In software, we rarely have meaningful requirements. Even if we do, the only measure of success that matters is whether our solution solves the customer's shifting idea of what their problem is.

The whole HTML validation exercise is questionable, but validating as XHTML is flat-out masochism. Only recommended for those that enjoy pain. Or programmers. I can’t always tell the difference.

The lesson is: Even if you know exactly what is going on in you system, measure performance, don't speculate. You'll learn something, and nine times out of ten, it won't be that you were right!!

The quality of TV, I think, is at an all-time high. The problem with it is the way that we end up consuming it - generally a cable box. A satellite receiver is, to me, nothing more than a glorified VCR.

Art and money are closely related. Try sitting down with a group of artists and ask them what's on their mind. Very quickly the topic shifts to money. And it can be very hard to get them off that subject.

That's the great thing about Apple: it's very focused on the things that we know how to do very well and not try to extend ourselves to areas that we know very little about or don't have a lot of expertise in.

Agile is an attitude, not a technique with boundaries. An attitude has no boundaries, so we wouldn't ask 'can I use agile here', but rather 'how would I act in the agile way here?' or 'how agile can we be, here?'

A well-functioning team of adequate people will complete a project almost regardless of the process or technology they are asked to use (although the process and technology may help or hinder them along the way).

I think when you go to a store and you go to the Justin Timberlake page and stream it from there, that's great, but that means you went to the store. iTunes Radio lets you discover it without you having to think about it.

When you look at Apple News and where it started, I want it to be available to everyone. But we also want to make sure the news producers are legitimate... We're very concerned about what's news items and what's clickbait.

The fact is, when you look at the best teams—like the ones that existed at Toyota or 3M when Takeuchi or Nonaka wrote their paper, or the ones at Google or Salesforce.com or Amazon today—there isn’t this separation of roles.

The addition of Beats will make our music lineup even better, from free streaming with iTunes Radio to a world-class subscription service in Beats, and of course buying music from the iTunes Store as customers have loved to do for years.

People will pay for great services. They said they wouldn't pay 99 cents for a song but they did. We've always believed that. When you go to work, you don't work for free; nobody works for free. Nobody can say, "I want to work for free." Nobody says that.

The measure of a man cannot be whether he ever makes mistakes, because he will make mistakes. It's what he does in response to his mistakes. The same is true of companies. We have to apologize, we have to fix the problem, and we have to learn from our mistakes.

A manager's most important work is helping the people doing the work. Give them a goal and let them work. Remove any impediments that get in their way. Do anything that make them more effective or productive. Then the organization can capitalize on the fruits of their work.

To create a usable piece of software, you have to fight for every fix, every feature, every little accommodation that will get one more person up the curve. There are no shortcuts. Luck is involved, but you don't win by being lucky, it happens because you fought for every inch.

Early Apple machines - don't know how to answer what it was like since there were so few tools. Just had to keep debugging by isolating a problem, looking at memory in the limited debugging (weaker than the DOS DEBUG and no symbols) patch and retry and then re-program, download and try again. And again.

The fact that I have to set things to record seems idiotic. And channel guides - I get home, and I want to watch a Duke basketball game; why do I have to go hunting to find out what channel it's on? Why can't I just say, 'I want to watch Duke basketball.' Or, even better, why doesn't the system know that?

When I ask candidates to tell me about their weaknesses, I am hoping for a wise, honest, and self-confident answer. When I hear a candidate rationally admit a weakness, I am impressed. When I hear a candidate duck the question with language straight out of a book, I start thinking about the next candidate.

In recent years, the government has lost more than five million fingerprints from government employees. They have lost hundreds of millions of credit numbers from financial institutions. This problem is happening more and more and more. And the only way we can protect ourselves is to make phones more and more secure.

I looked at my family and I said, "I've got a spouse. I've got three kids. There's no way I'm ever buying a music subscription service for the five of us. It's just not going to happen." So we wanted to do something really great for families... It wasn't easy. We had to convince the labels it was in their best interests, too.

I believe strongly that a group's potential is eventually limited by the strength of its leadership. I'm an outsider, but it still looks to me like the leadership in the Java w orld is Fouled Up Beyond ALL Recognition. Java ISVs don't know whether to listen to Mom or Dad. Everybody knows IBM should just buy Sun and clean up the mess. When are they going to do it?

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