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wanted to be like an orphan who had bummed around the country on trains and just arrived out of nowhere,
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Walter Isaacson |
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the world are the ones who do. --Apple's "Think Different" commercial,"
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Walter Isaacson |
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I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics," he said. "Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that's what I wanted to do." It was as if he were suggesting themes for his biography (and in this instance, at least, the theme turned out to be valid). The creativ..
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Walter Isaacson |
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Portfolio of Diana Walker Photos For almost thirty years, photographer Diana Walker has had special access to her friend Steve Jobs. Here is a selection from her portfolio.
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Walter Isaacson |
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His embrace, however, did not extend to people who were pretentious or pompous (with the exception of Wiener). When he thought a speaker was spouting nonsense, he would stand up and ask what seemed to be innocent but were in fact devilish questions. After a few moments, the speaker would realize he had been deflated and Licklider would sit down. "He didn't like poseurs or pretenders," Tracy recalled. "He was never mean, but he slyly pricked..
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Walter Isaacson |
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tkhfy lTby`@ srh bsbb shmwkhh wlys bGrD lkhd`
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Walter Isaacson |
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Josiah practiced the art, which his son would perfect, of marrying public virtue with private profit: he made money by selling candles to the night watchmen he oversaw.
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Walter Isaacson |
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Just because you can't act EVERYWHERE doesn't mean you don't act ANYWHERE. - Madeleine Albright
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humility
job
leadership
priorities
stewardship
vocation
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Walter Isaacson |
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Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!' " People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page." --
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Walter Isaacson |
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Maybe there's a better way, a gentlemen's club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code-words, but I don't know that way, because I am middle class from California.
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Walter Isaacson |
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They kept evolving, moving, refining their art. That's what I've always tried to do--keep moving. Otherwise, as Dylan says, if you're not busy being born, you're busy dying.
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Walter Isaacson |
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They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
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Walter Isaacson |
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Tribble recalled that he adopted the phrase from the "Menagerie" episodes of Star Trek, "in which the aliens create their own new world through sheer mental force." He meant the phrase to be a compliment as well as a caution: "It was dangerous to get caught in Steve's distortion field, but it was what led him to actually be able to change reality."
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Walter Isaacson |
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Amazingly, the reality distortion field seemed to be effective even if you were acutely aware of it. We would often discuss potential techniques for grounding it, but after a while most of us gave up, accepting it as a force of nature.
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Walter Isaacson |
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It was a self-fulfilling distortion," she claimed. "You did the impossible, because you didn't realize it was impossible."
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Walter Isaacson |
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I've learned over the years that when you have really good people you don't have to baby them," Jobs later explained. "By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things."
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Walter Isaacson |
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From his father Jobs had learned that a hallmark of passionate craftsmanship is making sure that even the aspects that will remain hidden are done beautifully. One of the most extreme--and telling--implementations of that philosophy came when he scrutinized the printed circuit board that would hold the chips and other components deep inside the Macintosh. No consumer would ever see it, but Jobs began critiquing it on aesthetic grounds. "Tha..
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Walter Isaacson |
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I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it's inside the box. A great carpenter isn't going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody's going to see it." In an interview a few years later, after the Macintosh came out, Jobs again reiterated that lesson from his father: "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the ..
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Walter Isaacson |
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No one would ever see them, but the members of the team knew that their signatures were inside, just as they knew that the circuit board was laid out as elegantly as possible.
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Walter Isaacson |
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He pretended to be interested in technology, but he wasn't. He was a marketing guy, and that is what marketing guys are: paid poseurs.
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Walter Isaacson |
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Jobs later said that he never read the novel. "I heard it was about me," he told me, "and if it was about me, I would have gotten really pissed off, and I didn't want to get pissed at my sister, so I didn't read"
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Walter Isaacson |
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We didn't know much about each other twenty years ago. We were guided by our intuition; you swept me off my feet. It was snowing when we got married at the Ahwahnee. Years passed, kids came, good times, hard times, but never bad times. Our love and respect has endured and grown. We've been through so much together and here we are right back where we started 20 years ago--older, wiser--with wrinkles on our faces and hearts. We now know many ..
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Walter Isaacson |
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When you have feelings," he said, "like sadness or anger about your cancer or your plight, to mask them is to lead an artificial life."
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Walter Isaacson |
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We talked a lot about focus. And choosing people. How to know who to trust, and how to build a team of lieutenants he can count on. I described the blocking and tackling he would have to do to keep the company from getting flabby or being larded with B players. The main thing I stressed was focus.
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Walter Isaacson |
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Jobs's intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions. If something engaged him--the user interface for the original Macintosh, the design of the iPod and iPhone, getting music companies into the iTunes Store--he was relentless. But if he did not want to deal with something--a legal annoyance, a business issue, his cancer diagnosis, a family tug--he w..
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Walter Isaacson |
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The nasty edge to his personality was not necessary. It hindered him more than it helped him. But it did, at times, serve a purpose. Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change. Dozens of the colleagues whom Jobs most abused ended their litany of horror stories by saying that he got them to do things they never dreamed possible. And he created a corporation crammed wit..
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Walter Isaacson |
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What Einstein appreciated in Mozart and Bach was the clear architectural structure that made their music seem "deterministic" and, like his own favorite scientific theories, plucked from the universe rather than composed. "Beethoven created his music," Einstein once said, but "Mozart's music is so pure it seems to have been ever-present in the universe." He contrasted Beethoven with Bach: "I feel uncomfortable listening to Beethoven. I thin..
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Walter Isaacson |
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plow deep.
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Walter Isaacson |
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The creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences combine in one strong personality was the topic that most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe that it will be a key to creating innovative economies in the twenty-first century.
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Walter Isaacson |
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stories on the company's woes. "NeXT is incompatible with other computers at a time when the industry is moving toward interchangeable systems," Bart Ziegler of Associated Press reported. "Because relatively little software exists to run on NeXT,"
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Walter Isaacson |
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Even some of his commissions that were completed, or almost so--Ginevra de' Benci and the Mona Lisa, for example--were never delivered to clients. Leonardo clung to his favorite works, carried them with him when he moved, and returned to them when he had new ideas. He certainly did that with the Saint Jerome, and he may have planned to do the same with the Adoration of the Magi, which he entrusted to Ginevra's brother for safekeeping but ne..
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Walter Isaacson |
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polymaths
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Walter Isaacson |
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MAIN CHARACTERS Cesare Borgia (c. 1475-1507). Italian warrior, illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, subject of Machiavelli's The Prince, Leonardo employer. Donato Bramante (1444-1514). Architect, friend of Leonardo in Milan, worked on Milan Cathedral, Pavia Cathedral, and St. Peter's in the Vatican. Caterina Lippi (c. 1436-1493). Orphaned peasant girl from near Vinci, mother of Leonardo; later married Antonio di Piero del Vaccha, known as..
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Walter Isaacson |
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It's one of the things in life I really feel ashamed about. I was not very sensitive, and I hurt their feelings. I shouldn't have. They had done so much to make sure I could go there, but I just didn't want them around. I didn't want anyone to know I had parents.
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Walter Isaacson |
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No, that's not right," Ferris replied. "The lines should be voluptuous, like a Ferrari."
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Walter Isaacson |
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Tim Cook When Steve Jobs returned to Apple and produced the "Think Different" ads and the iMac in his first year, it confirmed what most people already knew: that he could be creative and a visionary. He had shown that during his first round at Apple. What was less clear was whether he could run a company. He had definitely not shown that during his first round."
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Walter Isaacson |
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Jobs flew down to have lunch with Eisner, who was stunned at his audacity. They had a three-picture deal, and Pixar had made only one. Each side had its own nuclear weapons.
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Walter Isaacson |
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Apple went public the morning of December 12, 1980. By then the bankers had priced the stock at $ 22 a share. It went to $ 29 the first day. Jobs had come into the Hambrecht & Quist office just in time to watch the opening trades. At age twenty-five, he was now worth $ 256 million.
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Walter Isaacson |
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What made Leonardo a genius, what set him apart from people who are merely extraordinarily smart, was creativity, the ability to apply imagination to intellect.
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Walter Isaacson |
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One day in the fall of 2010 he was wistfully going through a box of old snapshots with me, and paused over one that showed him visiting Lisa when she was young. "I probably didn't go over there enough," he said. Since he had not spoken to her all that year, I asked if he might want to reach out to her with a call or email. He looked at me blankly for a moment, then went back to riffling through other old photographs."
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Walter Isaacson |
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Tin Toy went on to win the 1988 Academy Award for animated short films, the first computer-generated film to do so. To celebrate, Jobs took Lasseter and his team to Greens, a vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco.
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Walter Isaacson |
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It seemed to him that the hand was not able to attain to the perfection of art in carrying out the things which he imagined.
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Walter Isaacson |
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God is "all wise, all good, all powerful," he posited. Therefore, everything that exists or happens is with his consent. "What He consents to must be good, because He is good; therefore evil doth not exist."
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Walter Isaacson |
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God is "all wise, all good, all powerful," he posited. Therefore, everything that exists or happens is with his consent. "What He consents to must be good, because He is good; therefore evil doth not exist." Furthermore, happiness existed only as a contrast to unhappiness, and one could not exist without the other. Therefore, they balanced out: "Since pain naturally and infallibly produces a pleasure in proportion to it, every individual cr..
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Walter Isaacson |