The full saying goes, “good artists copy; great artists steal.” It’s usually attributed to Picasso originally. I didn’t really understand what this meant until

The full saying goes, “good artists copy; great artists steal.” It’s usually attributed to Picasso originally. I didn’t really understand what this meant until I heard Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt. He transformed the song, made it his own, to the point where a lot of people don’t know about the original. Even Trent Reznor said Hurt is Johnny Cash’s song now. This is how a great artist steals; they elevate and transform the original into something new that is able to connect with more people in a deeper way. When Jobs said it, I’m sure his view was that Apple took what they saw at Xerox and made it their own, to a level that makes Xerox’s original largely irrelevant, like a great artist would. Meanwhile, Microsoft were not great artists, and simply copied.