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in 1979 at age twenty-four, during a paid tour of Xerox’s famed Palo Alto Research Center. During his visit, Jobs was given a demonstration of the Xerox Alto, the first computer with a mouse and point-and-click interface. “I thought it was the best thing I’d ever seen in my life,” he said. “Now remember it was very flawed, what we saw was incomplete, they’d done a bunch of things wrong. But we didn’t know that at the time but still thought they had the germ of the idea there and they’d done it very well and within you know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this someday.”17

But Xerox’s management had no idea what its scientists had cooked up in the lab. Despite dozens of demonstrations, Xerox’s executives didn’t see its potential. “Basically they were copier heads that just had no clue about a computer or what it could do,” said Jobs. “And so they just grabbed defeat from the greatest victory in the computer industry. Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry today.” 18

When it comes to innovation, Jobs is fond of quoting Picasso’s famous dictum: good artists copy; great artists steal. To which Jobs adds: “And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

The Creative Connection

For Jobs, innovation is about creativity, putting things together in unique ways. “Creativity is just connecting things,” Jobs told Wired magazine. “When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. . . . Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”19

Apple’s use of magnetism is a good example of how the company takes a technology—something as simple as magnets—and plays with it, putting it to different uses. The first magnets appeared in the latches of Apple’s notebooks. A magnet would pull the latch out of its housing as the lid was closed. Then Apple added magnets to its remote controls, so that they could be safely stored attached to the side of the computer. Newer MacBooks have dispensed with latches altogether in favor of stronger magnets that hold their lids closed when not in use; they also have MagSafe power adapters, which stay in place thanks to magnets. They are designed to easily detach from the power cord, stopping the computer from crashing to the floor. It’s an idea Apple took from Japanese rice cookers, which have had magnetic power adapters for several years for the same reason—to prevent boiling water from being thrown across the kitchen if a child snags the power cord.

Jobs has said that everything he learned about products he learned from Heathkits as a kid. Heathkits were popular kits for building electronics like ham radios, amplifiers, and oscillators. The kits taught Jobs that products were manifestations of human ingenuity, not magical objects dropped from the sky. “It gave a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in one’s environment,” he said. “My childhood was very fortunate in that way.”20

Jobs has always been a keen student of design, of architecture, and of technology. His offices would be full of electronics devices he’d dismantled to see how they worked. John Sculley remembered that Jobs was always studying other manufacturers’ products. “. . . [E]lectronic parts and cases of products were scattered about the room,” he wrote. “It was cluttered and disorganized, with posters and pictures taped to the walls. He had just