Ed Woolard, his mentor on the Apple board, pressed Jobs for more than two years to drop the interim in front of his CEO title. Not only was Jobs refusing to commit himself, but he was baffling everyone by taking only $1 a year in pay and no stock options. I make 50 cents for showing up, he liked to joke, and the other 50 cents is based on performance.
Walter IsaacsonGood telling of human stories is the best way to keep the Internet and World Wide Web from becoming a waste vastland.
Walter IsaacsonWithout Steve Jobs, you would have well-designed computers, probably open and not integrated, but they wouldn't have sex appeal, they wouldn't have romance.
Walter IsaacsonThe older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft donโt really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally love music.
Walter IsaacsonI have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesmen, because theyโre the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company.
Walter Isaacson