Real Artists Ship

An old saying at AppleComputer, attributed to SteveJobs, meaning that while producing stuff that is cool, elegant, innovative, and InsanelyGreat is important, it is even more important to actually produce working software that can be delivered to users.

He was about 2 years late shipping the Mac. The Lisa team finished much sooner, but the product sucked. Steve found approximately the right balance between shipping date and taking improvement/design time, especially in terms of leveraging wimpy hardware. He had the rare knack for finding that balance for products that nobody made yet.

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