Technology Quotes

Part of our brand is that we're pretty understated in what we do. If you look at other technology companies, they might preannounce things, and it will be a couple years before they really happen, and they don't happen in the way they said they would.

Pixar is the most technically advanced creative company; Apple is the most creatively advanced technical company.

Apple really hasn't weighed in on the sub-$1,000 computer category. Their next step could be refreshing their current products and making pricing changes.

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.

The computer reminds one of Lon Chaney -- it is the machine of a thousand faces.

From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.

What does it say about our culture that personality is now considered a technology, a tool of the trade, not only in politics but in business and the professions? Has everyone been forced to become an actor? In sixteenth century England, actors were.

In all large corporations, there is a pervasive fear that someone, somewhere is having fun with a computer on company time. Networks help alleviate that fear.

In software, we rarely have meaningful requirements. Even if we do, the only measure of success that matters is whether our solution solves the customer’s shifting idea of what their problem is.

There was a time when nails were high-tech. There was a time when people had to be told how to use a telephone. Technology is just a tool. People use tools to improve their lives.

Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according to everybody is the ‘most reliable Windows ever.‘ To me, this is like saying that asparagus is ‘the most articulate vegetable ever.

The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action.

You can try to control people, or you can try to have a system that represents reality. I find that knowing what's really happening is more important than trying to control people.

The Internet is like a giant jellyfish. You can't step on it. You can't go around it. You've got to get through it.

Double your drive space — delete Windows !

Programmers are in a race with the Universe to create bigger and better idiot-proof programs, while the Universe is trying to create bigger and better idiots. So far the Universe is winning.

Programming is like sex: one mistake and you’re providing support for a lifetime.

To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.

I have gotten everything from a one-page letter written in pencil to a 50-page computer generated masterpiece.

I’ve finally learned what ‘upward compatible’ means. It means we get to keep all our old mistakes.

Any code of your own that you haven’t looked at for six or more months might as well have been written by someone else.

The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.