Success Quote by Steve Jobs

Jobs is smuggling a moral argument into a business plan: bigness is a temptation, not a virtue. In one clean contrast - best versus biggest - he frames Apple as a company that measures itself by judgment and taste rather than market share, a stance that flatters the customer and disciplines the organization. It is also a preemptive defense. If you lose in volume, you can still win in meaning.

The specific intent is managerial as much as rhetorical. "Best devices" narrows the target to product obsessiveness: materials, interface, the feel of frictionless use. "Not to be the biggest" tells teams what to ignore - feature creep, scattershot product lines, the quarterly sugar high of chasing every segment. It justifies saying no, an underrated corporate superpower and a signature Jobs move.

The subtext is tribal. Buyers are invited to see themselves as connoisseurs, not consumers of commodity electronics. That identity story helped Apple charge premium prices while turning constraints into a kind of aesthetic: fewer options, tighter ecosystem, controlled experience. "Best" also quietly redefines success as something only Apple can credibly grade, because who decides what best means? Usually the people holding the keynote clicker.

Context matters: this is post-near-death Apple, reacting to the 1990s sprawl and competing against giants like Microsoft, IBM, later Dell and Samsung - companies that could win the numbers game. Jobs counters with a philosophy that sounds humble but is strategically aggressive: we don't need to be everywhere; we need to be undeniable where it counts.