Think Different

“Here’s to the crazy ones.  The misfits.  The rebels.  The troublemakers.  The round pegs in the square holes.  The ones who see things differently.  They’re not fond of rules.  And they have no respect for the status quo.  You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.  About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.  Because they change things.  They push the human race forward.  And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.  Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”—Apple’s Think Different brand image campaign by BTWA\Chiat\Day

Snapshot of a lovely red candle, together with my Kindle Fire, displaying a picture of Steve Jobs from Walter Isaacson’s book, “Steve Jobs.” And of course, the symbolic red apple. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

A tribute to a visionary who left us too soon; there was so much more he could have done.  We miss you Steve!  Good Bye!

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Think Different

Credit: Apple Inc. and Gizmodo

Yesterday afternoon I turned the last digital page of my Kindle Fire’s book dubbed, Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson.  It was a long biography approximately 600 pages long.  But each one of those pages was worth reading.  Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries:  personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

Steve Jobs has been one of my favorite American icons since I started following Apple computers in the early eighties.  Even though I never bought a second Apple computer, I read everything I could lay my paws on about this one-of-a-kind visionary and his roller-coaster life at Apple Computers.  The book was easy to digest, since I was very familiar with the names of the characters mentioned by Isaacson and the evolution of Apple since the late seventies.  Of course I was well aware of the Apple I and II, Macintosh, iMac, iPod, Shuffle, Nano, iTunes, Apple Stores, Apple Apps, Apple Retail Stores, iPhone, and last but certainly not least, the iPad.  However, knowing what was happening inside the well-guarded walls of Apple was indeed an informative experience.

I was deeply touched by the narration of Apple’s marketing campaign identified as Think Different.  It’s an eloquent piece of poetry, vision and determination.  This is what Hollywood actor Richard Dreyfuss said in the TV ad.

“Here’s to the crazy ones.  The misfits.  The rebels.  The troublemakers.  The round pegs in square holes.  The ones who see things differently.  They’re not fond of rules.  As they have no respect for the status quo.  You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.  About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.  Because they change things.  They push the human race forward.  And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.  Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”—Apple’s Think Different brand image campaign designed by TBWA\Chiat\Day.

From computers to smartphones, Apple products are known for being stylish, powerful and pleasing to use. They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products.

Great products, according to Mr. Jobs, are triumphs of “taste.” And taste, he explains, is a byproduct of study, observation and being steeped in the culture of the past and present, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then bring those things into what you are doing.”

His is not a product-design philosophy steered by committee or determined by market research. The Jobs formula, say colleagues, relies heavily on tenacity, patience, belief and instinct. He gets deeply involved in hardware and software design choices, which await his personal nod or veto.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair.  But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system.  His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

He was passionate about the quality of Apple’s products, and Apple as a lasting company of excellence.  This is what Steve Jobs said drove him to search perfection in everything he did in an area known as the interception of technology and humanities in Apple, NeXT and Pixar:

“What drove me?  I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s been done by others before us.  I didn’t invent the language or mathematics I use.  I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes.  Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on.  And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow.  It’s about trying to express something in the only way that most of us know how—because we can’t write Bob Dylan songs or Tom Stoppard plays.  We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow.  That’s what has driven me.”

Steve Jobs, of course, was one member of a large team at Apple, even if he was the ultimate leader. Indeed, he has often described his role as a team leader. In choosing key members of his team, he looks for the multiplier factor of excellence.

Truly outstanding designers, engineers and managers, he says, are not just 10 percent, 20 percent or 30 percent better than merely very good ones, but 10 times better. Their contributions, he adds, are the raw material of “aha” products, which make users rethink their notions of, say, a music player or cellphone.

“Real innovation in technology involves a leap ahead, anticipating needs that no one really knew they had and then delivering capabilities that redefine product categories,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School. “That’s what Steve Jobs has done.”

Mr. Jobs is undeniably a gifted marketer and showman, but he is also a skilled listener to the technology. He calls this “tracking vectors in technology over time,” to judge when an intriguing innovation is ready for the marketplace. Technical progress, affordable pricing and consumer demand all must sell to produce a blockbuster product.

I will certainly read this book again.  It should also be read by college students around the world so they can understand the meaning of innovation, creativity and business administration.  There’s so much to learn from this man from Cupertino.  As the Off switch was activated by the One Above, Steve Jobs ascended to the stars where he will shine forever.  He made his dent in this planet while he was here.  Good bye Steve, you are being missed already.

My next book is Moby Dick; or, the White Whale by Herman Melville.  Good Day.

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Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

“A mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.”-–William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

On October 5, 2011, Apple Inc. announced that co-founder Steve Jobs had died.  He was 56 years old.  The news exploded all over the world.  People were in a state of shock.  The man who was able to merge artistry with technology with a touch of gusto was longer amongst us.

Steve Jobs was a patron who could appreciate artistry and knew how it could be interwoven with technology and commerce.  Artistic creativity energized him, especially when it was connected to technology.  Jobs was enamored with beauty and wanted to reflect it in all his products.  His passion for perfection was so obsessive, that he would demand that even the parts inside the products out of the view of the consumer, had to be perfect as well.  Of course his clashes with people around him were classical.  He was abrasive, rude, cold, ironic, arrogant, narcissistic and a whole lot of other negative attributes.  But one thing you can’t deny is that he had a taste for beauty.  He used to say that “Great art stretches the taste, it doesn’t follow tastes.”

Jobs squeezed as much as he could the concepts of the minimalist movement.  Minimalist is one of the most significant movements of the 20th and early 21st century.  It isn’t the flashiest, or the most popular, but it arguably penetrated more fields than almost any other art or design trend.

Everything from user interfaces, to hardware designs, to car, to films and games, to the web and visual designs of today—all those fields and more were influenced by minimalism.  Industrial design should be simple, yet have an expressive spirit.  The Bauhaus movement emphasized rationality and functionality by employing clean lines and forms.  “God is in the Details” or “Less is More” were words often said by Ludwig Mims van der Rohe and Walter Gropius of the Minimalist movement.

Minimalism has been a business strategy for Apple Inc.—and maybe their most successful business strategy of all.  Minimalism built the brand that made their gadgets lust-worth to begin with.

I’m currently reading in my Amazon Kindle Fire, Steve Jobs’s authorized biography written by Walter Isaacson, dubbed Steve Jobs.  Many of the passages of his book are familiar to me, since I have been following Apple since the early eighties, when I acquired my first computer.  It was an Apple II-e.  Since then I have been an ardent follower of Steve Jobs and his roller-coaster ride both inside and out of Apple.

I still have an Apple pin which was given to me by the manager of Xerox Panama, which was the main distributor of Apple products in Panama.  He found out I was a heavy user of the Apple II-e and asked if I could provide seminars to their dealers about Apple’s hardware and software.  I was appalled at the request, and immediately accepted.  They paid me generously.  Apple products sold in Panama were in my hands before they went out to the dealers.  It was a most rewarding experience.

Below is a picture of this Apple pin which is very dear to me.  I later sold my Apple to a friend of mine after it couldn’t handle the workload I had as a Comptroller at Compañía Azucarera La Estrella, S.A. (a large sugar mill in the countryside).  I still have with me a spreadsheet program dubbed Multiplan, which Microsoft elaborated for Apple IIs.  Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel were not even on the drawing board.  During those early days of personal computers, the spreadsheet everybody used was Visicalc, conceived by Dan Bricklin and refined by Bob Frankston.  Visicalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool.

Snapshot of an Apple pin which was given to me by the manager of Xerox Panama when I was selected to provide seminars for Apple dealers in Panama. It is a cherished treasure for me. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Apple’s famous colorful logo was designed by Rob Janoff, art director working for Regis McKenna.  Janoff came up with a simple apple shape in two versions, one whole and the other with a bite taken out of it.  The first looked too much like a cherry so Jobs chose the one with a bite.  He also picked a version that was striped in six colors, with psychedelic hues sandwiched between whole-earth green and sky blue, even though that made printing the logo significantly more expensive.

Thank you Mr. Steve Jobs for making a dent in the world and proving to us that “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”  Leonardo da Vinci and you were right.  Both of you belong to the same exceptional breed—Masters of the Universe.

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Steve Jobs: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Credit: Time Magazine

Unless you have been living under a rock, you already know that Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, passed away a day after his company launched the latest iPhone 4S.  Some jokingly say, the “S” stands for Steve.

On October 5, 2011, around 3:00 p.m., Jobs died at his home in Palo Alto California, aged 56, six weeks after resigning as CEO of Apple.  Shortly after his death was announced, ABC, CBS, and NBC interrupted scheduled programming to broadcast this news.  Numerous newspapers around the world carried news of his death on their front pages the next day. Several notable people, including U.S. President Barack Obama.

His influence in the world is such, that he is considered to be in the same category of Thomas Alva Edison and Henry Ford.  As famous as he was, as the greatest showman since Barnum & Baily, little is known about his personal life.  He kept this side in complete darkness.

As the dust settles down after his departure, more information is coming out into the open.  Before he died, he called Walter Isaacson to write his biography.  It was his only authorized biography.  When Isaacson asked Jobs why he wanted to do the book, Jobs told him, “I wanted my kids to know me. I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”

“Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published,” the description reads. “He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against.”

The name of Isaacson’s book is very simple—Steve Jobs.  It was released on October 24, 2011.  Although there have been other biographies about Apple’s iconic co-founder, Isaacson’s has been billed as the first published with Jobs’ participation.

“A few weeks ago, I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroom because he was too weak to go up and down stairs. He was curled up in some pain, but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant.”

I found the book at Amazon.com.  It’s Kindle version has a price tag of $17.29.  The hardcover version is $17.88.  Audio CD, audiobook, unabridged sells for $29.24 and the Audible audio edition, unabridged sells for $20.05.

This will be my next book.  Currently I’m reading, “In My Time”, authored by Dick Cheney.  I want to know what’s his side of the story on the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and what is his perspective on Wall Street’s financial malaise.  All of these major events happened during his administration while he was Vice-President and George W. Bush was Commander-in-Chief.

Reading about Steve Jobs will be an excruciating experience.  There will parts of the book I will not like, and others that will show his most brilliant moments.  This is only natural.  He was after all, a human being with all its goodness and imperfections.  There is one thing we can’t deny—he made a dent in the world.

The Book:  Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Kindle Edition)

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