Steve Jobs explains why he'd quit Apple rather than compromise its core values. When advisors urged him to ignore the Gizmodo controversy because Apple was too big and powerful, he refused. He says the company's mission has stayed the same for five to ten years: build the best products for people.
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When this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got a lot of advice from people that said, "You've gotta just let it slide. You can't, you shouldn't, 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 5 years ago, what would we have done if something like this happened? You go back 10 years ago, you know, what would you do if— without going into that. We have the same values now as we had then. We're maybe a little more experienced, certainly more beat up. But the core values are the same. And we come into work wanting to do the same thing today as we did 5 or 10 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, you know, in their lives. That's what keeps me going. And it's what kept me going 5 years ago. It's what kept me going 10 years ago when the doors were almost closed. And it's what will keep me going 5 years from now, whatever happens. So I don't see why you have to change if you get big.
