~ The Biography Of Steve Jobs ~

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

Business Insider: What is the significance of the employee numbers, since you were saying that you took seven because you wanted it.

Michael Scott (Apple’s first CEO): We had to have a payroll, and in order to minimize how much work we had to do, I had to sign up with Bank of America’s payroll system, and those days you didn’t have a choice. You had to assign employee numbers.

That was a dispute you get into — who gets number 1? One of the first things was that of course, each Steve wanted number 1. I know I didn’t give it to Jobs because I thought that would be too much. I don’t remember if it was Woz or Markkula that got number 1, but it didn’t go to Jobs because I had enough problems anyway.

Source: Interview of Michael Scott, Business Insider, May 24, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

I would say that the challenge was, who was more stubborn, Steve or me, and I think I won.

The other argument at the meetings was would Steve take his dirty feet and sandals off the table, because he sat at one end of the conference table, and Markkula sat at the other end chain smoking. So we had to have special filters in the attic in the ceiling to keep the room filter. I had the smokers on one side and the people with dirty feet on the other.

[Laughter from interviewer.]

It was not funny then. Everybody has their pet peeves.

Source: Interview of Michael Scott, Business Insider, May 24, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

A little side story that he and I would fight over. If we were negotiating price for parts, we could negotiate a price with a vendor and at the last minute, Steve would come in and bang on the table and demand to get one more penny off. And of course they would give him one more penny off. Then he’d crow "well I see you didn’t do as good a job as you could’ve getting the price down."

And I’m saying, "Yeah but that one more penny might’ve cost us a bit more ill will for times when parts are in short supply."

Source: Interview of Michael Scott, Business Insider, May 24, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

True to form, the shepherd [Steve Jobs] to his Apple flock often teaches in parables. One such lesson could be called the "Difference Between the Janitor and the Vice President," and it’s a sermon Jobs delivers every time an executive reaches the VP level.

Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn’t have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. "When you’re the janitor," Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, "reasons matter." He continues: "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering." That "Rubicon," he has said, "is crossed when you become a VP."

Source: Fortune, Aug 25, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

Today, I met Steve Jobs! It was as simple as “Hello, I’m Steve… nice to meet you. Come on into my house.” And with that, we walked through his front gate and through the garage to the backyard.

[…] We set up in the back corner of the yard, and began the install, which took us three hours to complete. During the process, he would come out and check on us every 45 minutes or so, usually staying for a bit to chat about the trampoline, the company that built it, the manufacturing process, or how the trampoline could be simplified and improved upon. We didn’t really get any opportunities to chat about things outside the task at hand, but it was nice that he would spend any time at all with us. He even got up to test-jump a bit too (I really, really wish I had that on video).

[…] He finally finished talking and came around back. Rob explained a little about the satefy rules and the specifics of the install as we walked back towards the back corner of the yard. He jumped up inside the trampoline and started jumping with his daughter. It was really sweet. He jumped around inside a bit, then got out and gave some encouraging words to her and her friends. Then he paid us the install fee (plus the largest tip Rob has ever received on an install).

“And one more thing” we sheepishly said; “Can you sign our iPods???”

“You don’t want me to do that — it will rub off,” he quips.

He looks at mine and continues, “and that one is going to be a collectors’ item soon!” I think to myself, “exactly!” and say “true, it’s a classic design.”

Then he asks us some questions about how many of our friends have iPods and if we use iTunes Music Store and we answer honestly. I mention that I am waiting to get a new iPod with a larger hard drive (hoping that he will reveal any information on the rumored next model). He seems to pause a moment, but doesn’t let any secret cats, out of any well-designed Apple bags. But, I could tell that he wanted to say something.

Source: Cult of Mac, Oct 8, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

I first met Steve Jobs 13 years ago, when I was working on a book on the history of Silicon Valley. Following an extended tap dance with his Apple gatekeeper, and after I’d already interviewed most of the Valley’s other leaders, Jobs agreed to see me, in a conference room at Apple headquarters. I got to see firsthand what I’d so often heard about: smarts, breadth, charm and abrasiveness.

Even before sitting down, he said, "You’ve got 20 minutes," adding with some derision, "You’re not from here, are you?" I asked why he asked, also wondering to myself where he’d honed his social graces. "Look at how you’re dressed!" he said. Jobs had on his usual black mock turtleneck and faded jeans. I was wearing a blue blazer and Oxford shirt. "I was just trying to show you some respect," I offered. He nodded, smiled slightly and acknowledged my efforts.

We wound up talking for three hours. I liked him right away, idiosyncrasies and all. […] In that initial [encounter], back in 1998, Jobs began by going to a whiteboard to draw a biographical timeline of the Valley. There were Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard back in 1938, developing an audio oscillator in their Palo Alto garage, and in the process giving birth to Silicon Valley (though it wasn’t called as such until the early 1970s, when silicon became the main element in microchips); there was brilliant-but-pathological William Shockley, who founded the first semiconductor company in 1956, in Mountain View; there were the "Traitorous Eight" -- including Gordon Moore, Bob Noyce and Gene Kleiner -- who bolted from Shockley to launch Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957, which led to the most famous of the "Fairchildren" spin-offs, a company called Intel, started by Moore and Noyce in 1968, as well as the Valley’s first major venture-capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, co-founded by Kleiner and Tom Perkins four years later.

Jobs played the role of history teacher, with an appreciation for his entrepreneurial forbears that is rare in the Valley -- a place that cares mostly for the new. And he told the narrative with personal reverence and humility: Packard and Noyce had been mentors, so much so that when Jobs got fired from Apple in 1985 he met with them "to apologize for screwing up so badly."

What Jobs left out of the narrative, with even more uncharacteristic modesty, was Steve Jobs. At the end of that glorious chronology, sketched out over the course of 45 minutes, he should have added himself (and Steve Wozniak), for starting Apple Computer in 1976.

Source: David A. Kaplan, Fortune, Oct 11, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

The second time I met Steve Jobs was on a Manhattan street corner. He was coming to speak to a group of us at Newsweek and we entered the building at the same time. It was in 1999, the week after my book on the Valley had come out. "I’m hearing great things about your book, David," he told me.

"Really?" I said. "That’s good to hear. What did you think of the book?"

"Haven’t read it -- probably won’t." He seemed to say it as a punch line, with some glee.

Source: David A. Kaplan, Fortune, Oct 11, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

The last time I saw Jobs was by chance in the courtyard at Apple headquarters 3½ years ago. I was there with my older son, then 15, to have lunch with an Apple friend. My son is a big Apple fan and user. By chance, we saw Jobs was walking along by himself, pecking away at his iPhone. I said hello, as did he -- and he then took my son aside to chat for several minutes, about technology and thinking large. My son was rapt.

It was a gracious thing for Jobs to do, with no payoff for himself. (I don’t merit efforts to co-opt.) He later e-mailed me about the joys of parenthood. While Jobs was tone-deaf at times, he wasn’t a jerk.

Source: David A. Kaplan, Fortune, Oct 11, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

Everyone knows Parisians are snobs. So it probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise that an unshaven, middle-aged American, speaking English and dressed in cuffed jeans, sneakers, and a worn black T-shirt, was rudely turned away from the bar at a lavish fete inside Paris’s Musee d’Orsay on September 16, 2003.

Except that the man was Steven P. Jobs, the cofounder and chief executive of Apple Computer Inc., and it was his party. And some bash it was. For three hours, Apple’s guests grazed on foie gras and seared tuna canapes, and sipped champagne while strolling under a massive glass arcade that shelters one of the world’s largest collections of Impressionist masters, Rodin sculpture, and art nouveau furniture. In a Baroque salon at the far end of the museum, a raucous jazz band played. As one guest observing the scene intoned, "This is huge."

Source: Fast Company, Dec 19, 2007

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

Somebody just walked up to me at one point [and] he said:

"I work at Apple and I sort of met Steve Jobs."

I said, "How?"

"He cut in front of me in the cafe to grab some food."

"Did he say ‘I’m sorry’?"

"No."

Source: Walter Isaacson interview, Fortune, Dec 27, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

He once [called] your editor, Andy Serwer, at Fortune, and John Huey, when he was trying to kill a story that you may have worked on at Fortune about his cancer treatment and everything else.

And he finally said, "What do you have in the story?" And Serwer told him what’s in the book. And he finally said, "Well, wait a minute, you’ve discovered that I’m an asshole? Why is that news?" So, he was self-aware, he was tough.

Source: Walter Isaacson interview, Fortune, Dec 27, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

Steve Jobs when he does the iPhone decides he doesn’t want plastic, he wants really tough glass on it, and they don’t make a glass that can be tough like they want. And finally somebody says to him, because they were making all of the glass in China for the fronts of the stores, says, "You ought to check with the people at Corning. They’re kind of smart there."

So, he flies to Corning, New York, sits there in front of the CEO, Wendell Weeks, and says, "This is what I want, a glass that can do this." So, Wendell Weeks says, "We once created a type of process that created something called Gorilla Glass." And Steve said, "No, no, no. Here’s how you make really strong glass." And Wendell says, "Wait a minute, I know how to make glass. Shut up and listen to me." And Steve, to his credit, shuts up and listens, and Wendell Weeks describes a process that makes Gorilla Glass. And Steve then says, "Fine. In six months I want enough of it to make--whatever it is--a million iPhones." And Wendell says, "I’m sorry, we’ve actually never made it. We don’t have a factory to make it. This was a process we developed, but we never had a manufacturing plant to do it." And Steve looks at him and says what he said to Woz, 20, 30 years earlier: "Don’t be afraid, you can do it." Wendell Weeks tells me... Because I flew to Corning, because I just wanted to hear this story. Wendell Weeks tells me, "I just sat there and looked at the guy. He kept saying, ‘Don’t be afraid. You can do this.’"

Source: Walter Isaacson interview, Fortune, Dec 27, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

He’s paid $100,000 to have the logo for NeXT Computer. Paul Rand, who did it, who was a great designer — [Steve Jobs] said, "I want you to design a business card for me." It was "Steven P. Jobs." And they fought over whether the period after the P should be under the P, which is what you could do with bitmap displays, or if it should be right afterward, which was the normal way of doing it.

And they fought so badly that Paul Rand would not surrender, and Steve Jobs had it done his own way. This is the passion for detail and perfection that is usually considered a micromanaging passion, but he does connect it, too, to the broad vision. And the broad vision is... I mean, look, the whole desktop publishing industry comes out of the fact that he cared about fonts.

Source: Walter Isaacson interview, Fortune, Dec 27, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

About right when the iPad was about to come out, I fly into San Francisco. And you get off the plane, and the thing you least want to see on your iPhone, which is seven missed phone calls from Steve Jobs.

[…] It wasn’t like he was returning my calls. It’s like he was mad about something... And Simon & Schuster had put a cover sort of in the catalogue they were putting out two years ago. It had Steve in a red apple, "iSteve," and some day as to when it would be published. He said, "That is the ugliest thing — this has such poor taste," and it was actually words of one syllable that were stronger than that. "You shouldn’t even come to the product launch, I never want to deal with you again. You have no taste," and whatever.

Finally, he says, "I’m only going to keep dealing with you if you let me have some input into the cover." "Because," he said, "nobody is going to read your book, I’m not going to read your book. But I’ll look at the cover — and I don’t want it to be ugly." Now, it takes me about one and a half seconds to say, "Sure!" I mean, here’s a guy with the greatest design eye of our time.

That is basically Steve Jobs saying, "That’s what the cover should look like." With a font that comes from the original Mac, the sans serif font, and the Albert Watson picture, and it’s in black and white. And I said, "Shouldn’t we do it in color?" He says, "No, I’m a black and white sort of guy: Things are either black, or they’re white. It’s a black and white cover."

Source: Walter Isaacson interview, Fortune, Dec 27, 2011

[MysteRy]

Sayings

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

Jobs said he was betting the company on the machine and so it needed a great name. He suggested one at the meeting, Segall says, but it was terrible. [It was later revealed the name was ‘MacMan’]

Jobs said the new computer was a Mac, so the name had to reference the Macintosh brand. The name had to make it clear the machine was designed for the internet. It also had to be applicable to several other upcoming products. And it had to be quick: the packaging needed to be ready in a week.

Segall says he came back with five names. Four were ringers, sacrificial lambs for the name he loved — iMac. "It referenced the Mac, and the "i" meant internet," Segall says. "But it also meant individual, imaginative and all the other things it came to stand for." The "i" prefix could also be applied to whatever other internet products Apple was working on. Jobs rejected them all, including iMac.

"He didn’t like iMac when he saw it," Segall says. "I personally liked it, so I went back again with three or four new names, but I said we still like "iMac." He said: ‘I don’t hate it this week, but I still don’t like it.’"

Segall didn’t hear any more about the name from Jobs personally, but friends told him that Jobs was silk-screening the name on prototypes of the new computer. He was testing it out to see if it looked good. "He rejected it twice but then it just appeared on the machine," Segall says, laughing. "He never formally accepted it."

While working on the name, Jobs purposely worked in a small, tight-knit group. He didn’t want to have a lot of opinions at the table. He also didn’t do any market research or testing. "Apple in my entire time never tested a thing in print or on TV," Segall says. "Everybody else tests everything."

Source: Ken Segall interview, Cult of Mac, Nov 3, 2009