Steve Jobs Was a Craftsman
Posted by thearrow on October 6, 2011
I went along with my husband yesterday to a guitar repair shop down in Virginia. He had bought a mass-produced electric guitar a while ago and Larry, the guy whose shop we were visiting, had replaced all the electric components in it, had refinished the neck, replaced the pick ups, and generally turned it into a really fine instrument. The shop is actually his garage and basement. I was impressed by how neat and orderly it was, and by how many pieces of machinery it had. Rock music was humming from a radio indistinguishable from the tools around it and a Great Pyrenee made the place homely.
After testing the guitar and getting his face expanded into a wide grin at the amazing sounds it made, my husband started asking Larry if he played the instrument. He must have since he could build guitars so well. To which the even more amazing answer was, no. He said he wanted to play guitar when he was a kid but wasn’t that good at it, so instead he learned how to build one. On his own, by taking it apart and putting it back, and then by studying books and other materials. He got his basic training from his dad, a machinist, and his grandparents, who were carpenters. As he was saying this, I started looking at rows upon rows of small tools that looked identical, like pliers, but whose tips were slightly different, each adapted to a purpose that seemed very precise. All of them in their neat place, waiting for the right moment.
So here was this universe, quietly mastered by a self-effacing man, from which wonders of woodwork and electrical skill sprung out. Larry can build probably any model of electric guitar there is starting from a block of wood. If I can’t describe his work in more relevant details it’s just because I know nothing about guitars. But it was impossible not to see the exquisite quality of what he did.
In the evening, when the sad news of Steve Jobs’ passing reached me and I started reading the obituaries and the long list of amazing devices that “suffered a sea-change, into something rich and strange,” it struck me that he was, in fact, a craftsman. He focused his immense talent on creating and perfecting exquisite things that give us pleasure. The joy of using them makes us forget how useful they are. The quality of the devices he created is amazing, but it’s transcended by their beauty and the attention to detail that went into them.
That’s why Apple was so intimately dependent on his vision, because he took his creations to a different level, way beyond mass production. He would have had great success even if his devices weren’t so great; if they were just good enough. But a true craftsman is never content with anything less than the highest level he can achieve.
Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
