Status-Q

The wires are buzzing with the news that Steve Jobs is resigning from Apple. Everyone knew it had to come, but he will be greatly missed, and the web is gradually filling with tributes of one sort or another.

The thing I have always loved about Apple was that they broke so many rules, and did so with such glorious success.

Conventional business wisdom will tell you, over and over again, that you should focus on your strengths, cast off all else that hinders, and aim to commoditise whatever complements your core business, rather than getting into it yourself. Microsoft don’t make chips, and Intel don’t make operating systems.

Apple, on the other hand, weren’t listening. They gradually grew to sell hardware, accessories, operating systems, applications, for mass markets and niche markets. They even did what many people thought was bound to be a disaster: opening their own retail outlets! But they then turned them into, per square foot, the most valuable retail space in the world. Having covered pretty much everything in conventional computing, they plunged into the notoriously difficult mobile phone market and, well, you know the story. Oh, and by the way, they sell a few books and some music, too.

When you think about it, doesn’t the fact that Ford doesn’t even sell petrol seem, well, a bit unadventurous?

To understand more about the man who made this happen, I recommend this page of quotes from Steve at the WSJ.

Or, for a bit of nostalgia, you can’t do much better than the posters from Apple’s 1997 ‘Think Different’ campaign:

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 invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some 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.

Today’s thought-provoking quotation comes from The Knight Foundation’s John Bracken:

“Print is the new vinyl.”

Nice quote from Kevin Kelly on the (excellent) Triangulation podcast:

The solution to bad or stupid ideas is not to stop thinking. It’s to have better ideas.

Similarly, the solution to bad or stupid technology is not to get rid of technology. It’s to create better technology.

Q. When are gut feelings a bad thing?

A. When they leave you feeling gutted.

(Inspired by a question from David Shores about the effects of strong curry…)

When I was young we had a poster with some quotations on it on the wall of the loo at my parents’ house. I had forgotten this one until now:

Using virtual machines on my Mac and Linux computers allows me to fire up a copy of Windows on the very rare occasions when I need it. (Typically about once a quarter). And then shut it down again before anything bad happens.

And then the light of understanding and enlightenment dawned upon me, dear friends, so I share it with you, with apologies for the grammar:

It’s called Windows, because that’s what you should run it in.

While walking the dog this morning, I was listening to a dramatisation of Plato’s Symposium – as one does – and Socrates had a natty little phrase which I found rather pleasing. But first, some background…

I have always been blessed with excellent eyesight, for which I am very grateful. However, Anno Domini does have a way of sneaking up on one. A couple of weeks ago, in a restaurant with some colleagues, I found that the very small writing on the ginger beer bottle was rather more legible when I held it just that little bit further away. One of my companions – of a similar vintage to myself – laughed at me and told me that he had just purchased his first reading glasses, which he then held out for me to try.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it was a turning point in my life. For the first time, I tried on somebody else’s spectacles, and the world looked clearer. And so, as I booked an eye test this morning, I took comfort from the words of Plato, who said something along the lines of:

“Wisdom begins as eyesight starts to fade.”

Most pleasing.

Of course, I then realised that the fact I have seldom needed an eye test before now, while so many of my friends have worked their way through many pairs of glasses or contact lenses, may have less pleasing implications…

If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.

David Brent

This one comes from Rita Mae Brown:

Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.

Are you one of these emancipated women we’re having so much trouble with at home?

-Kenneth More’s character to Lauren Bacall’s in North West Frontier

After a hundred years in a vault, Mark Twain’s autobiography is soon to be published. Memo to self: remember to achieve something significant enough in your life that anyone will be interested in reading about you a century later…

It sounds, though, as if the renewed interest in him may be a mixed blessing, which reminds me of a little poem I learned as a child:

Lives of Great Men all remind us
As we o’er their pages turn
That we too may leave behind us
Letters that we ought to burn.

…is a snippet from Frank Zappa:

Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth.