computer was so small that it could be used on a desk in the office or in a regular home, and it made everyone's dream of having a computer come true.

Jobs developed his computer in his garage in California. He had two employees and a venture capital of just $1,300. At the time, most computers were large-scale, made for companies and universities. Only a few experts used computers. Jobs' computer became a huge hit. It sold $1 billion a year in six years, and Apple became the largest American company.

At the age of 26, Jobs became a venture capitalist. Even so, only a few people used computers. At the time, to operate a computer, you had to type in a complicated symbol called a command. Jobs introduced a technology that solved this problem at once. Each function of a computer was represented by a symbol called an icon. And a device called a mouse was connected to the computer. By using the mouse and clicking on the icon, you could call out the necessary functions.

With this revolutionary technology, the number of people using computers increased. When you first created a personal computer, there was no personal computer in the world. It was very hard to believe. Well, that's why we made one. We made one because we wanted one. There was no such thing, so we had to make one. Did you know that when you made the personal computer, that this would become a major industry? I mean, did you know like this? No. No, it took about a year before we started this sensei. It took about a year and a half. He was a brilliant guy, and he did most of the engineering for the original Apple 1 and the Apple 2.

And after about a year, we showed it to our friends. We just made it for ourselves. And we showed it to our friends, and all one. And so we were busy making these computers by hand for our friends. This would take all of our life. All of our spare time. And so we decided we'd better manufacture a hundred of these so that we could not have to spend the rest of our lives making them for our friends. And that's what we did. We didn't think about starting a company. We were just doing it for ourselves, and then our friends, and then the circle got bigger and bigger and bigger, and now there's 25 million people. So you were having fun? We were always having fun. So many young people are aspiring to become venture companies and emulate something like Apple for themselves.

And sometimes people come to me and say, I want to start a company. I say, why? They say, oh, I want to make lots of money. I say, that's not a good enough reason. You will not. Most likely you will not succeed. Most people that have started companies because they want to make lots of money are people that come to me and say, I want to start a company. And they have an idea that they want to get out and express out into the world. And to make that happen, you have to start a company. So you don't have to listen to them. Jobs' various ideas and strategies led to the company's steady growth. But after Jobs left Apple, there was a crisis.

Microsoft, led by Bill Gates, Jobs' rival, began to monopolize the computer market. 3, 2, 1. In 2006, Jobs returned to the company and began to rebuild his business. Think different.

Change your way of thinking. This is the slogan of the re-election that Jobs raised. In the company's advertisements and pamphlets, people like Einstein, Ganzi, and Picasso came up with their own unique ways of thinking. Step 1. Connect the power. Step 2. Connect the telephone. A new idea was born. It was a computer designed for everyone to easily use the Internet. With its colorful design, it opened up a new market for women.

Jobs rebuilt his company. You know, think different is easy to say. I mean, it's easy to work. It's easy to say. But it's much harder to do. But as a company of 10,000 people, how do you permeate the message throughout all the employees? What do you say to them? Well, you permeate it by example. In other words, when something's not quite good enough, do you stop and make it better, or do you just ship it? What do you do? to see how the senior management makes those decisions. And what we've tried to do is stop and make it great before we ship them.

We have problems. Stop and fix them. And by example, you can say anything you want, but everybody watches very carefully when you're in a difficult situation what decision you make, what values you have. I mean, there's so many Japanese companies who are now trying to rejuvenate themselves, trying to instill a sense of sort of adventure spirit in their companies. And they would like to know how you do it. And it's probably not that easy to do. Yeah, you know, we try to hire really smart people. But we have a very simple organization. And we try to focus and do very few things well. And focusing's hard, because focusing doesn't mean saying yes, it means saying no.

So we decide not to do a lot of things so we can focus on a few handfuls of things we can do well. And I think, you know, everybody working in the company wants to do something great. They want to be excited about what they're working on. And they want to be recognized for it when they figure a really great job. So we just try to allow people to do the best work in their lives at Apple and get it out. That's 25 million subscribers. And that's very exciting. When you're working on something, this works out, up to 25 million people are going to use this. It's very motivating. And it's not just 25 million of our customers. But other companies tend to follow us.

It takes a few years, but other companies tend to copy what we do a bit worse. And so we can influence the whole industry. Because the environment of personal computers is becoming very, very, let's say, negative.

The personal computer market is not so vibrant. It used to be the engine for the American growth. What is your perception as an entrepreneur for the prospect? I don't see it quite the same way. But that's OK, because Apple's in a great spot. Apple, maybe three or four years ago, was a little fragile. But in the last three or four years, everyone at Apple has worked so hard, and we've got such great customers that we've sold a lot of computers. But some people say that we're now entering a post-PC era, that the personal computer age is behind us, and there are many, many portable net applications available. Why do you think a PC can be the center?

Well, because let me give you, see, we've been focusing on the internet for the last six, seven years. And that's been appropriate. But the internet is just one of the things we can do with computers. Let me give you an example. The internet, I love the internet, but the internet has no emotion to it. The internet's very... It's an information exchange. It's just information. It's very intellectual. And the bandwidth isn't there to deliver emotion. To deliver emotion, you have to have higher bandwidth. And most people don't have internet connections or high enough bandwidth. Most content is not created for the internet to be emotional. And we see at Apple, one of the things we've always felt is that we want to stand at the intersection of technology and humanities.

We want to bring the humanist element into these fields and not have them just serve our intellectual side, but have them serve some other sides of us as well. And so that's, I think, that we do particularly well. Why do you think you need emotion right now? There's a lot of forces in life that tend to funnel us down into this institutionalized path. And where people sometimes forget that they're very unique and that they have very unique feelings and perspectives.

And again, the whole computer industry wants to forget about the humanist side and just focus on the technology. And a lot of our industry focuses just on more is better, more megahertz and megabytes and speeds and feeds, we call it. But we think there's a whole other side to the coin, which is what do you do with this thing? Can we do more than just spreadsheets and word processors? Can we help you express yourself in a richer way in your movies, in your photography, in these kinds of things that people want to do? Do you have a camcorder? I do have a camcorder, but not a digital one. Yes, and you take lots of footage.

Do you ever go back and watch it much? Or does it just sit on tapes on the shelf? Yes, it's hard to go back and watch it. We keep taking more and more. Because it's really boring. So what you really want to do is edit it down and make a little movie. And then you watch that movie over and over. And you can send it to your family. You can send it to your friends. You can put it on the internet. Well, as an example, I have children. And I shoot some footage. And I remember making my first iMovie, where I could edit the clips together. And I could put some cross dissolves in and some titles on. And then I took one of my favorite pieces of music and stuck it in and added a soundtrack. And I made about a three-minute movie. And I showed it to my wife. And she started crying. But you have to be similar to yourself. Actually, you don't have to be creative enough to do that.

Spend your time making movies and listening to digital music. Maybe somebody like you, who is very, very digitalized, can help. We've had over a million customers make movies now. Over a million. And some of the movies are maybe not better than others. But they all are very emotional. And yet, our industry, the whole personal computer industry, hasn't really talked to that side of people before. We just talk to the side of people who has to add up numbers and write a letter. But there's so much more to it. And I think we're finally, with this digital lifestyle, airing and opening, going to be addressing those other things that all of us do, some of every single day.

I mean, you said that you're becoming an old man in the industry after 30 years. But how do you see yourself 10 years from now? You know, my headlights are not that good. I don't know. I don't really think about it. I think about a year, two, three, down the road. We have some projects at Apple that are sort of maybe four years down the road, five years, probably like three or four at the most. Because things change. You can be going down a path, and you say, well, in five years, I don't want to be here. But then something new happens. And you just say, forget that. I want to be over there. So most of this five-year plan that I've seen in my life, some of it's essential, but most of it changes things.

So we tend to look three or four years. It's about as far ahead as we can see. So your quest for plan continues? Oh, yeah. OK. Well, thank you very much, Steve. Thank you. Thank you.