Apple CEO Steve Jobs isn’t exactly known to mince words with his customers or employees, and his characteristic bluntness even extends as far as his conversations with other CEOs.
Take this conversation he had with eerie William Macy lookalike and Nike CEO Mark Parker upon the introduction of the Nike+ product line. Asking Parker for advice on how to run his company, Jobs bluntly replied: “Get rid of the crappy stuff.”
“I expected a little laugh,” Parker said. “But there was a pause and no laugh at the end.”
No, Mark, Jobs is dead serious about excising the crap. Well, except for the Apple TV.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
