He was a master presenter. And he had such skill with words that Oscar Wilde could have accused him of writing poems in prose. Two years ago, our editorial mentor Nimish Dubey, converted fifteen quotations of Steve Jobs into poetry. Today, to mark the Apple co-founder’s 62nd birthday, he converts another ten, relatively lesser known quotes. Happy birthday, Steve. No, we cannot say our gift could have been worse… because it actually is verse. Pun intended.
The Resume’
Am willing to
Tear down walls,
Build bridges,
And light fires.
I have great experience,
Lots of energy,
A bit of that “vision” thing
And I’m not afraid to start
From the beginning.
Legacy
If Apple becomes a place
Where computers are
A commodity item,
Where the romance is gone,
And where people forget
That computers are
The most incredible invention
That man has ever invented,
I’ll feel
I have lost Apple.
But if I’m a million miles away,
And all those people
Still feel those things…
Then I’ll feel
That my genes are still there
Who Has Time?
It’s insane;
We all have busy lives,
We have jobs,
We have interests,
And some of us
Have children.
Everyone’s lives
Are just getting busier,
Not less busy,
In this busy society.
You just don’t have time
To learn this stuff,
And everything’s
Getting more complicated…
We…don’t have a lot of time
To learn how to use
A washing machine
Or a phone.
Changing the World
(Technology) doesn’t change the world.
It really doesn’t.
Technology can make it easier,
Can let us touch people
That we might not otherwise.
But it’s a disservice
To constantly put things
In a radical new light,
That it’s going to change everything.
Things don’t have to change the world
To be important.
Heroes
How do you tell somebody
Who you are,
What you care about?
And the best way
We could think of was…
If you know
Who somebody’s heroes are,
That tells you a lot about them.
So we thought
We’re going to tell people
Who our heroes are…
And – some people will like us,
And some people won’t like us.
Communicating with Feeling
We don’t stand a chance
Of advertising
With features and benefits…
With RAMs…
With charts and comparisons.
The only chance we have
Of communicating
Is with a feeling.
Hire Great People
We hired truly great people
And gave them
The room to do great work.
A lot of companies…
Hire people
To tell them what to do.
We hire people
To tell us what to do…
We’re paying them all this money;
Their job is to figure out
What to do
And tell us.
Innovation
Innovation
Has nothing to do
With how many R&D Dollars you have…
It’s not about money.
It’s about the people you have,
How you’re led,
And
How much you get it.
Passion, Perseverance
Unless you have a lot of passion…
You’re not going to survive.
You’re going to give it up.
So you’ve got to have an idea,
Or a problem
Or a wrong
That you want to right
That you’re passionate about.
Otherwise
You’re not going to have the perseverance
To stick it through.
After life
I want to believe in an afterlife.
That when you die,
It doesn’t just all disappear.
The wisdom you’ve accumulated.
Somehow it lives on,
But sometimes I think
It’s just like an on-off switch.
Click and you’re gone.
And that’s why
I don’t like putting on-off switches
On Apple devices.