* Complete the following table.
"The Three stones in the Life of Steve Jobs'
( ABOUT , SETBACKS , REACTIONS , ACHIEVEMENT AND BENEFITS )
(1) First story
(2) Second story
(3) Third story
Answers
Answer:
Steve Jobs really turned on the charm for Robert X. Cringely in the newly rediscovered 70 minute interview shot for Cringely’s 1996 PBS special “Triumph of the Nerds” and showing in 19 U.S. cities tonight.
My favorite part part is when Jobs answers the question “What’s important to you in the development of a product?” with a dig at John Sculley’s Apple (AAPL) and a parable about a can of rocks:
You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen.
And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there are tremendous tradeoffs that you have to make. There are just certain things you can’t make electrons do. There are certain things you can’t make plastic do. Or glass do. Or factories do. Or robots do.
Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.
And it’s that process that is the magic.
And so we had a lot of great ideas when we started [the Mac]. But what I’ve always felt that a team of people doing something they really believe in is like is like when I was a young kid there was a widowed man that lived up the street. He was in his eighties. He was a little scary looking. And I got to know him a little bit. I think he may have paid me to mow his lawn or something.
And one day he said to me, “come on into my garage I want to show you something.” And he pulled out this dusty old rock tumbler. It was a motor and a coffee can and a little band between them. And he said, “come on with me.” We went out into the back and we got just some rocks. Some regular old ugly rocks. And we put them in the can with a little bit of liquid and little bit of grit powder, and we closed the can up and he turned this motor on and he said, “come back tomorrow.”
And this can was making a racket as the stones went around.
And I came back the next day, and we opened the can. And we took out these amazingly beautiful polished rocks. The same common stones that had gone in, through rubbing against each other like this (clapping his hands), creating a little bit of friction, creating a little bit of noise, had come out these beautiful polished rocks.
That’s always been in my mind my metaphor for a team working really hard on something they’re passionate about. It’s that through the team, through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas, and what comes out are these really beautiful stones.
The 70-minute film was shown in select Landmark Theaters Wednesday Nov. 16 and will be shown one more time Thursday, Nov. 17
Explanation:
1.The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months... Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class... Ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. And since Windows just copied the Mac... 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... You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. 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.
2.My second story is about love and loss. I got fired [from Apple]. 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. 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. You've got to find what you love. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
3.My third story is about death. I was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type that is incurable. [Later] I had surgery and I'm fine now. No one wants to die. And yet death is the destination we all share. 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 you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog. On the back cover of their final issue were the words: "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.