KARA SWISHER: What do you imagine the next ten of your life will be about?
STEVE JOBS: Um. You know. This is probably a bad example, but I'm going to use it. When this whole thing with Gizmodo happened. I got a lot of advice from people that said, you gotta just let it slide. You can't, uh, you shouldn't go after a journalist because they bought stolen property, and they tried to extort you. You should let it slide. Apple's a big company now, you don't want the PR. You should let it slide.
And I thought deeply about this, and I ended up concluding that the worst thing that could possibly happen as we get big, and we get a little more influence in the world is if we change our core values and start letting it slide. I can't do that. I'd rather quit. You know, you go back five years ago, what would we have done if something like this happened. You go back ten years ago. Uh, what would you do if, uh, what would you do — no I won't go into that — we have the same values now as we had then. We're certainly a little more experienced, we're certainly more beat up, uh, but the core values are the same. And we come into work wanting to do the same thing today as we did five or ten years ago which is build the best products for people. You know there's nothing that makes my day more than getting an email from some random person in the universe who just bought an iPad over in the UK and tells me the story about how it's the coolest product they've ever brought home in their lives. That's what keeps me going. And it's what kept me going five years ago. It's what kept me going ten years ago when the doors were almost closed, and it's what'll keep me going five years from now, whatever happens.
