~ The Biography Of Steve Jobs ~

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

We were in Jobs’ neighborhood two weekends ago having dinner with some friends of my parents, and we decided to take a walk in order to look at Steve Jobs’ and Steve Young’s houses, which are right next to each other. We headed over, and all of a sudden were alongside Jobs house. It’s a really unusual and interesting house, but very understated and relatively small. You can just freely walk on the sidewalk right next to it.

Well, we were walking along, and I heard dishes clattering, coming from his house, and I look over and there he was in his kitchen window, black turtleneck and all, washing dishes. He just looked up at us, maybe 15 feet away. Nothing in between us but a window, no tall fence (a short, decorative, waist-high one). And we just walked on and proceeded to admire the apple orchard he has in his front yard, and even walked up his driveway a little to see his tulip garden.

His neighbor, who we were walking with, told us that his security lives in the house next door, and he is under constant surveillance, but I still couldn’t help but be shocked at how simple and unassuming his house was, and the fact that we saw him washing his dishes.

Source:Gawker, Mar 31, 2010

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

I used to work at one of the Apple Stores here in New York. He was scheduled to come in, we didn’t know exactly when. He got out of a town car out front, walked in, and right up to me - shaking my hand and saying, "Hi, I’m Steve Jobs! Is [name of the store manager] here?" When I said he was and called him, [Jobs] said he was going to run to the bathroom first - and went to the customer’s bathroom (which anyone can use - and isn’t exactly the cleanest). He came out, walked right back up to me, and started talking about the store. After about 5 min customers around us starting walking up asking to take pictures, and asking questions, when he promptly asked to be excused and left - back to the car and away.

We had all heard stories about his desire to not shake hands (he offered first), his desire to not be in public (he spent his entire time in full view in open areas of the store) and his general shitty attitude (he was super nice and cordial).

Source:Gawker, Mar 31, 2010

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

Growing up I was a huge apple fan-boy (fine, still am.) The first NY apple store in Soho opening was probably the coolest thing that happened to me between the ages 6 and 12. For a while I would spend almost every weekend there. Every year for halloween I was a mac, and I made a habit of shaving the Apple logo into my head to celebrate every OS launch.

My neighbor Brooke mentioned that Steve Jobs, busy as he is, always reads email sent to his public address. I think I was around 10 or 12, and I sent a very enthusiastic and grammatically incorrect message including a picture of my shaved head [with an Apple logo in the back).

Apparently he forwarded it to the head of Public Relations, Katie [Cotton], and I got invited to the opening of the 5th Avenue Cube. I can never thank them enough. This was probably the high point of my childhood.

Source: Allen Paltrow, Oct 6, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

In 1998, Jobs decided that Airborne Logistics Services, a division of Airborne Express that maintained a parts warehouse for Apple in Grove City, Ohio, wasn’t delivering spare parts quickly enough. According to Jeff Cooke, who ran Apple’s customer-service department at the time, Jobs ordered him to find a replacement for ALS. When Cooke resisted, citing concerns that ALS would sue for breach of contract, he says Jobs told him that "there won’t be any lawsuit. Just tell them if they f--- with us, they’ll never get another f---ing dime from this company, ever," Cooke recalls. Jobs says he does not remember making the comment, but confirms that he was determined to drop ALS.

Sure enough, Apple became embroiled in a lawsuit with ALS, which was settled in mid-1999. Cooke resigned after just 100 days at Apple. "My stock options would be worth $10 million had I stayed, but I knew I couldn’t have stood it--and he’d have fired me anyway," says Cooke. If some of Jobs’s methods are distasteful, they do get results. After dumping ALS, Apple gave its spare-parts business to PC ServiceSource and demanded it slash the inventory by 75% in a matter of weeks, says former PC ServiceSource CEO Mark Hilz, now head of a Dallas real estate management company. "They got very, very, very results-oriented once Jobs got back there," says Hilz. "Under Steve Jobs, there’s zero tolerance for not performing."

Source:Fortune, Jul 31, 2000

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

It’s Monday morning, and Jobs is onstage at the Flint Center in Cupertino, obsessing. Tomorrow the auditorium will overflow with thousands of Apple loyalists; right now he’s rehearsing the killer moment where he says, "Say hello to the new iMacs," and the machines glide out from behind the dark curtain and across the stage. But the current lighting leaves their translucence insufficiently vivid on the gigantic onstage screen. So Jobs wants the lights brighter and turned on earlier in the roll-out. The producer, Steph Adams, speaks into his headset, telling the backstage guys to yeah, just try it again, with the edgy tone of a man whose job consists of placating a perfectionist. No good. Jobs jogs halfway up the aisle and slouches into a center seat, his legs slung over the seat backs of the next row. "Let’s keep doing it till we get it right, O.K.?"

They go again. The iMacs are still underlighted. "No, no," Jobs whines, agonized. "This isn’t working at all."

And again. Now the lights are bright enough, but they’re still coming on too late. "I’m getting tired of asking about this," Jobs growls.

Again. And finally they get it right, the five impeccably lighted iMacs gleaming as they glide forward smoothly on the giant screen. "Oh! Right there! That’s great!" Jobs yells, elated at the very notion of a universe capable of producing these insanely beautiful machines. "That’s perfect!" he bellows, his voice booming across the empty auditorium. "Wooh!"

And you know what? He’s right. The iMacs do look better when the lights come on earlier.

Source:Time Magazine, Oct 18, 1999

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

I first encountered Steve Jobs in front of the Company Store, outside the main entrance to 1 Infinite Loop. It was July 2001, and I was a 23-year-old skate punk from New York who had been at Apple for all of six weeks.

He almost ran me over.

As I walked back from the campus fitness center, a silver Mercedes S-Class launched a wheel onto the sidewalk and nearly took me out. I whipped around and threw a dirty look at the driver. The door opened, and the driver spat an expletive at the curb as he exited. I recognized the face immediately. It’s him, I thought. Oh God, he’s pissed. […] I kept walking. DO NOT ENGAGE, I thought. DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT. But I couldn’t help myself. He kept walking briskly behind me, staring at the ground, visibly irritated about his car and whatever made him come into the office. After I looked back for the third or fourth time, he cracked a smile that said, This kid doesn’t even have the balls to talk to me. It was a week before Macworld New York. I took a deep breath and spoke.

"Ready for the show?"

He looked up and smiled for real. "Yeah, we’ve got a lot of great stuff. It’s going to be fun."

"Well, I grew up in New York. Say hi for me."

Another smile. "OK."

He walked past me and held the IL1 lobby door open. Steve Jobs. Holding the door for me. What?

That moment changed my life, and other former and current employees surely have moments like it. Whatever Steve was upset about that day was almost certainly more serious than anything I have faced in my career. Yet he still had the good sense to give me a smile and an act of courtesy. It taught me to never lose perspective and never forget who you’re dealing with, no matter what else is going on.

Source:Matt Drance, Oct 7, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that interim CEO Steve Jobs and Apple board member Larry Ellison were apparently so annoyed by a computer consultant who wants to be Apple CEO that they sent prank e-mails telling the executive he had the job. The newspaper reported Wednesday that Jobs and Ellison, who is also chairman and CEO of Oracle Corp., both sent e-mail messages to Michael Murdock, a Burlingame, California-based computer consultant, two days before Christmas, telling him he had the job.

"OK. You can have the job. -- Larry," was one message sent to Murdock, who has been conducting an e-mail campaign for the top job, the Chronicle reported. Jobs reportedly wrote, "Yep, Mike, it’s all yours. When can you start?" Murdock said he took the messages seriously and said he could start work January 5. The newspaper said Jobs replied, "Please do not come to Apple."

Apple Computer spokeswoman Katie Cotton said the situation was "completely ridiculous" and said that Jobs had responded to Murdock "in jest" because of the numerous e-mails he had received. "This particular person was just firing e-mails and sending e-mails to Steve and Larry on a regular basis and in jest. Steve responded to him," she said. "He has taken it too far," Cotton said, referring to Murdock, who said she has been calling media organizations with the story. But Murdock -- who said he quit his job as a Macintosh Systems engineer at Pixar Animation Studios Inc., where Jobs is also chairman, in August -- said he has not harassed Apple or any of the individuals involved.

Murdock said he sent Jobs about four e-mails on the topic since August, and that when Jobs wrote him in December to say "please go away," he gave up his campaign. He also contacted Apple’s search firm Heidrick & Struggles, Apple board member Bill Campbell and Ellison. He also said he had lunch with Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak. "I have never called Apple; I have never called Pixar," Murdock said. "I have not been pounding down the door." The consultant said he respected Jobs and Ellison but felt like they were "trying to play some type of fraternity joke."

Source: Reuters, Jan 1998

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

During one of our agency’s regularly scheduled marketing meetings with Steve, he asked for our advice on what he felt was a conundrum. Which was more important — to make the logo look right to the owner before the PowerBook was opened, or to have it look right to the rest of the world when the machine was in use?

Look around today and the answer is pretty obvious. Every laptop on earth has a logo that’s right-side up when the machine is opened. Back then, it wasn’t so obvious, probably because laptops were not yet ubiquitous.

So we debated the issue. There were decent arguments on both sides. It seemed like we were damned if we did and damned if we didn’t. Remember, Steve was the guy who put the customer experience first. In the end, that was the reason he ended making the decision he did. He thought that the most important person in the equation was the one who shelled out good money to buy the product in the first place.

It was only when later PowerBook models were designed that Steve reconsidered and decided the logo should face the world right-side up. That one fleeting moment of pleasure for the owner started to feel tiny in comparison. Looking back, it borders on the unbelievable that something so wrong could ever have seemed right. That Steve Jobs ever wrestled with this decision only proves one thing: being right in retrospect is much easier being right in real time.

Source:Ken Segall (former Apple ad man), Dec 6, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

I was an intern [at Apple in the summer of 2001] and one day the head of the intern program gathered the almost 100 interns into the Town Hall auditorium in Infinite Loop 4 for a "surprise guest speaker" that wasn’t really much of a surprise: Steve Jobs. The meeting had no agenda but I had a hunch that when Steve (everyone who has ever worked at Apple just calls him "Steve") ended his remarks there would be a Q&A session. My mind started racing. This was probably going to be the one time in my life when I would have the chance to ask Steve Jobs a question and get a reply. This has *got* to be a good question. This was like getting a chance to shoot a basket with Michael Jordan, you want to take a good shot.

I can’t remember exactly the questions that I decided against, but I remember specifically thinking that I wanted to ask something that hadn’t been captured in the numerous books I had read about Apple’s history. Something Macworld magazine hadn’t reported on. Something Steve hadn’t talked about in the press before. And something personal to him. The other interns, disappointingly to me, were asking questions more about the company like "Is Apple ever going to go after the enterprise market?" (Steve’s response, a refreshing "If you’re interested in that, you’re probably at the wrong company.")

Steve got to about his 4th question from the audience and by this point almost every single intern had their hand up. [Steve pointed to Jonathan] I was nervous. "Steve, many years ago you left Apple to start NeXT. But recently you returned to Apple. Why did you come back to Apple?" I could be filling in false details, but I remember Steve thinking for a moment with his characteristic "fingertip pressed together downward glance". He then proceeded to give a two part answer.

The first part of his answer I’ve completely forgotten because it seemed to be a canned spiel that he had used before. It had something to do with Apple’s products or mission. I started losing interest because it sounded like something I might have even heard Steve say before at a keynote. I felt a bit disappointed that my one chance to learn something new and unique about Steve was probably about to end. But then, as if to try again at my question, he added a second part to his answer.

"When I was trying to decide whether to come back to Apple or not I struggled. I talked to a lot of people and got a lot of opinions. And then there I was, late one night, struggling with this and I called up a friend of mine at 2am. I said, ‘should I come back, should I not?’ and the friend replied, ‘Steve, look. I don’t give a Sorry about Apple. Just make up your mind’ and hung up. And it was in that moment that I realized I truly cared about Apple."

[This friend was Andy Grove, the former Intel CEO]

Source: Jonhatan Berger, Aug 25, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste," he said last year in "Triumph of the Nerds," a television documentary about the history of the computer industry. "I don’t mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture into their products. I have no problem with their success -- they’ve earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products."

The statement was quintessential Jobs: arrogant, frank, insightful and perhaps more than half right, though brutally overstated. Those same traits were both his strength and his weakness at Apple. After the documentary was televised, Jobs called Gates to apologize, sort of. "I told him I believed every word of what I’d said but that I never should have said it in public," Jobs says. "I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."

Source:The New York Times, Jan 18, 1997

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

The closest thing [Steve Jobs and I] ever had to an argument was when I left in 1985 to start a company to build a universal remote control. I went to [design agency of which Apple was a client] Frog Design to do the design. Steve dropped in there one day and he saw what they were designing for me and he threw it against the wall and said they could not do any work for me. “Anything you do for Woz, belongs to me.” I was on my own, but I was still friendly with Apple. But Steve had a burst-out there. The people at Frog told me about it. That was the only time there was ever a fight between us, but it wasn’t actually between us. Nobody has ever seen us having an argument.

Source: Steve Wozniak, interview with Dan Lyons, Oct 11, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

Diane Keaton, 65, says she met Jobs in the late ‘70s, when the late computer genius was her NYC neighbor. Steve wanted to meet the "Annie Hall" star, so she went over for a visit. But things went downhill fast.

"All he’s talking about is the computer thing," Keaton recalls. "How the computer was going to take over the world. And I’m sitting there like, ‘OK, right.’ And he keeps talking about how everyone is going to have a computer in their life, in their world, in their home. And I’m going, ‘Right, Right.’"

Unfortunately, all the tech talk didn’t go over well with the actress, who says she never saw Jobs again. "Because obviously I just wasn’t prepared for that. I thought, ‘Is he nuts?’" But Keaton does regret leaving Steve: "Can you imagine? What an idiot I was."

Source:CNN The Marquee Blog, Dec 15, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

I should tell you this story. We’re in a meeting at NeXT, before Steve went back to Apple. I’ve got my chief scientist. After the meeting, we leave and try to unravel the argument to figure out where Steve was wrong—because he was obviously wrong. And we couldn’t do it. We’re standing in the parking lot.

He sees us from his office, and he comes back out to argue with us some more. It was over a technical issue involving Objective C, a computer language. Why he would care about this was beyond me. I’ve never seen that kind of passion.

Source: Eric Schmidt, Business Week, Oct 6, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

Steve was trying to sort out one of the fundamental questions of the age: is there any value to a musician’s work? He thought that with iTunes, he could make it easier for people who wanted to respect intellectual copyright. So we had the idea to offer "Vertigo" for an iPod commercial, and we went out to see Steve at his house in Palo Alto and he was like, "What? You guys want to give me a song for a commercial? Wow, that’s great, that’s amazing." Then we said we wanted to be in the commercial, and he said "Maybe, yeah, I don’t see why not."

Then we said we don’t want to be paid, but we’d like a U2 iPod, a black one. His first response was, "That doesn’t work at all. iPods are white!" But it turned out lots of people wanted them – and not because of U2. Because they were red and black!

Source: Bono, Rolling Stone, Oct 7, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

Anecdotes
"Telling a Steve Jobs story": Silicon Valley's favorite topic of discussion

In my own involvement with him, my real personal enjoyment of him as a man, he was a clear thinker, on lots of subjects, and I could turn to him. My actual last conversation with him was he called me because he was worried about my health, which is a clue to him. This tough guy was very tender, and he said, "I don’t like the look of you, you look worn out," and I said, "What? I’m fine!" He wouldn’t listen to me.

When I hurt my spine and I was in trouble, this package arrived of books and CDs and music and honey from their garden – tons of stuff arrived at the house. And so, yes, he was a captain of industry, a warrior for his companies. But I found him to be a very thoughtful friend, and a wonderfully detailed and interested parent of his kids, and lover of his wife.

Source: Bono, Rolling Stone, Oct 7, 2011