Quotes from Walter Isaacson

La conciencia pública es un componente importante de la innovación.

innovación requiere contar con tres cosas como mínimo: una gran idea, el talento técnico para llevarla a cabo y la experiencia empresarial (además de la sangre fría para cerrar tratos) para convertirla en un éxito.

The Pepsi Generation campaign, he said, sold not a product but a lifestyle and an optimistic outlook.

An innovator is probably a fanatic, somebody who loves what they do, works day and night, may ignore normal things to some degree and therefore be viewed as a bit imbalanced

occasional bursts of intensity, especially when he was launching a new product that he wanted on the cover of Time or featured on CNN, places where I'd worked. But

When we ascribe credit for an invention, determining who should be most noted by history, one criterion is looking at whose contributions turned out to have the most influence.

receiver from Hallicrafters, the most sophisticated radios available. Woz spent a lot of time at home reading his father's electronics journals, and he became enthralled by stories about new computers, such as the powerful ENIAC.

In 2011 a milestone was reached: Apple and Google spent more on lawsuits and payments involving patents than they did on research and development of new products.

If you stand far enough away from a picture, even a large one, the problem of the edges being at a different distance from you diminishes. Leonardo determined that a proper vantage point for a large picture should be ten to twenty times its width or height. "Stand back until your eye is at least twenty times as far off as the greatest height and width of your work

Partly because of the poor sales of the Cube, Apple produced

late 1980s, when it became possible for ordinary people at home or in the office to dial up and go online. This would launch a new phase of the Digital Revolution, one that would fulfill the vision of Bush, Licklider, and Engelbart that computers would augment human intelligence by being tools both for personal creativity and for collaborating.

if you suggested to people what the right thing to do would be, they would be smart enough to pick it up and do it

Einstein rejected the emission theory in favor of postulating that the speed of a light beam was constant no matter how fast its source was moving.

So does that mean your real parents didn't want you?

Grace was a good man

Stallman issued a manifesto: "I consider that the Golden Rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. . . . Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air."123

The creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences combine in one strong personality was the topic that most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe that it will be a key to creating innovative economies in the twenty-first century.

Painting a conventional portrait for a pushy patron did not interest him. Nor did money motivate him. He painted portraits if the subject struck his fancy, such as the Musician, or if a powerful ruler demanded it, as in the case of Ludovico with his mistresses. But he didn't dance to the music of patrons.

Apple's stock went up a full point, or almost 7%, when Jobs's resignation was announced. "East Coast stockholders always worried about California flakes running the company," explained the editor of a tech stock newsletter. "Now with both Wozniak and Jobs out, those shareholders are relieved.

So, you've uncovered the fact that I'm an asshole. Why is that news?

prisons, and through Mark Vermilion, who ran Baez's human rights foundation Humanitas. When Jobs donated some computers to them, he asked if he could meet Baez. A few weeks later he and Baez had lunch in Cupertino. "I wasn't expecting a lot, but she was really smart and funny," he recalled. At the time, he was nearing the end of his relationship with Barbara Jasinski. They had vacationed in Hawaii, shared a house in the Santa

I wanted to throw caution and logic to the wind and join Apple

At its core were certain principles: authority should be questioned, hierarchies should be circumvented, nonconformity should be admired, and creativity should be nurtured.

Met Jobs at Atari, became first partner with Jobs and Wozniak at fledgling Apple, but unwisely decided to forgo his equity stake.