Life imitates art. The Little Prince is narrated by a pilot who crash-lands his airplane. And sadly enough, the author himself crashed – and died – while flying an airplane in France a year after the novel’s publication.
But the author did enable his future, even under Nazi-occupied France. It just took some patience – The Little Prince was published in his home country only after liberation from the Nazis.
Here is Jobs addressing a somewhat hostile question at the 1997 WWDC. At the time, Apple was nearly out of money, and Jobs had just returned after previously being kicked out of the company.
George Bernard Shaw said that “your patience when you have nothing” is one of the two things that define you. It’s interesting to look at Steve Jobs when he is down and see the vision and patience that was brewing at the time.
As we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, it started with what incredible benefits can we give to the customer, where can we take the customer. Not starting with ‘let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and then how are we going to market that’.
And I think that’s the right path to take.
It would be four more years until the iPod launched and ten years until the iPhone launched.
The end of Jobs’ answer also reminded me of Teddy Roosevelt.
Some mistakes will be made a long the way. That’s good, because at least some decisions will be made along the way.
Mental Break Town 