Sunday January 04, 2009 11:17
“I don’t think about that,” he said. “When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, ‘Get it away!’ and I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you’ll be crushed. You have to look forward.”
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Steve Jobs from 25 Years of Mac: From Boxy Beige to Silver Sleek
This attitude has doubtlessly contributed to Steve Jobs’ peculiarly innovative career in high tech, but it also sometimes leads to senseless contrarian positions such as his famous “people don’t read anymore” take on the Kindle. The notion that people don’t read anymore is patently false; perhaps one could say that “people read differently.” This more nuanced presentation, rather than past-bashing for past-bashing’s sake, would open Apple up to taking the challenge of building the Kindle killer.
Maybe they’re just not interested. That’s perfectly fine, but irrational tradition-averse maxims can be as limiting at some times as they are liberating at others.
