Jobs. Apple.
“Jobs’ power has always been not to invent the iPod, but to realize that an iPod needs to be invented. When someone comes to him and says, ‘Here’s an idea for a product,’ he’s the guy who says, ‘You are now the most important thing going on in this company. Waste anything except for time, let’s get this on the market.’ But at the same point, he is the guy who takes a look at the entire story that Apple is telling and makes sure that nothing extraneous enters the dialogue and enters the storyline. They’ve always been about a small, lean cast of characters that each support each other. There’s no product in Apple’s product line that does not in some way enhance or support every other product in Apple’s product line. And that is the vacuum that Steve Jobs will leave behind. If we go back to that one guy who understands Apple and can say ‘no’ to really cool objects that are nothing more than really cool objects, Apple will do just fine.”—
Andy Ihnatko, MacBreak Weekly 124, 1/20/09
I love to think of Apple as telling a story through its line of products, so to hear Andy say this makes me want to buy him a bird and brush his pretty hair.
Favorite/pertinent Jobs maxim: “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”True.
