Steve Jobs's best speech

Maybe Steve Jobs's speech at Standford 2005 graduation ceremony is the most famous, but the following one that he gave at 1997 right after he came back to Apple is the best. Especially that he asked the audience to change the mentality that "For Apple to growth and prosper, the Microsoft has to lose". Very classic. And Steve Jobs laid out the Apple's came back strategy clearly. This whole video could be used in a Harvard MBA class.

Focus and Focus

I just reflect on what Steve Jobs said in the past keynotes, earning conference calls. I vividly remembered this statement from Mr. Jobs, "there were so many things we could do and we choose only a few things to focus on". (this may not exactly be Mr. Jobs's wording but it was what he meant anyway). 

It is truly remarkable if you look back at the products from Apple over the last decade. With so much talent in the company, so many ideas, so many possibilities, that Mr. Jobs has picked only a few and steered his people to focus on. 

I think Apple's people really get what it means to pay attention to details, whatever slightly those details are. I am not sure anyone at Apple except Mr. Jobs has the guts, or credibility to be able to have Apple people to focus on a few things. With so much cash, without a strong leader, it is inevitable that Apple would think it is invincible and just step into too many fields. That is my biggest worry as an Apple shareholder and as an Apple admirer.

J-20 and Liu Xiaobo

Say what? Well, China President Hu Jintao will be visiting Washington later this month. Usually the China government would release several political prisoners to show some good will towards Washington. But this time around, instead of releasing the prisoner say Liu Xiaobo, the China government decides to leak out some photos about its coming fifth generation fighter J-20.

What a change!

Well, a country that is capable of producing the fifth-generation fighter yet have to put a citizen that merely expressing his political will into a 11-year prison (and a Nobel Peace Prize winner 2010). It remains to be seen how China would turn itself into a real civil society in the coming decade.

"...and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed..."

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America