We should be encouraging their collaboration, not treating them like thieves

"Music," he explained, "is different" from other intellectual property. Not Karl Marx different - this isn't latent communism. But neither is it just "a piece of plastic or a loaf of bread." The artist controls just part of the music-making process; the audience adds the rest. Fans' imagination makes it real. Their participation makes it live. "We are just troubadours," Tweedy told me. "The audience is our collaborator. We should be encouraging their collaboration, not treating them like thieves."

Lawrence Lessig, "Why Wilco Is the Future of Music," Wired, Feb 2005.

The technology aspect needs to be stripped out

"Marketing is the key," Hirschhorn says. "The technology aspect needs to be stripped out of the equation. People need to understand that they can take their music with them, they can take it on the bus."

Eric Hellweg, "Gunning for iTunes," Technology Review, 25 Jan 2005

I could find patterns in it

I began by counting things. The very thing that had attracted me to the diary in the first place was also the thing that made it difficult to work with. I mean there's just so much. The diary is a long accumulation of workaday entries. And so I had to find some way to get control of the information so that I could find patterns in it.

Laurie Kahn-Leavitt, "Interviews with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: About Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's Work on A Midwife's Tale," dohistory.org, Interviews done in 1991,1993 & 1994.

Passion vs Job

The Mac was more like a back-to-the-roots thing. Really the reason the Mac succeeded was the people were passionate and brilliant and motivated and devoted their lives to it. Whereas, the Lisa maybe had a little bit of that, but it was much more corporate, and a job, as opposed to a passion.

....

When you look at the last 20 years of PC development, are you surprised at how much has changed, or how little?

Both. On the hardware side, how much. Moore's Law predicted it, but then to actually see it play out in such a stunning fashion. I mean now the computer I'm using every day has literally 8,000 times the memory that the original Mac had. The hardware is so capable compared to that, it's almost like a dream. Whereas the software is where it's disappointing. The basic software since the Macintosh has evolved at a snail's pace and in some ways it's even gone backwards in usability.

The metaphor of the interface has hardly changed at all.

That's right. That's not because of a lack of possibilities. It has to do with the business dynamics of the industry--essentially Microsoft getting the monopoly and being anti-innovation and establishing an environment where innovation was crushed rather than rewarded. That's the PC industry the last 10 years.

....

How do you feel about the iPod being closed now?

The same way. I think Apple is making a blunder not licensing FairPlay. Ultimately, when you boil it down, it comes to respect for your customer. I think Apple is showing disrespect to the customers by locking them in.

Mac fans are often described as fanatic. What is the "cult of Mac"?

The cult of Mac, I think what it is...is essentially passion. It starts with the designers and the people in the company being passionate about what they're doing. It starts with the designers making something that they want for themselves more than anything else in the world, that's the single secret. As soon as you're making something you want more than anything else, you don't have to do research about the customers. You just look inside yourself. You run the risk of being wrong about it, but at least you make something that has integrity.

Maybe even a better word is love. You fill the product with love and then people will love it.

Scott Ard, Interview with Andy Hertzfeld, "How the Mac was born, and other tales," CNet, 11 Jan 2005