“One of the great things about Steve Jobs is what comes out of his mouth,” Owen Linzmayer writes for Wired News in an article originally published on March 29, 2006, but we thought some would like to see it again.
Linzmayer writes, “The CEO of Apple Computer is a master of hype, hyperbole and the catchy phrase. Even when he’s trying to talk normally, brilliant verbiage comes tumbling out.”
Linzmayer writes, “Here’s a selection of some of the most insanely great things the man has said, organized by topic: innovation and design, fixing Apple, his greatest sales pitches, life’s lessons, taking the fight to the enemy and Pixar.”
Here are a few choice quotes from when Jobs was out of Apple:
• You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any more than that it’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me. — Fortune, Sept. 18, 1995
• If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago. — Fortune, Feb. 19, 1996
MacDailyNews Take: How we read this today: “Milk the classic Mac OS for all it’s worth and get busy creating the “NeXT” great thing: Apple’s Mac OS X platform.” The PC wars aren’t over; far from it – as current market share trends clearly show. But, Jobs was out of Apple at the time, trying to deal with NeXT, probably in discussions with Apple at the time regarding the sale of NeXT, and often says things he doesn’t believe or mean for many reasons.
And one Steve Jobs from long after he’d returned to Apple:
• I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. — Stanford University commencement address, June 12, 2005
And some Steve Jobs quotes that we like that you won’t find in the article:
• Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better.
• Pixar is the most technically advanced creative company; Apple is the most creatively advanced technical company.
• The trouble with Microsoft is they have no taste. They have no taste and I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way.
Read more in the full article here.