174 REFINE AND REHEARSE
deal, after all. Great slides mean little without a great delivery. A
great story will fall flat if delivered poorly.
Table 14.2 illustrates Jobs’s vocal delivery. It’s from the same
iPhone presentation featured in Scene 13, with a focus on his
actual delivery. The words Jobs chose to emphasize are italicized
in the first column; the second column lists notes on his deliv-
ery, including the moments when he pauses right after a phrase
or sentence.^4 Pay particular attention to pacing, pausing, and
volume.
Jobs varied his delivery to create suspense, enthusiasm, and
excitement. Nothing will do more to destroy all of the work you
put into crafting a spectacular presentation than to deliver it in
a boring monotone, which Jobs most certainly does not.
Jobs’s voice complemented the drama of the plot. He uses
similar devices in every presentation. This section details four
related techniques that Jobs uses to keep his listeners engaged:
inflection, pauses, volume, and rate.INFLECTION
Jobs changes his inflection by raising or lowering the pitch of
his voice. Think about how flat the iPhone launch would have
sounded if all of his words had been delivered with exactly the
same tone. Instead, Jobs raised his pitch when he said, “Are you
getting it?” and “This is one device.” Jobs has some favorite
descriptors that find their way into many of his presentations:
unbelievable,awesome,cool, and huge. These words would not
carry the same impact if the tone in which they are delivered
sounds exactly like the rest of the sentence. Jobs modifies his
tone frequently, keeping his listeners on the edge of their seats.PAUSE S
Nothing is more dramatic than a well-placed pause. “Today we’re
introducing a third kind of notebook,” Jobs told the Macworld
audience in January 2008. Then he paused a few beats before
saying, “It’s called the MacBook Air.” He paused again before the
delivering the headline: “It’s the world’s thinnest notebook.”^5
Jobs does not rush his presentation. He lets it breathe. He
will often remain quiet for several seconds as he lets a key point