As those who have worked with Apple will attest, the simpler way isn’t always the easiest. Often it requires more time, more money, and more energy. It might require you to step on a few toes. But more times than not, it will lead to measurably better results.

Leonard Bernstein captured this thought perfectly when he said: To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

He never lost sight of the fact that at the end of the day, technology is about people: what stirs their imaginations, what keeps them satisfied, and what makes them smile.

Being competitive without being arrogant is a difficult thing.

The cost of the big briefings and subsequent focus groups, including airfare and hotels, must have been huge. During all my years working with Apple as both an agency creative director and a consultant, I never attended a formal meeting like this. In fact, I never even attended an overcrowded meeting. There’s something in the blood at Dell that req

Apple lets Chiat shoot for the stars. If it produces a clunker along the way, the world isn’t going to end. People aren’t going to abandon their Apple equipment on the streets.

Simplicity is an open book. The concept has to be quick. The customer has to get it in a second—like “phone, Internet, and iPod, all in one.” Customers need to be able to pick it up and start using it instantly. Most important, it has to improve our lives by an order of magnitude over what’s already available or create an entirely new category by i

Simplicity can make itself known in many forms: products, strategies, corporate hierarchies, processes, ads, speeches, and a hundred other places. But nowhere is Simplicity found in such a concentrated form as the name of a new product.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world . . . are the ones who do.