You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
That's been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.
Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that.
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.
You know, I was showing this to somebody -- I was giving a demo to somebody a while ago, who had never seen this before, inside Apple. And I finished the demo, and I said what do you think. They told me this, they said, You had me at scrolling. So, the iPhone with the most amazing iPod ever. You can now touch your music.
You know, it was just a year ago that I was up here and announced that we were going to switch to Intel processors. A huge, heart transplant to Intel microprocessors. And I said that we would do it over the coming 12 months. We did it in seven months, and it was the -- it's been the smoothest and most successful transition that we've ever seen in the history of our industry. And it was because we made a beautiful, seamless version of OSX for Intel processors. And our team created Rosetta software which lets you run PowerPC apps on top of OSX on Intel processors. Our hardware team got to cranking out a new Mac with Intel processors every month, and we completed this transition in seven months. But we didn't do this alone. We did this with the help of a lot of folks. Our new colleagues at Intel really helped us. Thank you very much. Our third-party developers rapidly moving their apps to universal versions to run at native speeds on Intel processors. Thank you very much. And most of all, our users. The minute you saw these lightning-fast machines, you bought 'em. And we've had an extremely successful year, and I want to thank our users very much.
Now, as many as you know, our retail stores have for a while been selling over half their Macs to people who have never owned a Mac before: switchers. Well, I'm pleased to report that now, in the U.S., Macs selling through all channels, over half of them are selling to people who have never owned a Mac before. It's not just limited to our retail stores anymore. Half the Macs we're selling in the U.S. We are picking up lots and lots of new members of the Mac family, and we couldn't be happier. As a matter of fact, here's one that might be coming on soon. Jim Allchin at Microsoft was quoted recently as saying if he didn't work for Microsoft, he would buy a Mac, and he's retiring soon, so I've alerted our Seattle stores to keep an eye out for him and give him really good service. You know, Vista's coming out, and you know our ads with the Mac guy and the PC guy, we made a little ad for Vista, and I'd love to show it to you now, if you'd like to see it.