“Creativity is just connecting things,” Jobs told Wired magazine. “When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. . . . Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”
Nobody can doubt the charisma of Steven P. Jobs. The interim CEO of Apple Computer Inc., who returned to the company last July after his ignominious 1985 ouster, has brought back his legendary vision, impatience, and infectious passion for the Macintosh. Jobs spoke to Business Week Correspondent Andy Reinhardt in Apple's stark, fourth-floor boardroom, just after the company rolled out its new software strategy on May 11. Note: This is an extended, online-only version of the Q&A that appears in the May 25, 1998, issue of Business Week. Q: Now that you've introduced the new, bold-looking iMac, are you going to do some radically different products? A: There's a lot of talk about such things -- about handhelds, set-top boxes. A lot of computer companies have been searching for a consumer product. My view is that the personal computer has been the most successful consumer product of the last 10 years. What we have to do, what the industry stopp...