On the birth of the iPhone
"We all had cellphones. We just hated them, they were so awful to use. The software was terrible. The hardware wasn't very good. We talked to our friends, and they all hated their cellphones too. Everybody seemed to hate their phones. And we saw that these things really could become much more powerful and interesting to license. It's a huge market. I mean a billion phones get shipped every year, and that's almost an order of magnitude greater than the number of music players. It's four times the number of PCs that ship every year.
"It was a great challenge. Let's make a great phone that we fall in love with. And we've got the technology. We've got the miniaturization from the iPod. We've got the sophisticated operating system from Mac. Nobody had ever thought about putting operating systems as sophisticated as OS X inside a phone, so that was a real question. We had a big debate inside the company whether we could do that or not. And that was one where I had to adjudicate it and just say, 'We're going to do it. Let's try.' The smartest software guys were saying they can do it, so let's give them a shot. And they did."
关于 iPhone 的起源 我们都用过手机，体验总是极其恐怖。软件烂得一塌糊涂，硬件也不怎么样。我们和朋友聊过，他们也都非常痛恨自己的手机。（每个人都痛恨自己的手机。）(注：文中的（）内的字是《财富》网络版的特有内容，在印刷版中被删去。)于是我们觉得，这些东西完全可以变得更加强大，（摆出来也会很有意思。）这是一个巨大的市场－－我的意思是，每年有10亿部手机被卖掉，这单生意在数量上可比随身听庞大多了，这相当于每年个人电脑出货量的四倍。
这是个巨大的挑战－－我们要做出一款可以让我们自己都一见钟情的手机。（我们手中有技术，我们手中有源于 iPod 的微型制造工艺，我们手中还有来自 Mac 电脑的精密操作系统。）从未有人想过往手机里放进一个如 OS X 般精密的操作系统，看来这确实是个问题。在公司内部，针对我们能否实现这一目标曾经有过大规模的争论。我不得不当机立断地做出决定："我们可以做到的。让我们试试看吧。"那些最聪明的软件工程师说，他们可以做得到，而我们必须给他们这个机会。他们果然做到了。
On Apple's connection with the consumer
"We did iTunes because we all love music. We made what we thought was the best jukebox in iTunes. Then we all wanted to carry our whole music libraries around with us. The team worked really hard. And the reason that they worked so hard is because we all wanted one. You know? I mean, the first few hundred customers were us.
"It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That's what we get paid to do.
"So you can't go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There's a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, 'If I'd have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me "A faster horse." ' "
关于苹果和消费者之间的联系 （我们之所以去做 iTunes ，是因为我们都热爱音乐。我们在 iTunes 身上做出了自认为最好的音乐播放器。然后我们又都希望随身携带全部的音乐资料库。产品团队展开了非常艰辛的工作。它们之所以这么卖命，就是因为我们都需要一个这样的产品。你知道吗？我的意思是，我们自己就是最早期的那几百个用户。）
这事儿和流行文化无关，和坑蒙拐骗无关，和说服人们接受一件他们压根儿不需要的东西也无关。我们只是在搞明白我们自己需要什么。而且我认为，我们已经建立了一套良好的思维体系，以确保其他许多人都会需要这么个东西。我们收了钱就是来做这事儿的。
（所以你没法走大街上去问别人，你说，下一件牛叉的事情会是什么？亨利·福特曾经有过一句经典语录，对吧？他说："如果我当年去问顾客他们想要什么，他们肯定会告诉我'一匹更快的马'。"）