You’d better have the technology knowledge. I really urge you not to think you can start a whole company and business with just ideas on paper, because you’ll end up owning so few of those ideas.
I really believe I know why my designs were better than any other human being, but I don’t want to take credit for starting Apple, for turning the world around or anything like that.
Some great people are leaders and others are more lucky, in the right place at the right time. I’d put myself in the latter category. But I’d never call myself a normal designer of anything.
Steve Jobs didn’t really set the direction of my Apple I and Apple II designs but he did the more important part of turning them into a product that would change the world. I don’t deny that.
Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me. They’re shy and they live in their heads. The very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone.
Back in high school I told my dad, “I’m going to have a computer someday.” And he said that it cost as much as a house-the downpayment on a house. And I said, “Well, I’ll live in an apartment.”
I went – I had designed – in high school designed hundreds and hundreds of computers over and over and over, so I developed these skills without ever thinking I’d do it in life as job.
