Focusing is about saying no (1997) [video]

https://donhopkins.medium.com/focusing-is-about-saying-no-st...

This is a hand made transcription I wrote of the video, with gesture and body language annotations and snapshots, because they were so much a part of what he meant to convey!

Prime example:

https://donhopkins.medium.com/focusing-is-about-saying-no-st...

>And so I think (hands on hips) there’ll be stories like that that come and go (pulls up pants), but focus is about saying no (Clinton thumb).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gestures

>Clinton thumb. The gesture dubbed the "Clinton thumb" after one of its most famous users, Bill Clinton, is used by politicians to provide emphasis in speeches. This gesture has the thumb leaning against the thumb-side portion of the index finger, which is part of a closed fist, or slightly projecting from the fist. An emphatic, it does not exhibit the anger of the clenched fist or pointing finger, and so is thought to be less threatening.[15] This gesture was likely adopted by Clinton from John F. Kennedy, who can be seen using it in many speeches and images from his political career.[15]

    >> What about OpenDoc? >> What about OpenDoc? Yeah. [ Applause ]
    What about it? [ Laughter ]
    It's dead, right? It's dead, right? >> I don't know. I spent a lot of time working on it. >> Yeah.
    Well, you know, let me say something that's sort of generic. I know some of you spend a lot of time working on stuff that we put a bullet in the head of.
    I apologize. I feel your pain. [ Laughter ]
    But Apple suffered for several years from lousy engineering management. I have to say it.
    And there were people that were going off in 18 different directions doing arguably interesting things in each one of them.
    Good engineers, lousy management. And what happened was you look at the farm that's been created with all these different animals going in different directions,
    and it doesn't add up. The total is less than the sum of the parts.
    And so we had to decide what are the fundamental directions we're going in and what makes sense and what doesn't.
    And there were a bunch of things that didn't. And microcosmically they might have made sense. Macrocosmically they made no sense.
    And, you know, the hardest thing is when you think about focusing, right, you think, well, focusing is saying yes, no.
    Focusing is about saying no. Focusing is about saying no.
    And you've got to say no, no, no. And when you say no, you piss off people.
    And they go talk to the San Jose Mercury and they write a shitty article about you. [ Laughter ]
    And it's really a pisser. Because you want to be nice, you don't want to tell the San Jose Mercury the person is telling you this,
    you know, just was asked to leave or this or that or this or that. So you take the lumps.
    And Apple's been taking their share of lumps for the last six months in a very unfair way.
    And it's been taking them, you know, like an adult. And I'm proud of that.
    And there's more to come, I'm sure. There's more to come. I mean, some of these, I read these articles about some of these people that have left.
    I know some of these people. They haven't done anything in seven years. And, you know, they leave and it's like, you know,
    it's like the company's going to fall apart the next day. And so, you know, I think there'll be stories like that that come and go.
    But focus is about saying no. And the result of that focus is going to be some really great products where the total is much greater than the sum of the parts.
    And OpenDock, I mean, I was for putting a bullet in the head of OpenDock. A, I didn't think it was great technology.
    But B, it didn't fit. The rest of the world isn't going to use OpenDock.
    And I think as a container strategy, there's some stuff in the Java space that's much better.
    And even the OpenDock guys were basically trying to rewrite the whole thing in Java anyway, which was a restart. So it didn't make sense.


    ywhisper() {
            model="${HOME}/.local/share/whisper/ggml-medium.en.bin" # base < small < medium
            yt-dlp -f 251 -o - "$1" |
                    ffmpeg -i - -vn -acodec pcm_s16le -ar 16000 -ac 2 -f wav - |
                    nice -n 20 whisper-cpp --threads "$(nproc)" --file - \
                            --language en --model "$model"
    }

If I remember correctly there should be another video of Steve where he stresses the point that focusing actually means saying no to great ideas. That’s an important qualifier missing in the linked WWDC 1997 video.