Nearly 3 years on I still lament the passing of one of the greatest minds of our time, Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple.
He starting one of the worlds largest and most innovative companies from scratch (along with several other very successful companies) he created defining products, simple yet seductive designs and in tandem re-defined several other markets such as music, applications and retail.
I found Walter Isaacson’s biography a long but inspiring read describing the life of a man from simple beginnings who was very respectful and influenced by his father, growing up in Palo Alto, California.
Job’s father used to do-up old cars in his spare time. Jobs enjoyed bonding with his father in his workshop where he learned of his father’s passion for craftsmanship. He always made sure that the parts you can’t see are as beautiful as the parts you can. “A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet even though nobody is going to see it.”
When Apple were designing circuit boards for the Macintosh Jobs insisted the memory chips were positioned a certain distance appart for aesthetic reasons. “For you to sleep at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through”.
When I read this I went out and bought a Mac immediately. How could I ignore a product where such care and attention was poured into every detail, even the parts we’d never see?
Contrast this with the Priory Hall debacle where residents paid huge sums of money for appartments only to find out these were substandard. They were forced to move out as a result, on health and safety grounds, and left in limbo whilst still paying off huge mortgages on these properties.
Things are beginning to improve and we need houses again, let’s build homes we can be proud of. Let’s put care into the parts we can’t see..