Steve Jobs speaks out

In an exclusive interview, Apple's CEO talked with Fortune senior editor Betsy Morris in February in Kona, Hawaii, where he was vacationing with his family, about the keys to the company's success, the prospect of Apple without Jobs, and more. Here are excerpts.

On the iPod tipping point
"People have finally started to realize that they don't have to put up with Windows," Jobs says. Apple's ad campaigns play up that idea.
On the iPod tipping point
"It was difficult for a while because for various reasons the Mac had not been accepted by a lot of people, who went with Windows. And we were just working really hard, and our market share wasn't going up. It makes you wonder sometimes whether you're wrong. Maybe our stuff isn't better, although we thought it was. Or maybe people don't care, which is even more depressing.

"It turns out with the iPod we kind of got out from that operating-system glass ceiling and it was great because [it showed that] Apple innovation, Apple engineering, Apple design did matter. The iPod captured 70% market share. I cannot tell you how important that was after so many years of laboring and seeing a 4% to 5% market share on the Mac. To see something like that happen with the iPod was a great shot in the arm for everybody."

On what they did next:
"We made more. We worked harder. We said: 'This is great. Let's do more.' I mean, the Mac market share is going up every single quarter. We're growing four times faster than the industry. People are starting to pay a little more attention. We've helped it along. We put Intel processors in and we can run PC apps alongside Mac apps. We helped it along. But I think a lot of it is people have finally started to realize that they don't have to put up with Windows - that there is an alternative. I think nobody really thought about it that way before."
Last updated March 07 2008: 7:10 PM ET

iPhone's birth

Connecting

No consultants

What drives employees

Apple without Jobs?

Focus

Managing style

The OS

Monday meetings

Roadblocks

iPods

Apple store

Tech's next wave

Apple TV

Downturn
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