Having made up my mind, I went to see Steve [Jobs]. I brought a hand-drawn sketch with me, and I said, "Please make something like this." He said, "Don't show me such an ugly design sketch." But he also said, "You've got the right idea. I totally agree that the time has come when we can make the ultimate mobile machine."

Having made up my mind, I went to see Steve [Jobs]. I brought a hand-drawn sketch with me, and I said, "Please make something like this." He said, "Don't show me such an ugly design sketch." But he also said, "You've got the right idea. I totally agree that the time has come when we can make the ultimate mobile machine."

I haven't invented anything earth-shattering. If I could be said to have one noteworthy ability compared with the average person, it's that I have a keen interest in reading the direction and timing of paradigm shifts.

I would say that hardware is the bone of the head, the skull. The semiconductor is the brain within the head. The software is the wisdom and data is the knowledge.

If something happened, like engineers starting to quit, things would go downhill fast.

I don't care about the sort of things that will bring in chump change over the next two or three years. I think I'm better than others at sniffing out things that will bear fruit in 10 or 20 years while they're still at the seed stage, and I'm more willing to take the risks that entails.

But a big paradigm shift is staring us in the face. If I left things to someone else despite having my own thoughts on it, I wouldn't be true to myself.