Quotes from Walter Isaacson

Perché la minestra si fredda," he writes. Because the soup is getting cold.24

Jobs's father had once taught him that a drive for perfection meant caring about the craftsmanship even of the parts unseen. Jobs applied that to the layout of the circuit board inside the Apple II. He rejected the initial design because the lines were not straight enough.

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Kilby displayed his awshucks humility. "When I hear that kind of thing," he responded, "it reminds me of what the beaver told the rabbit as they stood at the base of Hoover Dam: 'No, I didn't build it myself, but it's based on an idea of mine.

Innovation can be sparked by engineering talent, but it must be combined with business skills to set the world afire.

Leonardo's optics experiments produced discoveries that would not be rediscovered for another century.23 In addition, they were important in honing his ability to match theory with experiment, and they became an underpinning of his studies on perspective.

his thirties or forties able to really contribute something amazing," Jobs declared as he was about to turn thirty. That held true for Jobs in his thirties, during the decade that began with his ouster from Apple in 1985. But after turning forty in 1995, he flourished.

But even Leonardo was practical enough to realize, eventually, that such a large monument so precariously balanced was not a good idea, so he settled for a horse that would be fancifully prancing.

ought to go ahead and do it," he said. He argued that if he joined Apple full-time, he would not have to go into management or give up being an engineer. "That was exactly what I needed to hear," Wozniak later said. "I could stay at the bottom of the organization chart

Nothing kills humor like a general and boring truth.

Jobs rented a theater in San Jose for the unveiling of the TV commercial and special

The Adoption When Paul Jobs was mustered out of the Coast Guard after World War II, he made a wager with his crewmates. They had arrived in San Francisco, where their ship was decommissioned, and Paul bet that he would find himself a wife within two weeks. He was a taut, tattooed engine mechanic, six feet tall, with a passing resemblance to James Dean. But it wasn't his looks that got him a date

A break came when Polish intelligence officers created a machine based on a captured German coder that was able to crack some of the Enigma codes. By the time the Poles showed the British their machine, however, it had been rendered ineffective because the Germans had added two more rotors and two more plugboard connections to their Enigma machines.

I can't see any reason that anyone would want a computer of his own," DEC president Ken Olsen declared at a May 1974 meeting where his operations committee was debating whether to create a smaller version of its PDP-8 for personal consumers.

rethink things. There was something about the design that lacked purity, he felt. "Why

Reality is unforgiving.

each moment is not distinct but instead contains connections to a narrative.

Apple's graphical user interface. Just as Jobs was being eased out of Apple in 1985, John Sculley had struck a surrender deal: Microsoft could license the Apple GUI for Windows 1.0, and in return it would make Excel exclusive to the Mac for up to two years. In 1988, after Microsoft came out with Windows 2.0, Apple sued. Sculley contended

In collecting such a medley of ideas, Leonardo was following a practice that had become popular in Renaissance Italy of keeping a commonplace and sketch book, known as a zibaldone. But in their content, Leonardo's were like nothing the world had ever, or has ever, seen. His notebooks have been rightly called "the most astonishing testament to the powers of human observation and imagination ever set down on paper."3

to itself." Jobs went home early that day to mull over the problem, then called Ive

This biography is essential reading." —The New York Times, Holiday Gift Guide "A superbly told story of a superbly lived life.

over the years, with 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 now that I was no longer at either of those places, I hadn't heard

One person who encouraged the denizens of the counterculture

It's one of the things in life I really feel ashamed about. I was not very sensitive, and I hurt their feelings. I shouldn't have. They had done so much to make sure I could go there, but I just didn't want them around. I didn't want anyone to know I had parents.