Apple was very close to bankruptcy and to irrelevance [but] you learn a lot about life through death, and I learnt a lot about vital corporations by experiencing a non-vital corporation. You would have thought that, when what stands between you and bankruptcy is some money, your focus would be on making some money, but that was not [Steve Jobs’] preoccupation. His observation was that the products weren’t good enough and his resolve was, we need to make better products. That stood in stark contrast to the previous attempts to turn the company around.

The quest for simplicity has to pervade every part of the process. It really is fundamental.

If something is going to be better, it is new, and if it's new you are confronting problems and challenges you don't have references for.

It's very easy to make something that is new. So we are trying to make things that are better.

But one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I'm aware of designers wagging their tails in my face.

A lot of what we are doing is getting design out of the way.

There are a thousand no's for every yes.