Focus and trade-offs
Which good ideas should we stop working on?
Distinguish a shorter list of priorities from a real decision to move people and resources.
Public recordings · A simulated perspective
SJ
Steve Jobs
Apple
A product decision often starts with what to leave out. Explore Jobs’s public interviews and presentations with the original situation in view: the product, the team, and the trade-offs being discussed. Historic recordings can offer a perspective without becoming a prescription for today.
49 recordings in the collection23 hrs indexed
Collection totals describe compiled material. Access to archive depth depends on your plan.
Start with your situation
Questions worth exploring
Editorial starting points for a conversation. They do not imply that the record answers every detail of your situation.
The customer experience
What experience should this product make possible?
Start with the person using the product, then explore the technical decisions that follow.
Product and organization
Do our team and roadmap support the same direction?
Use the historical context to question your assumptions, while keeping differences in company stage in view.
Read before you ask
Ideas with their context attached.
Source guide
Steve Jobs on focus: choosing what to stop building
Read Jobs’s discussion of product focus in its 1997 context, with original recording links and questions for evaluating your own roadmap.
Read the guideExplore the public record
Selected recordings
Open the original recording to hear the speakers and the surrounding conversation. Upload dates can be later than the events being recorded; they are not dates of the person’s activity.
Steve Jobs at 27: How to Think Differently
Published/uploaded 2026-10-16
Open the original ↗Apple iPhone 4 “Antennagate” Q&A - Steve Jobs, Tim Cook & Bob Mansfield
Published/uploaded 2026-09-22
Open the original ↗Steve Jobs Explains What Went Wrong at Apple — Before He Came Back
Published/uploaded 2026-08-31
Open the original ↗Building NeXT from the Ground Up - Steve Jobs on Vision and Survival, 1986
Recorded 1986 · Published/uploaded 2026-05-21
Open the original ↗Steve Jobs, speech at the Apple campus
Recorded 1999 · Published/uploaded 2026-03-17
Open the original ↗Before the Comeback: Steve Jobs’ Most Honest Interview (1994) #tech #apple #news
Published/uploaded 2025-11-19
Open the original ↗
About the person
A public record, not participation.
Steve Jobs (1955–2011) co-founded Apple. His work spanned Apple, NeXT, and Pixar. This collection explores his public interviews and presentations, with the historical context kept separate from a simulation’s application to a new question.
Keep the limits in view.
The simulation can miss context or generate an inaccurate interpretation. It cannot speak for Steve Jobs, provide private information, or tell you what they would actually advise in your situation.
How Timbre handles context and accuracy →