Designer

True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go, 'Yeah, well, of course.' Where there's no rational alternative.

I get an incredible thrill and satisfaction from seeing somebody with Apple's tell-tale white earbuds. But I'm constantly haunted by thoughts of, is it good enough? Is there any way we could have made it better?

Different' and 'new' is relatively easy. Doing something that's genuinely better is very hard.

At the start of the process the idea is just a thought - very fragile and exclusive. When the first physical manifestation is created everything changes. It is no longer exclusive, now it involves a lot of people.

We knew that iMac was fast; we didn't need to make it ugly.

When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical.

When you're doing something for the first time, you don't know it's going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it's copied. I have to be honest: the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn't. I think it's theft, and it's lazy.

The best ideas start as conversations.

I am very aware that I'm the product of growing up in England and the tradition of designing and making, of England industrialising first.

I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next.

We struggle with the right words to describe the design process at Apple. But it is very much about designing and prototyping and making.

With a father who is a fabulous craftsman, I was raised with the fundamental belief that it is only when you personally work with a material with your hands, that you come to understand its true nature, its characteristics, its attributes, and I think - very importantly - its potential.

I think subconsciously people are remarkably discerning. I think that they can sense care.

'Design' is a word that's come to mean so much that it's also a word that has come to mean nothing.

My father was a very good craftsman. He made furniture, he made silverware and he had an incredible gift in terms of how you can make something yourself.

There's no other product that changes function like the computer.

Designing and developing anything of consequence is incredibly challenging.

There is a clear goal and it isn't to make money. The goal is to desperately try to make the best products we can. We are not naive - if you trust it, people like it, they buy it and we make money. This is a consequence.

Our goal isn't to make money. Our goal absolutely at Apple is not to make money. This may sound a little flippant, but it's the truth. Our goal, and what gets us excited, is to try to make great products.

As a kid, I remember taking apart whatever I could get my hands on.