Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

Original text: (Here)

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

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10 Timeless Marketing Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Us

Steve Jobs not only represents a brand, but actually a generation of users who follow in the footsteps of his creativity. The impact that Jobs has had on everyone’s lives can never be overestimated. Although you’re not always aware of it, his innovations have affected everything around you, from movies, to computers, music and mobile phones.

A lot of people still keep asking: “Why is Apple such a successful brand?” In order to answer this question, we should remember some of  Steve Jobs’ key quotes, when he was just a young visionary:

“Marketing is about values. It’s a complicated and noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.”

And boy, was he right about what we remember! Not only were his products iconic, but they’re also his legacy. The key to Jobs’ success is a combination of quality, innovation, and market strategies that were designed extremely carefully. They were so effective that Apple managed to reinvent products that were already available on the market, and got consumers to think they had never seen anything like them before.

Steve Jobs not only reinvented Apple, but he redesigned and marketed thousands of products that were actually already on the market (e.g. mp3 players). Steve was so brilliant, that even when he was fired from his post as CEO of Apple, it didn’t stop him from returning to his post the second time, and this time increasing their sales.

1) MAKE A GREAT PRODUCT.

Since 1981, we’ve observed success, strategy, inspiration, and innovation. Very few entrepreneurs have managed to accomplish what Steve Jobs did: create an excellent product. From its performance, to the physical space each one occupies, the design, and the beautiful box it comes carefully wrapped in- when you buy an Apple product you know what to expect. For Jobs: (and thousands on his team, of course! After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, or alone!) product quality comes first and not just a great packaging and excellent marketing strategies. The key is that the product is excellent. In his own words:

“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse’.”

2) DON’T SELL PRODUCTS, SELL DREAMS.

Apple’s strategy involves selling their consumers a global package of dreams, personal experiences, and status, and it makes almost all other products go unnoticed if they don’t carry the Apple logo.

As we said before, Apple managed to reinvent products that were already on the market. You know when you buy an Apple product, you’re not only buying a great piece of modern technology, you’re buying a little piece of ideology to put in your pocket. By carrying it, you adopt the visions that Steve Jobs had: dreams can be fulfilled, take a position in life and stand up for it, don’t squander your life living by someone else’s rules. Be true to yourself. Apple is different from all other brands because for Steve Jobs, consumers weren’t just consumers, they were people. People with dreams, hopes, and ambitions, and he got Apple to create products to help them achieve their dreams and goals.

Apple has always been innovative, from their products to how they market their message. An example is when they launched their famous Apple commercial “1984″ (which we can see below). It demonstrated why 1984 wasn’t like”1984″ after it came out. It was like some sort of marketing-event, where the campaign itself was so revolutionary that the media even covered it like an event.

3) FOCUS ON THE EXPERIENCE.

Think different. Think like Nike and Apple. Focus on creating a universe of sensations, experiences, and values that the person gets when they buy your product. Analyze how it feels to use and buy your products, and think about what you need to improve, and what you need to focus on. When you purchase your Apple MacBook Air, you’re not only buying a computer where you can do your work, edit  pics/videos, and connect with your friends. You’re buying Apple’s belief that people with passion can change the world and make it a better place.

In Nike’s case, they do sell a commodity, but when you think Nike, you think about the whole experience. When we say Nike, it doesn’t feel like we’re talking about a fleet of factories with the best calibrated machines or a company that just sells shoes, it feels like we’re talking about a lifestyle. Nike represents passion, crossing your limits, training, enduring and accomplishing your goals. Nike doesn’t even mention selling shoes in their ads, and that’s the key to their success.

4) TURN CONSUMERS INTO EVANGELISTS, NOT JUST CUSTOMERS.

One of Apple’s most important strategies is getting the consumer to want to recommend the brand, and without being paid for it. Like other iconic brands such as Harley Davidson, (the great motorcycle company that doesn’t just sell bikes, but rather a subculture, and a lifestyle); Apple users are advocates, sponsors, and fans of the brand. We’ve seen it in the classic fight between designers: which is better for designing computer graphics, Mac or PC? IPhone users preach that its the only option for cellphones all the time, right? Apple users are like evangelists who represent a way of thinking, a new generation, and a mission, something bigger than themselves. They’re part of the team and understand the vision of the company. Side note, while Apple managed to get their customers to be really loyal in the most profitable way, that is, by turning them into fans, Harley Davidson meanwhile, actually got them to take it even further: the consumers choose to tattoo themselves with the brand’s logo as a symbol of membership and belonging. Now we’re talkin about brand power!

5) MASTER THE MESSAGE, (and now that we’re on the subject, the delivery too).

You can have a great product but if communication fails, it’s like watching a stand-up comedian do a gig in a completely different  language. Jobs gave us some of the best speeches in corporate history. He preached against PowerPoint presentations, saying you only have to use them when it’s really necessary. Mastering the topic, the message, and knowing how to present it without visual aids, speaks much more than a cute drawing created with some elegant color scheme. For large groups, PowerPoint is excellent but Jobs hated when people brought in presentations into meetings, because he saw it as a sign that they didn’t completely dominate the topic they were presenting.

6) DECISIONS SHOULD BE MADE BY A GROUP, NOT A COMMITTEE.

No wonder there aren’t any monuments of committees. Important decisions should be made by a group designated to decision making.  A small group who trusts in each other and in their instincts because they are all immersed in the company’s objectives. You should always encourage the team to discuss ideas, but then only leave those most suitable to make the final decisions.

7) FIND AN ENEMY.

Think about Coca Cola versus Pepsi and all their media battles over time. Make it clear who the enemy is, and try to get people to take a side. Choosing sides is part of human behavior and was introduced as an idea by the French social psychologists Gabriel Tarde and Gustave Le Bon. The herd mentality or mob mentality is what happens when the collective consciousness occurs in a group of people influenced and pressured by the masses to adopt certain behaviors, follow trends, and/or purchase products. The desire to belong and to explain the disorder of the world makes consumers feel better about belonging to the ideology of a brand that matches their own thoughts and values. If you don’t stand up for what you believe in, you’ll go unnoticed. And what better way to state what you believe in, than stating clearly what you DON’T believe in?

Apple is well aware of this, so obviously so are its users, and you know it’s been made clear exactly who the enemy is: Bill Gates and what Microsoft brought to market, as Jobs puts it: bad taste. The biggest enemies of Apple are, complexity, lack of good taste, and conventional thinking, all aspects that Jobs made abundantly clear, that Microsoft possesses. Jobs stated: – “The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products.”  For Jobs, an important part of the development of a product is the aesthetics, and that the homogenous design that represents the brand is a style that you find in absolutely all of their products.

8) KEEP THE DESIGN SIMPLE, AND WHEN YOU GET THERE, SIMPLIFY IT EVEN MORE.

It’s the essence of the coveted Apple products. No other competing product beats their level of simplicity. From the user experience to its aesthetic design and delicate work put in to make their products intuitive. So, one thing is absolutely clear: less is more.

9) YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE THE FIRST, BUT YOU’VE GOT TO BE THE BEST.

As we’ve mentioned a few times, Apple didn’t invent MP3 players, Smartphones, Tablets or computers. However, they did redefine and invest all their efforts to create a world where their products gave us a before and after of new technology. Even though other competition was already on the market, Apple took those same products and improved the user experience, navigability, weight, packaging, and distribution channels. They achieved better design, size, they listened, paid attention, and managed to design products that are super convenient to carry with you everywhere you go.

10) INNOVATE OR DIE.

Steve Jobs knew that the key was diving into the user experience and identifying what they need, and what they want. Thinking outside the box, and constantly providing products and services that meet those needs. Apple remains a precursor in the current market, and has recently launched some apps that measure your health and can automate your home with its new iOS 8.  The IOS 8 operating system was presented by Tim Cook at conference number 25 for enterprise developers, according to Reuters. The software includes, among others, HomeKit and HealthKit, perfecting the comfortable, simple and practical lifestyle that Apple seeks to provide with their products. Healthkit allows users to control their health and provides them with a data base where their information is recorded along with their info from other fitness related applications. HomeKit, meanwhile, allows the user to control their locks, lights, garage doors, etc.. from the device.

From the Genius Bars to Apple Stores, the vision and personal beliefs of Steve Jobs are alive in the legacy of the coolest products, whose sales efforts reach even the packaging. He believed that you don’t only have to innovate, but you’ve got to think and dream big, believe in something and then fight for it. And if you want to stand out in a highly competitive market, you need to take risks, but mostly you need to be different or else you’ll just blend in with the rest.

Original version in http://postcron.com/en/blog/10-amazing-marketing-lessons-steve-jobs-taught-us/ [April 20, 2015] 

PORTAL DA LÍNGUA INGLESA has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-partly internet websites referred to in this post, and does not guarantee that any context on such websites are, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

In some instances, I have been unable to trace the owners of the pictures used here; therefore, I would appreciate any information that would enable me to do so. Thank you very much.

Is something important missing? Report an error or suggest an improvement. Please, I strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact me!

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Cartoon: The Death of Steve Jobs

In this cartoon from The Guardian Martin Rowson pays tribute to the co-founder of Apple Inc, who has died at 56 from cancer.

The image shows a funeral procession, but instead of a coffin, the pallbearers are carrying an iPad displaying a wreath made of apples with the letters RIP (Rest In Peace). The mourners lining the route all have iPads with 'Grief Apps' or virtual wreaths on them.

In a reference to events in the UK, PM David Cameron, Chancellor George Osborne and a fat cat (representing the world of finance), are depicted on the left of the cartoon. Cameron is reading a newspaper with the headline, "Jobs gone forever", a play on the death of Steve Jobs and the fact that every day seems to bring more job losses in austerity Britain.

STEVE JOBS: REST IN PEACE.

Sempre segui a máxima "Stay hungry. Stay foolish".Quando recebi a notícia da morte de Steve Jobs pensei o quanto ele tinha me influenciado tanto. Incrível, pois ser influenciado por alguém que você nunca nem conheceu pessoalmente é algo para realmente se admirar.

Tornei-me workaholic e perfeccionista assim como o Steve. Hoje, como sei que muita gente vai procurar pelo nome Steve Jobs no Google e sei que muitos vão parar aqui por acaso, resolvi postar algumas coisas que levarão o nome Steve Jobs. Única a exclusivamente para aumentar o número de visitas no blog.

O que eu estou fazendo? Sendo “marqueteiro” assim como o Steve Jobs sempre foi ao lançar seus produtos da Apple. Alias, até o nome da empresa sempre foi um marketing: Apple era o nome da empresa dos Beatles. Vejam em qual adiferença entre Apple e Apple.

Muito legal esse vídeo do Steve Jobs. O cara que tinha trabalho até no nome.

Steve Jobs - Discurso Stanford COMPLETO

Steve Jobs praised as Apple's visionary, creative genius

This belongs to Steve Jobs.

R.I.P.

(CNN) -- Steve Jobs, the visionary who led a mobile computer revolution with the creation of wildly popular devices such as the iPhone, was mourned Thursday by admirers and competitors as much of the world awoke to news of his death.

Jobs' death was announced Wednesday by Apple, the Silicon Valley company he co-founded with Steve Wozniak. He was 56.

"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," Apple said in a statement on its website.

"Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor."

To read more à http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/06/us/obit-steve-jobs/index.html?hpt=T1

This one has been posted by Bruno Jobs.