Steve Jobs was famous for his insane attention to detail. The fonts had just to be right. The hinges on a MacBook needed to provide just the right amount of stiffness. The color of the original iMac had to be just the right blue (in case you’re wondering — it’s bondi-blue; named after the famous blue waters at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia).
There is something truly magical about using a product which has received so much attention for detail. These are the products we fall in love with. Apple’s dominance in nearly all the markets it competes in, is the logical consequence of their behavior.
Today I finally got around watching the full 90 minutes of Steve Jobs’ January 30th, 1984 first public unveiling of the Macintosh (you can watch it here). It’s mesmerizing. Steve Jobs does an absolutely incredible job at it — it’s truly a work of art.
The actual scene where Steve pulls Macintosh out of a bag, switches it on and lets Macintosh run a demo, I must have seen 50 times by now — it’s widely shared. And all this time I missed an incredible detail:
In one of the shots, Macintosh is showing a photo of Steve Jobs in MacPaint the title of the image is “Real Artists Ship”:
This is how you create a legacy: You sweat every single little detail. And create wonder and astonishment 30 years after you released your art to the world.