Starting a startup is a process of trial and error. What guided the founders through this process was their empathy for the users. They never lost sight of making things that people would want.

Programmers have not been professionals because they haven't really cared about quality.

Innovations seem inevitable in retrospect, but at the time it's an uphill battle.

Pick a big enough project, something that's really hard, something that over the years you can work on.

The one thing we learned over 5 years is that nothing works better than just improving your product.

Lots of people were skeptical, but that's always true when you do something that hasn't been done before.

My skills weren't that I knew how to design a floppy disk, I knew how to design a printer interface, I knew how to design a modem interface; it was that, when the time came and I had to get one done, I would design my own, fresh, without knowing how other people do it. That was another thing that made me very good. All the best things that I did at Apple came from (a) not having money, and (b) not having done it before, ever. Every single thing that we came out with that was really great, I'd never once done that thing in my life.