¶ We Believe
/This is what we believe:
Technology alone is not enough.
Faster. Thinner. Lighter. Those are all good things, but when technology gets out of the way, everything becomes more delightful. Even magical.
That's when you leap forward. That's when you end up with something like this.
For my initial reaction to Steve Jobs' resignation as CEO from Apple, I made a conscious point as soon as I heard the news to read nothing else other than Steve's letter and Apple's PR statement. I wanted my reaction to be my own.
I have found that reading other writers' thoughts on a topic can sometimes sway my own, which isn't necessarily bad, but can sometimes leave me feeling as if I just regurgitated their statements with my own slight spin.
For my reaction, I focused on culture. It looks like I wasn't far off the mark from fellowwriters. The above video echoes this belief of changing the world. Technology isn't enough. It is a means to an end. And that end is to bring delight and magic to mere mortals.
John Gruber paints this culture in a fascinating way:
Apple’s products are replete with Apple-like features and details, embedded in Apple-like apps, running on Apple-like devices, which come packaged in Apple-like boxes, are promoted in Apple-like ads, and sold in Apple-like stores. The company is a fractal design. Simplicity, elegance, beauty, cleverness, humility. Directness. Truth. Zoom out enough and you can see that the same things that define Apple’s products apply to Apple as a whole. The company itself is Apple-like. The same thought, care, and painstaking attention to detail that Steve Jobs brought to questions like “How should a computer work?”, “How should a phone work?”, “How should we buy music and apps in the digital age?” he also brought to the most important question: “How should a company that creates such things function?”
Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself.
Some get it. Others are screaming Apple will falter soon, just like it did in 1985. The big difference is last time Jobs left Apple he was forced out, exiled. He was a different man then. During his exile he learned a lot, found his footing. And when he came back he cleaned house and reshaped Apple. He surrounded himself with like-minded individuals.
Apple is not just Steve Jobs, it is the sum of the many parts of creative talent and thirst to change things for better.
This is why Apple will continue on and see its best years ahead of it. Steve is certainly one-of-a-kind, but we are Apple.
Just remember, Steve Jobs hand-picked Tim Cook to succeed him. Michael Grothaus shared his personal story of Tim Cook, in which he says:
No one can ever replace Steve Jobs, the man, the genius. But Apple is not only Steve Jobs, no matter what anyone thinks. Apple is the interns and executive assistants; it's the retail employees and the designers; it's the marketing and PR departments, it's Scott Forstall and Jonathan Ive; Bob Mansfield and Phil Schiller; it's the dozens of other names you see on all those Apple patents that we talk about every week. Apple is not any single one of these people. It is the sum of them all, run by a leader who possesses enough wisdom to know that everyone in the company matters, that everyone's concerns are valid and deserve attention. Tim Cook is such a leader.
Culture is one of the most important things for people. It defines who we are, and guides us on our future paths. Tim Cook believes in the culture Steve Jobs inspired. The people who create wonderful things at Apple believe it. We who use these tools believe it. I believe it.
We are Apple, and our greatest days are yet ahead of us.
