Geoffrey Cain > Quotes

“Pixar worked with technology Steve didn’t understand—computer graphics and animation—and he was forced to trust his team’s expertise. Ed observed that Steve “didn’t know anything about graphics or the direction it was going. He just believed it was going to become important.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“The Texas billionaire who’d tried to teach Steve fiscal discipline took his message national. Armed with flip charts and infomercials, Ross called the national deficit the “crazy aunt nobody in the family wants to talk about.” He bypassed both parties, positioning himself as a populist independent with a knack for speaking directly to voters. “Absolutely I endorse him,” Steve told a magazine. Steve didn’t let their breakdown get in the way of his admiration for Ross. He pointed to Ross’s “belief in the worth of the common individual.” In the 1992 presidential election, he captured 19 percent of the popular vote, the best third-party showing since Teddy Roosevelt.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“Pixar worked with technology Steve didn’t understand—computer graphics and animation—and he was forced to trust his team’s expertise. Ed observed that Steve “didn’t know anything about graphics or the direction it was going. He just believed it was going to become important.” Ed even asked Steve to stay out of creative meetings because his presence was so overpowering that he could derail discussions simply by speaking.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“At the same time, Steve attempted to impose order. For example, through radical pay transparency. Everyone knew exactly what everyone else made: $75,000 for senior staff and $50,000 for everyone else. He didn’t tolerate salary politics.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“The logo’s 28-degree tilt was, Hartmut insisted, rooted in mystical harmony. In Pythagorean philosophy, twenty-eight was a “perfect number,” equal to the sum of its divisors. The ancient Greeks believed such numbers held the keys to the cosmic order.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“It felt like signature Steve. The team had seen him lose major customer deals, watch the entire team slump in dejection, only to return the next morning with electric enthusiasm—and no small amount of bluster. Steve had this ability to “confidently state things that he did not know to be true,” software developer Leo Hourvitz observed.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“engineer, along with a hundred others, began his hike that night near Samsung’s Everland theme park, traversing the mountains around Yongin—a distance of sixty-four kilometers (about forty miles)—through the day and overnight. The hike was designed to test the team’s mental toughness as they prepared to race forward making a 64K DRAM chipset, an early semiconductor used in calculators.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech

“Steve was building the future of American surveillance while snacking on Medjool dates and sipping at his favorite drink, carrot juice.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“Our challenge was that it usually takes ten years and $100 million to associate a symbol with the name of the company,” he said. Steve wanted to choose an iconic logo off the bat and skip the waiting period.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“He was like a guy who’s been waterboarded at Guantanamo,” Mike recalled. “[He] couldn’t sleep…. He was off his rocker every day.” To keep the company afloat, Mike said that Steve was writing $10 million checks out of his own checkbook. He was starting to run out of personal cash too. In 1991, Reed College invited Steve to speak to incoming freshmen. “Character is built not in good times,” he told them, “but in bad times; not in a time of plenty, but in a time of adversity.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“Whether through his intensity, his taste, or his insistence on discipline, Steve created a design culture that employees never forgot. Many loved the high standards and the pride that came from producing excellent work. Even years later, a number said that NeXT was the most magical place they’d ever worked. Nowhere else came close.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“NeXT was teaching Steve something he’d never learned at Apple: how to transform failure into fuel.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“In late 1991, Jim Diamond landed one of NeXT’s biggest sales: thousands of workstations to the National Reconnaissance Office, an elite intelligence agency whose mere existence was a state secret until 1992.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

“NeXT’s leadership team began taking a cold, hard look at the company’s hardware business. The fact was that NeXT’s computers simply weren’t selling. “[They were] too expensive,” hardware chief Rich Page said. And third-party software options were still too limited. Even with “a great operating system, it didn’t really have the right apps,” he said.”
― Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary