Note how Scott introduced my demo with just enough words to communicate to Steve what was next on the agenda, where he should turn his attention, and who I was. I, in turn, used the minimum number of words necessary to direct Steve’s attention further, so he knew exactly what to look at. After that, Steve looked carefully at the software and asked

That explanation is too simple.

As we did all this mixing and combining of our seven essential elements, we always added in a personal touch, a little piece of ourselves, an octessence, and by putting together our goals and ideas and efforts and elements and molecules and personal touches, we formed our approach, an approach I call creative selection.

Steve believed she’d do better with a product that wasn’t loaded down with every thingamabob the product designers could dream up. He believed that stripping away nonessential features made products easier for people to learn from the start and

But if you’re expecting to read a handbook about the “Seven Elements That Made Apple Great,” I hope you’ll see that working in the Apple style is not a matter of following a checklist.

Demos were fundamental to our work at Apple. We used them to highlight the potential, explore the concepts, show the progress, prompt the discussion, and drive the decisions for making our products.

Collaboration: Working together well with other people and seeking to combine your complementary strengths 3. Craft: Applying skill to achieve high-quality results and always striving to do better 4. Diligence: Doing the necessary grunt work and never resorting to shortcuts or half measures 5. Decisiveness: Making tough choices and refusing to dela

already be stretched by the bustle of their everyday lives.

Greg often provided the insight that some difficult development path was the best way to make our products easier to use.