He found that we can hold only around seven items in our working memories at once. Trying to handle more than sevenish things in our minds simultaneously requires us to start making chunks, or to create groups of items that go together. If we can’t free up slots in our mind by making chunks when a lot of information is coming at us, we become overloaded, and once our working memory is filled, we begin to make more errors and less accurate judgments. Our ability to function falls off fast.


Gentlemen, we have a great deal of ground to cover. We’re trying to do things a lot differently than they’ve done here before. We’re going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because perfection is not attainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because, in the process, we will catch excellence. I’m not remotely interested in being just good.


He identified three features - loading web pages, clicking links, and going back to previous pages. These alone would be sufficiently compelling proofs of concept. In contrast, Don and I were hoping Mozilla would pan out somehow. I was trying to get the open source behemoth to build on the Mac, with little thought beyond that. I had no comparable plan, goals, nongoals, tight schedule, or technical shortcuts.


Greg often provided the insight that some difficult development path was the best way to make our products easier to use.


Three weeks or a month before the keynote itself, Steve would start rehearsing with portions of his slide deck in some venue at Apple, often in Town Hall. Slowly, day by day, he would build the show by stepping through it as he wanted to present it at the keynote. He practiced. A lot. He went over and over the material until he had the presentation honed, and he knew it cold.


Gentlemen, we have a great deal of ground to cover. We’re going to do things a lot differently than they’ve been done here before. We’re going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because perfection is not attainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because, in the process, we will catch excellence.