Insanely Simple

My original selections from the book:

• That's Simplicity. It's what drives Apple to create what it creates and behave as it behaves. It's Apple's devotion to Simplicity that forms an unbreakable connection with its customers and inspires customers to evangelize to colleagues, friends, and family.

"Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains." - Steve Jobs

• the Simple Stick:
• Translation: Steve had rejected their work-not because it was bad but because in some way it failed to distill the idea to its essence. p. 1

• it's a reminder of what sets Apple apart from other technology companies and what makes Apple stand out in a complicated world: a deep, almost religious belief in the power of Simplicity. As those who have worked with Apple will attest, the simpler way isn't always the easiest. Often it requires more time, more money, and more energy. p. 2

• Every one of Apple's revolutions was born of the company's devotion to Simplicity. Each new device either created a existing category on new category or turned an its head p. 3

• Simplicity is not merely a layer that can be grafted onto a business. It isn't available in a prepackaged version. It doesn't work with an on/off switch. Yet it's there for absolutely anyone to take advantage of, if only they have the determination and knowledge. p. 4

• People prefer Simplicity. Given the option, any sane person will choose the simple path over one that's more complicated. p. 4

• As Simplicity becomes more rare, it also becomes more valuable. So your ability to keep things simple, and protect things from becoming more complicated, becomes more valuable as well. p. 5

• my job to turn complicated ideas into interesting and compelling stories p. 7

• If your company is ever to fail, you can be sure it won't be the fault of Simplicity it will be the result of its absence. p. 10

• Clarity propels an organization. Not occasional clarity but pervasive, twenty-four-hour, in-your-face, take-no-prisoners clarity. p. 14

• This is probably the one element of Simplicity that's easiest to institute. Just be honest and never hold back. Demand the same from those you work with. p. 14

• There is a huge difference between being brutally honest and simply being brutal. p. 14

• The truth is, I thought those ads were "good enough," and I'd included them with another series of ads I thought was much better. But there they sat, diminishing the quality of our show. What I had done was easier, not smarter. I'd never again put myself in a position where I had to defend something I didn't believe in. p. 16

• It may not always be welcome news, but there is great value in understanding the state of your relationship--knowing what you've done right, what you've done wrong, and what you must do to ensure a happy future. p. 21

• Apple encourages big thinking but small everything else. p. 25

• Start with small groups of smart people and keep them small. Every time the body count goes higher, you're simply inviting Complexity to take a seat at the table. The idea is pretty basic: Everyone in the room should be there for a reason. Either you're critical to the meeting or you're not. p. 26

• Complexity normally offers the easy way out. p. 27

• Most people know from experience that the fastest way to lose focus, squander valuable time, and water down great ideas is to entrust them to a larger group. Just as we know that there is equal danger in putting ideas at the mercy of a large group of approvers. One must be judicious and realistic about applying the small-group principle. Simply making groups smaller will obviously not solve all problems, and "small" is a relative term. p. 28

• Many businesses follow an instinctive but misguided principle: The more critical the project, the more people must be thrown at it. p. 30

• One of the things Steve institutionalized was an annual off-site meeting of Apple's global executives called the Top 100. These were the people he trusted to understand Apple's vision and make sure it was absorbed by their direct reports. At the Top 100 meeting, Steve and his executive team would lay out the strategies for the coming year and provide a glimpse into the years beyond. It's a safe bet that Steve knew the Top 100 by their first names. p. 33

• The quality of work resulting from a project increases in direct proportion to the degree of involvement by the ultimate decision maker. p. 34

• He was no less enthusiastic about being involved in a marketing meeting than he was about being involved in a product design meeting. He understood that both were vital to Apple's success. He knew that if he participated in the marketing process, directing a small group of smart people, Apple would continue to market circles around its competitors. p. 34

• The bottom line is this: If you think it's important, you find time for it. p. 35

• One major reason is that most big organizations are simply awful at thinking small. They're unable to streamline complicated processes. Even when they successfully identify their challenges, develop strategies, and create great work that brings them to life, their processes choke the life out of that work. p. 38

• Great ideas travel with a degree of risk. p. 39

• one of the most important things Apple does is trust itself. p. 42

• It boils down to this: When process is king, ideas will never be. p. 42

• In multilayered organizations, it's difficult to stand up for imaginative thinking-because it puts your neck on the line. In Apple's flatter organization, it's easier to "think different." p. 45

• Steve Jobs often spoke publicly about the purity of Apple's thinking. It focuses on one thing and doesn't get distracted by anything else. p. 46

• at the 1997 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Steve foretold this moment perfectly:

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things. p. 48

• It builds a large and loyal following not because of the products it can make but because of the products it chooses to make. p. 52

• Remember, being complicated is easy. It's Simplicity that requires serious work. p. 57

• Unfortunately, the desire to minimize does not necessarily come hand-in-hand with intelligence. Some of the most brilliant people on this planet can't stop themselves from overcomplicating the way they do business. p. 60

• More likely your company is concerned with building ideas, and you'd profit handsomely from a few really good ones. p. 61

• Those who believe in Simplicity believe that good ideas need to be protected from those who would do them damage. The best way to do this is to minimize the processes through which these ideas must travel. p. 64

• Minimizing is the key to making a point stick. Your point will be more quickly understood, and more easily remembered, if you don't clutter it up with other points. p. 64

• People will always respond better to a single idea expressed clearly. They tune out when Complexity begins to speak instead. p. 66

• When in doubt, minimize. p. 68

• the easiest way to screw up a project is to give it too much time enough time for people to rethink, revise, have second thoughts, invite others into the project, get more opinions, conduct tests, etc. Leonard Bernstein captured this thought perfectly when he said: To achieve great things, two things are needed, a plan, and not quite enough time. p. 72

• 1. Aim realistically high. When Apple created the first iPod, it didn't set out to create a portable player that could accommodate music, movies, podcasts, and photos. It created a music player. The rest would come later. In other words, don't overreach-it's important to achieve greatness, but your project has to end on time and deliver what you've promised. 2. Never stop moving. The project begins on day one and should consume people from the get-go. No time-outs allowed. Only when people are kept in constant motion do they stay focused with the right kind of intensity. Work isn't supposed to be easy; it's supposed to be gratifying and keeping the team in motion is what gets you there. p. 72

• Another good example is iPhone. The 1.0 version of this product didn't even support apps, which quickly came to be the most revolutionary part of the platform. The original idea was that Apple would support only web apps developed in Safari. p. 73

• Unless it currently has a breakthrough technology, Apple takes itself out of the spec-comparison game and makes a more meaningful connection with its customers. Simplicity is hard to leave behind. p. 74

• It's always shocking to learn that company as successful or influential define itself. But that's as Microsoft or Dell can run into trouble trying to the kind of confusion that results when big organizations get bigger-and people lose sight of what makes things simple. p. 81

• Though Steve's mission was to save Apple, he thought of it in even grander terms. He believed that Apple occupied a very special place in the scheme of things, especially when compared to the IBMs and HPs of the world. In his mind, we weren't just fighting for Apple, we were fighting for the spirit of creativity and innovation. If Apple was to disappear, he believed that those sacred values would be left without a champion in the computer category. p. 86

• Target-wise Apple needed to reach three different groups of people. First were those who remembered the great Apple of old but whose opinions of the brand had faded along with Apple's success. Second was the new generation of users who were young enough that they'd only known one Apple the anemic one. Third, and every bit as important, were Apple employees. They were in serious need of some inspiration after years of bad press, a succession of ineffective CEOs, and a lack of innovative products. p. 86

• The ads had to be authentic. If this work was to truly define Apple, we knew that the "big idea" couldn't be complicated. It had to be direct, to the point, and simple. p. 87

• Apple wasn't for everybody; it was for those who valued creative thinking. p. 88

• You can tell a lot about someone by the people he or she admires, and that would be the philosophy of our campaign. By celebrating the lives of those who inspired Apple, Apple would be telling the world exactly what kind of company it is-without using any more words than "Think different." p. 88

• To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world, it's a very noisy world, and we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us. Remember, Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes. And yet when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company. In their ads, as you know, they don't ever talk about the product. They don't ever tell you about their air soles and why they're better than Reebok's air soles. What does Nike do in their advertising? They honor great athletes, and they honor great athletics. That's who they are, that's what they are about. Our customers want to know, "Who is Apple, and what is it that we stand for? Where do we fit in this world?" Apple at the core, its core value, is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That's what we believe. ... And that those people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that actually do. p. 90

• Since marketing schemes don't usually come with a guaranteed return on investment, they require leap of faith--and faith is a hard sell to management during a crisis. He made it clear that Apple couldn't be withdrawing into a shell at a time like this now was its last chance to get out there and put its stake in the ground. "The company had to invest in itself. [.] previously it was saying a hundred things quietly instead of one thing loudly. p. 92

• When it comes to design, Apple carefully calculates will be sent by every product, even those messages the messages that subconscious. It considers that are mostly every aspect of a product's design: how it looks, how it feels, how it makes you feel. Part of the idea is to win you over before you even touch it. One button does an excellent job of that. p. 97

• For many agencies, clients, and students of advertising, Apple is considered because Apple rigidly enforces the the gold standard in marketing. That's principles of Simplicity whenever it speaks to its customers. What Apple has done with great success at key points in its history is create an image that becomes an icon for its product or product line. This image changes the way customers think about the technology, a imbuing it with a personality that makes it harder to forget. p. 98

• Instead of asking you to buy this device, Apple was asking you to buy the emotion. p. 100

• The nature of advertising is to claim that you have a better product. And when you're the underdog, as Apple has always been in the PC marketplace, one effective way to do that is to directly compare yourself to the leader. How you portray your "enemy" has a big impact on how your audience perceives you. p. 101

• In this presentation, I relied on a philosophy I learned long ago from a wise man in advertising. It was "As long as you've got new ideas to share, you are free to re-present the old one." p. 110

• Apple doesn't just keep naming simple for the sake of brand-building. It keeps naming simple so it doesn't confuse the hell out of people. At the end of the day, that's what Simplicity does best. With perfect clarity, it tells customers who you are and what you sell. p. 115

• One of the downsides of Simplicity is that it travels with a curse. That is, sometimes it just seems too easy. It certainly doesn't seem easy to the person or persons who worked night and day to come up with the simple idea. But to the casual viewer, or even the manager reviewing the idea, it might just look obvious. the name was so obvious that a thousand news outlets and bloggers were referring to "iPhone" months before Apple ever unveiled it. It was every bit as obvious to Steve Jobs, which was why he wanted to name this product "iPhone" from the start. It was the obviousness of the name that he found so appealing. If it were called "iPhone," there would be no mistaking how Apple was positioning the product or what industry Apple was about to revolutionize. p. 118

• I've lost count of the clients I've seen pin their competitors' ads to the wall and openly wish those ads were their own. They want to be someone else, even if that someone has very different set of circumstances and a very different set of values. It's fine to have goals or to be inspired by other people's work. But Simplicity requires you to keep your eyes on the road and stay true to your own company's values. It's about authenticity. p. 119

• Apple lets others experiment with the wild and crazy things. Its goal is to appear as an island of Simplicity in this complicated universe. p. 122

• His most important concern was making things easier for customers. Apple was there to serve them, not the other way around. p. 123

• Steve had the sensitivities of an artist and was fanatic about details, just as the legend says. He wasn't debating the use of a single letter because he was controlling, he did this because he thought it was important. For Steve, there was no such thing as an unimportant detail. p. 124

• It drove Steve batty to see in twenty slides what could be spoken in three sentences. He valued time way too much for that. It meant that you'd devoted valuable time to the wrapping of your idea rather than thinking through the idea itself. Steve was most comfortable with a table, a whiteboard, and an honest exchange of ideas. He resisted anything that made it feel like relationships were becoming formal, or like Apple might be beginning to display behavors typical of a big corporation. p. 129

• He had hired us because we were smart, and he expected us to prove that time after time. Why should he keep us around if he needed to hold our hands? p. 131

• Many people incorrectly assume that by increasing the word count they will demonstrate their smarts, when the opposite is almost always closer to reality. Those who know how to communicate with brevity are the ones who come across as smarter and are more appreciated by executives who value their time. p. 134

• Revolution by revolution, Apple would prove that the most powerful form of Simplicity is that which connects directly to our humanity. From the beginning, Apple has succeeded because it makes products that reflect human values. p. 138

• Apple believed that what the music player category needed most was Simplicity, p. 138

• Steve explained in a 2006 Newsweek interview:

We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise, and the software expertise, including iTunes. One of the biggest insights we [had] was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless.

By removing the Complexity, Apple created a device that brought people closer to their music. It was a device that appealed on human terms, removing the barrier of technology. p. 139

• The genius of Apple is that it often sees human potential where other companies do not, and it has the design and engineering skill to bring its vision to life. Sometimes, as happened with iPod and the music player market, Apple doesn't actually invent the idea from scratch. The concept may already exist but be missing only one thing: Simplicity. And that makes all the difference in the world. p. 139

• Steve put his faith in people to solve impossible problems and create amazing computers and devices. His job was to create the conditions in which that could happen. He elaborated in a 2004 Business Week interview:

Process makes you more efficient. But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea. p. 140

• Remembering that you are going to die is the best way know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. p. 148

• Apple didn't describe the original iPod as a 6.5-ounce music player with a five-gigabyte drive. It simply said, "1,000 songs in your pocket." Human-speak is a hallmark of Simplicity. It's the recognition that the best way to connect with people is to put things in human terms and use the words that people use in everyday conversation. p. 149

• these companies tend to fall back on what's comfortable, Either that or they reserve a place at the table for Complexity's old friend, Compromise. p. 151

• Before Apple came along, people had no concept that a computer would ever let them share photos, stay connected with friends, listen to music, or do any of the things we take for granted today. Most computers were for doing accounting work in big companies. The idea of having one at home was either absurd or frightening, p. 151

• It had to start with the basics-¡ had to convince people a computer could open new doors for them. "Will someone please tell me exactly what a personal computer can do?" The cover opened to reveal four full pages side by side, stuffed to the gills with a list of a hundred things you could do. Many of these items were brought to life with a colorful and/or fanciful illustration--creating a seductive array of uses for the reader to explore. Apple made it clear that they were made for ordinary people who wanted to do extraordinary things. It took something that was inherently complicated and turned it into something that was wonderfully simple. Of course, simple is relative. p. 152

• What determines the humanity in a company's a messages is tone -which is the combined effect of the words and images it chooses to use. A human presence in imagery is absolutely one way to add humanity, but words can be every bit as human. p. 155

• Apple feels "authentic" at every point of customer contact, from ad to website to purchase to the look and feel of every product. That kind of consistency goes a long way toward creating a sense of Simplicity, and it's one of the most difficult things for a marketer to do. Simplicity requires that you have a set of core values that pervade everything you do and everything you say. Simplicity is what makes people feel like they know you, understand you, and ultimately trust you. p. 157

• In effect, Apple has built an ecosystem of Simplicity. p. 158

• While traditional marketers might complain that you'll turn off the bus. ness user if you show games, or you'll turn off the casual user if you show business functions, Apple ignores such traditional-and limiting advice. p. 160

• Simplicity calls for clear strategy, followed by consistent messaging. p. 160

• The concept has to be quick. The customer has to get it in a second like "phone, Internet, and iPod, all in one." Customers need to be able to pick it up and start using it instantly. Most important, it has to improve our lives by an order of magnitude over what's already available or create an entirely new category by itself p. 161

• the only truly meaningful change is a 1ox improvement over what came before. A product needs to have this level of importance attached to it if it is to get noticed and gain traction. [..] hold the original iPhone up next to the BlackBerry that was popular when iPhone was first launched. Leaps of magnitude are hard to ignore. p. 162

• He never lost sight of the fact that at the end of the day, technology is about people: what stirs their imaginations, what keeps them satisfied, and what makes them smile. p. 163

• In a 1998 Business Week interview, Steve said:

It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. p. 164

• Apple isn't interested in ideas that try to please everyone. Those are the ideas that end up stripped of their character, feeling calculated and worst of all less human. p. 164

• For the sake of Simplicity, it's a good idea to probe thoroughly when you run into a negative response. It might just be that you're asking someone to go above and beyond what's normal-but that's how you get above-normal results. If there are rules, chances are they can be broken. If you let someone off the hook, it's your idea that will be diminished in the end. p. 176

• People may not pick out specific details, but they sense the thoughtful and elegant design of the store. Every detail matters, whether it's noticed or not. p. 179

• It's a rare idea in business that doesn't run into some form of opposition, be it internal or external to the organization. Steve Jobs learned early that if you have great idea, you need to ignore the negativity and concentrate on moving forward. You must also go to extremes to ensure that those great ideas survive. p. 184

• Simplicity allows people to focus on one thing. Conversely, focusing on one thing helps achieve Simplicity. Creating a war with Intel, as Apple did, was a very effective way of getting people to focus on one thing taking Macs seriously as a PC alternative. p. 187

• When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he told Apple's employees that they had to change their thinking. "We have to get it out of our heads that for us to win, Microsoft has to lose." He went on to say, "The battle for the desktop is over. And we lost." p. 187

• When someone else represents your work to a higher level of client, or to a higher level within your own organization, only rarely will they have your level of passion. If the person representing your work runs into opposition, they'll normally be far more willing to throw in the towel than you would be, or to make compromises that you would never agree to. It's human nature. p. 192

• But for six years leading up to iPhone, Apple had not only been successful with iPod and iTunes, it had literally changed the world. In the process, it had won the hearts of Mac and PC users alike, displaying its skill at creating handheld devices that were truly lust-inducing. So when rumors started to appear that Apple was working on a phone, the buzz began to feed on itself. But this was no ordinary buzz. It was multiplied several times by customers' attitudes about their current phones and phone companies. The world that Apple was to invade with iPhone was dominated by BlackBerry. That product had achieved "killer" status because it did one thing well: provide access to email anywhere, anytime. p. 193

• It was technology that would make iPhone capable, but it was Simplicity that would make it lovable. Apple had come up with a combination and a super powerful weapon. iPhone didn't act like a computer, even though that's exactly what it was. p. 195

• 2006 Newsweek interview: When you first start of trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions.** p. 195

• It's when you get to the essence of your idea that you'll have something to be proud of. p. 196

• Apple's design chief Jony Ive echoed Steve's philosophy in a speech to London's Royal College of Art in 2010: Apple's goal isn't to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products. We trust that as a consequence of that, we'll make some money. But we're really clear what our goals are. p. 198

• The iPhone has been such a spectacular success that most people don't remember that the first iPhone didn't have any apps other than those that came from Apple Weather, Stocks, Clock, etc. p. 199

• When you believe in the power of Simplicity, you are by definition "thinking different." You're in the minority. Simplicity may be one of the most powerful forces on earth, but it is the weapon of the few. p. 211

• In an interview, Steve Jobs once said: Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations. Simplicity doesn't like to get tangled up in old problems. It vastly prefers to look ahead. p. 213

• In this sense, Steve's greatest achievement wasn't a Mac, iPod, iPhone, or iPad. He accomplished something that no one had even contemplated before. Steve Jobs built a monument to Simplicity. That monument is Apple itself. Apple is both a testament to the power of Simplicity and : blueprint for those who wish to follow p. 221