Leonardo da Vinci had such a playful curiosity. If you read his notebooks, you'll see he's curious about what the tongue of a woodpecker looks like, but also why the sky is blue, or how an emotion forms on somebody's lips. He understood the beauty of everything. I've admired Leonardo my whole life, both as a kid who loved engineering - he was one of the coolest engineers in history - and then as a college student, when I travelled to see his notebooks and paintings.
Walter IsaacsonMore generally, I made an effort to leave out things that weren't relevant to the main narrative themes of the book, namely that there were two sides to Steve Jobs: the romantic, poetic, countercultural rebel on one side, and the serious businessperson on the other.
Walter IsaacsonSo thatโs our approach. Very simple, and weโre really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way weโre running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Letโs make it simple. Really simple.โ Appleโs design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: โSimplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Walter Isaacson