Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson
GENRE: Biographies & Memoirs
PAGES: 672
COMPLETED: December 20, 2022
RATING: 
Short Summary
Walter Isaacson takes a deep dive into the complex life of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, one of history’s most brilliant and innovative minds. In Steve Jobs, Isaacson dissects Jobs’s roller-coaster journey, one that saw him revolutionize six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. The biography taps into over 40 interviews with Jobs and more than 100 interviews with family members, colleagues, and enemies, and delivers an exclusive look at the dynamic personality behind one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time.
Key Takeaways
Think Ahead — Jobs had a unique ability to think ahead and correctly forecast what people were going to want before they knew they wanted it. He was a visionary. With the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, he was able to create revolutionary products that were simple, easy to use, and beautifully designed. He was always thinking ahead to what might help, or hurt, Apple in the future, and never became complacent even after enjoying huge success. His decision to cannibalize the iPod by making the iPhone is an example.
Passion for Perfection — Everything Jobs did was motivated by a relentless passion for creating amazing products. His work ethic was incredible, and he cared about his products more than anything else in his life. His passion for perfection drove him to obsess over every detail of the product, whether it was the design, software, user interface, marketing, packaging or anything else. For Jobs, making a profit was always secondary to creating excellent products. He was extremely meticulous and held everybody at Apple and Pixar to a standard of excellence. Have a passion for what you do and try to be great at it!
Simple & Focused — Jobs had a few rules he was always loyal to: keep things simple and narrow your focus. With every product he worked on, he eliminated unnecessary buttons and features. He was always trying to make the product simpler and more user friendly. He was also adamant about keeping Apple focused on doing a few things really well. When he returned to Apple in 1997, he slashed 70% of the products the company was working on. He always believed that a company (or person) shouldn’t try to do too much. Understand what you do well and focus on doing those things extremely well. And simple is always better.
Favorite Quote
Book Notes 
Introduction
- Book Origins — Walter Isaacson began writing this book in 2009 while Steve Jobs was battling cancer. Over the course of two years, Isaacson interviewed Jobs 40 times. He also interviewed over 100 of Jobs’s friends, relatives, rivals, and colleagues. Jobs sparked the project by asking Isaacson to write a biography about him in 2004 when he first began experiencing health issues.
- Quote (P. xx): “This is a book about the roller-coaster life and the searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. You might even add a seventh, retail stores, which Jobs did not quite revolutionize but did reimagine. In addition, he opened the way for a new market for digital content based on apps rather than just websites.”
Ch. 1: Childhood
- February 24, 1955 — Steve Jobs was born to Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, a Muslim teaching assistant from Syria. He was born in San Francisco, California.
- Adoption — Schieble and Jandali became pregnant on accident and decided to put their son up for adoption. Paul Jobs, a mechanic who served in the Coast Guard during World War II, and Clara Hagopian, a bookkeeper, became Jobs’s parents. They had been married nine years and were unable to have kids. Neither of them had graduated high school. They were living in San Francisco at the time of the adoption.
- Mona Simpson — Jobs’s biological sister is the acclaimed writer, Mona Simpson. The two did not meet until 1986. Schieble and Jandali had Mona after Schieble’s father died. Schieble’s father did not approve of the relationship between Schieble and Jandali. After he died in 1955, they got married and had Mona. By that point, Jobs was already adopted.
- Mountain View, California — Jobs grew up in Mountain View, a suburb of San Francisco in Silicon Valley. From a young age, he helped his dad, a mechanic, fix cars and build things.
- Silicon Valley — A 40-mile area that stretches from South San Francisco through Palo Alto to San Jose. The valley includes El Camino Real, a road that connects many, many companies and startups accounting for a third of the venture capital investment in the United States every year.
- The Semiconductor — Silicon Valley’s growth and rise is largely due to the semiconductor, a substance that has specific electrical properties that enable it to serve as a foundation for computers and other electronic devices. In 1956, William Shockley, who helped invent the transistor, moved to Mountain View and created a company to build transistors using silicon rather than the more expensive germanium that was commonly used. This shift to silicon, and the valley’s focus on creating computer chips and other technology, is what gave the area its unique name.
- Birth of Intel — After Shockley’s company failed, a few employees later took the core idea and created the company we know as Intel. Intel focused on memory chips and microprocessors and took off. Within a few years, there were over 50 companies in Silicon Valley making semiconductors.
- Homestead High School — Jobs later attended Homestead High in Santa Clara County. Here he began to find himself and hone his skills. He excelled in the classroom and worked several different jobs during his four years, all of them focused on electronics. He loved to tinker with technology and build lasers in his free time. Jobs was rebellious and despised authority, which got him into trouble more than a few times. He also began to smoke marijuana and experiment with LSD and acid.
Ch. 2: Odd Couple
- Steve “Woz” Wozniak — Apple’s cofounder alongside Jobs. The two met at Homestead High School, although Wozniak was five years older. Wozniak’s dad was a brilliant engineer who graduated from Cal Tech and worked for Lockheed Martin, an aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology company. Aided by his dad’s talent and knowledge, Wozniak was groomed to be an engineer from a young age; he drew, designed, and built computers in high school. He and Jobs met while Jobs was in high school and they instantly became great friends because of their commonalities.
- The Blue Box — The Blue Box started as a prank, but was the first project Jobs and Woz worked on together, and paved the way for their partnership in creating Apple years later. In 1971, while Jobs was a senior in high school and Woz was in college at UC Berkeley, the two found a way to create a small device (they called it the Blue Box) with a little circuit board capable of making long distance calls for free, which at the time was impossible. The two created the dials, circuits, and electronics needed to replicate various tones that allowed users to fool AT&T’s network and make calls without a charge. Jobs decided it would be possible to sell the device — it costed the two $40 to make the Blue Box and they sold it for $150.
- Quote (P. 30): “The Blue Box adventure established a template for a partnership that would soon be born. Wozniak would be the gentle wizard coming up with a neat invention that he would have been happy just to give away, and Jobs would figure out how to make it user-friendly, put it together in a package, market it, and make a few bucks.”
Ch. 3: The Dropout
- Reed College — After graduating from high school in 1972, Jobs attended Reed College, a private liberal arts school in Portland, Oregon. The college had just 1,000 students and was known for its rigorous academics and free-spirited hippie lifestyle. Jobs insisted on attending the expensive Reed College even though he could have easily gone to Stanford or UC Berkeley with Woz.
- Zen Buddhism — While at Reed College, Jobs became serious about Eastern spirituality, achieving enlightenment, and practicing Zen Buddhism. It became a big part of his life. He read books on the subject and practiced meditation frequently. At Reed College, he and his friends would go to the Hare Krishna temple and participate in some strange spiritual rituals involving singing and dancing.
- Extreme Diets — Early on at Reed College, Jobs read a few books on nutrition that sparked a lifelong obsession with strange diets. Throughout his life, he tinkered with purges, extreme fasts, and eating just one or two foods (like carrots or apples) for weeks. He genuinely believed the diets could prevent mucus and body odor.
- College Drop Out — Jobs eventually dropped out of Reed College. He was bored and wasn’t getting anything out of his classes. He also felt guilty that he was spending his parents’ money on classes that weren’t stimulating him. So he dropped out.
- Typefaces — Despite dropping out, the Dean at Reed College allowed Jobs to sit in on classes he liked for free. One of the first classes he dropped in on was a calligraphy class that discussed different typefaces, fonts, and spacing. This class is what led Jobs to later include multiple typefaces as an option with the first Mac. This class was instrumental in Jobs’s ability to make his products and their packaging look elegant.
Ch. 4: Atari and India
- Atari & India — In February 1974, Jobs moved back home to Los Altos. He quickly found a job at Atari, a video game manufacturer where he worked as a technician. After earning some money for a few months, he later spent 7 months in India on a mission to achieve enlightenment. He wandered and traveled from town to town in India hoping to find himself. When he returned home, he got his job back at Atari, where he and Woz worked together to build a new game in just four days.
- The Search — By this point, Jobs was obsessed with Eastern spirituality, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the search for enlightenment. He was actively looking for teachers and gurus to show him how to focus his mind, trust his intuition, live in the present moment, and achieve inner peace. He went to a Zen Center in Los Altos every Wednesday to listen to instructor Kobun Chino Otogawa and meditate. He also participated in ‘primal scream therapy’ in which people relive childhood traumas and express their pain by screaming out their thoughts.
- Quote (P. 55): “He (Jobs) was interested not just in engineering, but also the business aspects. I taught him that if you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him, ‘Pretend to be completely in control and people assume that you are.’” — Nolan Bushnell, Atari Founder
- Takeaway — This was a big lesson in Jobs’s life. He was fairly shy and unconfident before his time at Atari. He learned from Bushnell to act confident. When you act confident, it creates a confidence about you that others can sense. It calms you down and gives you more control. Sometimes the key is to act confident, even if you don’t necessarily feel confident. When you act confident, you feel confident. This lesson served Jobs well later on at Apple.
Ch. 5: The Apple I
- The Apple I — The machine that would later become the Apple I was designed and built by Woz in the summer of 1975 before he and Jobs officially founded Apple. At the time, Jobs and Woz were members of The Homebrew Computer Club, which was a group comprised of young people passionate about electronics and the counterculture attitude that was developing in the Bay Area at the time. At one of the meetings, Woz discovered that he could use a microprocessor to connect a computer, keyboard, and screen to create a personal computer. For the first time in history, somebody could hit a letter on a keyboard and see it come up on the screen. This was a milestone moment for the personal computer and led to the launch of Apple (the company).
- Quote (P. 60): “After work each day, Wozniak would go home for a TV dinner and then return to HP (Hewlett-Packard) to moonlight on his computer. He spread out the parts in his cubicle, figured out their placement, and soldered them onto his motherboard. Then he began writing the software that would get the microprocessor to display images on the screen. Because he could not afford to pay for computer time, he wrote the code by hand.”
- Selling the Apple I — Woz was content with giving away his ideas and designs for free. Jobs was more interested in selling them. Jobs had connections at Atari and payed a friend to draw Woz’s Apple I circuit boards and print about 50 of them to sell. The idea and decision to sell the circuit boards was essentially the start of Apple.
- Launching Apple — Jobs was on one of his many fruit diets at the time he and Woz were considering starting a company. Each of them suggested names, but Jobs, who was on a fruit diet and was working at an apple orchard in his spare time, proposed the name of Apple Computer. It stuck. Woz was working as an engineer for HP at the time and was hesitant to leave to start Apple. Jobs ultimately convinced him to do it, which was necessary because Woz’s personal computer design/circuit board was basically the only thing they had to sell at the time.
- Quote (P. 64): “Jobs at times seemed to be driven by demons, while Woz seemed a naïf who was toyed with by angels. Jobs had a bravado that helped him get things done, occasionally by manipulating people. He could be charismatic, even mesmerizing, but also cold and brutal. Wozniack, in contrast, was shy and socially awkward, which made him seem childishly sweet.”
- Takeaway — Jobs and Woz balanced each other out really well from both a skill and personality perspective. Jobs was more of the business and marketing arm of the company who focused on packaging and distributing the products, while Woz was the engineer building the machines. Jobs was more direct, confident, and just generally better about communicating with people. Woz was shy and too nice to really lead.
- Quote (P. 64): “Jobs at times seemed to be driven by demons, while Woz seemed a naïf who was toyed with by angels. Jobs had a bravado that helped him get things done, occasionally by manipulating people. He could be charismatic, even mesmerizing, but also cold and brutal. Wozniack, in contrast, was shy and socially awkward, which made him seem childishly sweet.”
- Interesting Fact — There was actually a third Apple partner in the beginning — Ron Wayne. The original division of shares and profits between Jobs, Woz, and Wayne was 45%-45%-10%. Wayne later got cold feet and backed out before the partnership papers were official. Had he stayed on board, his 10% stake in the company would have been worth $40 billion in 2013.
- Garage Work — Jobs and Woz made their first official sale in 1976. They sold 50 Apple I computers at $500 apiece to Paul Terrell, who ran a computer store named Byte Shop in Silicon Valley. Assembling the circuit boards required piecing chips and components together carefully, much like building a Lego. The small Apple team put the circuit boards and computers together in Jobs’s garage. They later sold many more units while Woz began working on the Apple II.
Ch. 6: The Apple II
- Integrated Package — The big focus with the Apple II was delivering the computer, the screen, and the keyboard all in one neatly presented package. The Apple I was just a machine — it didn’t come with the keyboard and monitor. Those were separate pieces the user had to get on their own. The Apple II featured a built-in keyboard and power supply.
- Power Supply — The Apple II had a unique power supply that switched the power on and off thousands of times per second rather than 60 times per second, which was standard at the time.
- Power Slots — The Apple II featured eight power slots for a user to plug in various things like, modems and printers. Jobs wanted just two for a simplified user experience, but Woz wanted eight. Woz won.
- Business & Marketing Plan — While developing the Apple II, Jobs and Woz met Mike Markkula, a 33-year-old former marketing wizard at Intel. Markkula worked with Jobs to create a business and marketing plan for Apple, and also provided $250,000 of capital. To that point, computers were mostly a niche interest for technology hobbyists. Markkula’s business plan aimed to change that by bringing Apple computers into the homes of regular, everyday people.
- A New Partner — In exchange for his time and expertise, Markkula became a one-third equity owner of the company. On January 3 1977, Apple changed from a partnership to a corporation with Jobs, Woz, and Markkula each owning 26% of the company.
- The Apple Marketing Philosophy — Markkula took Jobs under his wing and was a highly influential mentor in his life. Jobs adopted many of Markkula’s marketing strategies and used them throughout his career. Jobs said: “He (Markkula) emphasized that you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.” Markkula’s business plan included a one-page paper titled ‘The Apple Marketing Philosophy.’ The document outlined three key pillars that Jobs never forgot:
- Empathy — Having an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer. The ability to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and understand their needs, likes, dislikes, pain points, frustrations, and more.
- Focus — Focusing on what you do well and not getting distracted by unimportant opportunities. Eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities and pour your focus into excelling at a small number of things/products/services.
- Impute — Presentation is everything. People absolutely do judge a book by its cover. Markkula wrote: “We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software, etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.”
- Quote (P. 78): “For the rest of his career, Jobs would understand the needs and desires of customers better than any other business leader, he would focus on a handful of core products, and he would care, sometimes obsessively, about marketing and image and even the details of packaging. ‘When you open the box of an iPhone or iPad, we want that tactile experience to set the tone for how you perceive the product,’ Jobs said.”
- Takeaway — These three marketing principles are gold. You have to be able to understand and empathize with the customer. You have to focus on dominating a handful of things rather than pursuing unnecessary projects that are out of your lane. And you have to present the product, service, or marketing piece beautifully. Presentation is so important; it can’t be stressed enough. If the presentation isn’t excellent and easy to digest, the reader will not read the message and the customer will skip right past the product or service.
- The Apple Logo 🍎 — To bring Apple’s public image to life, Jobs and Woz worked with Regis McKenna, a premier publicist in Silicon Valley. McKenna’s art director, Rob Janoff, was tasked with changing Apple’s logo. In 1977, Janoff simplified the logo by creating two apples — one with a bite in it and one without. Jobs liked the one with the bite mark. He also chose a version with six stripes, each featuring a different color.
- Quote (P. 80): “Atop the brochure McKenna put a maxim, often attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, that would become the defining precept of Jobs’s design philosophy: ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.’”
- Takeaway — In marketing, less is more. Presentation is critical, and you will lose the customer or reader if the messaging is messy, unorganized, too long, or overly complicated. Tighten up the messaging and presentation. Use bullet points and subheads. Present the product or service in a simple manner — all Apple items come with minimal clutter when you unbox the product.
- Launching the Apple II — In April 1977, Jobs bought a booth at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco to launch the Apple II. The company received 300 orders and met a Japanese textile maker who became Apple’s first dealer in Japan.
- Interesting Fact — Jobs, especially in the early days of Apple, was kind of a baby. He yelled at people, insulted people, threw tantrums, and literally cried when he didn’t get his way. He also had horrible hygiene. He showered once a week because he was completely convinced that his weird fruit diets meant he didn’t give off body odor. He smelled horrible and walked around barefoot most of the time. When stressed, he would soak his feet in the toilet.
- Quote (P. 84): “The Apple II would be marketed, in various models, for the next 16 years, with close to 6 million sold. More than any other machine, it launched the personal computer industry. Wozniak deserves the historic credit for the design of its awe-inspiring circuit board and related operating software, which was one of the era’s great feats of solo invention. But Jobs was the one who integrated Wozniak‘s boards into a friendly package, from the power supply to the sleek case. He also created the company that sprang up around Wozniak‘s machines.”
- Takeaway — The Apple II was what really got Apple off the ground. It was a revolutionary machine. Wozniak built the computer and the software, but it wouldn’t have been as successful as it was without Jobs, who was responsible for marketing and distributing the product. The two were a very nice, complimentary team.
Ch. 7: Chrisann and Lisa
- Chrisann Brennan — Chrisann was Jobs’s high school girlfriend. Their relationship was on-again, off-again through their college years. In 1977, Chrisann moved into a big house Jobs and his friend were renting. Soon after, Chrisann became pregnant. Jobs wanted nothing to do with Chrisann or the baby, and even suggested an abortion.
- Lisa Brennan — On May 17, 1978, Chrisann gave birth to the baby. Jobs joined Chrisann and the baby three days after the birth. Jobs and Chrisann named the baby Lisa Nicole Brennan. Lisa did not have the last name ‘Jobs’ until she was nine. After the birth, Jobs basically abandoned both of them. He went back to work on Apple and didn’t pay much attention to Chrisann or Lisa.
- Paternity Test — Chrisann and Lisa really struggled without Jobs’s help. They lived on welfare for awhile. Eventually, the City of San Mateo sued Jobs and he was forced to take a DNA test. The test came back with a 94% probability of paternity. Despite the results, Jobs continued to claim he wasn’t the father and did the bare minimum to support Chrisann and Lisa.
Ch. 8: Xerox and Lisa
- New Computer — The Apple II was incredibly successful, rising from 2,500 units sold in 1977 to 210,000 units by 1981. But the company needed to follow it up. The first attempt at a new computer came with the release of the Apple III in 1980. It flopped. Following the failure, Jobs knew they needed something much different.
- The Lisa — After the Apple III flop, Jobs and a programmer named Bill Atkinson took the lead on developing a totally new computer that Jobs decided to call “the Lisa.” Incredibly, Jobs named the project after the daughter he had abandoned. To pass the name and avoid a PR nightmare, Apple had to come up with a fake, random, meaningless acronym for Lisa. They settled on “Local Integrated Systems Architecture.”
- Stealing From Xerox — In 1979, Xerox wanted to invest in Apple. Jobs decided to allow the company to buy $100,000 shares at $10 per share ($1,000,000) only if Xerox allowed Apple to look at its new technology being developed at the Xerox PARC in Palo Alto. This turned out to be a huge move for Apple. On their trip to the facility, Jobs and Atkinson got their first look at the revolutionary graphical user interface (GUI) and bitmapping technology Xerox was working on. Xerox thought of the ideas but did a bad job of executing them. The Xerox Star was released in 1981, but wasn’t successful because the computer wasn’t smooth. Apple essentially stole the basic ideas of a GUI and bitmapping they saw at Xerox PARC — GUI is the desktop and icons you see when using a computer — and made them much smoother and user friendly. The result was the Mac.
- Quote (P. 98): “The Apple raid on Xerox PARC is sometimes described as one of the biggest heists in the chronicles of industry. Jobs occasionally endorsed this view, with pride. As he once said, ‘Picasso had a saying — good artists copy, great artists steal — and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.’”
- Takeaway — This story is a good example of why good execution is as important as good ideas. Xerox had great ideas in the form of its graphical interface and bitmapping technology, but they weren’t able to execute them well with the Xerox Star. Apple took the ideas, cleaned them up, expanded on them, and capitalized by creating the Mac. It’s also a good example of why it’s OK to “steal” inspiration from other people who are doing great things. Study people who are successful and pull inspiration and ideas that can help you from those people.
- Quote (P. 98): “The Apple raid on Xerox PARC is sometimes described as one of the biggest heists in the chronicles of industry. Jobs occasionally endorsed this view, with pride. As he once said, ‘Picasso had a saying — good artists copy, great artists steal — and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.’”
- Creating the ‘Desktop’ & Mouse — A big part of the graphical user interface idea was the concept of a computer ‘desktop.’ Jobs and his team focused on allowing users to directly touch, manipulate, drag, and relocate things on the desktop. They added icons and menus. You were also able to open files and folders with a double click. These functions were completely new. To make the user experience as pleasant as possible, Jobs had his engineers develop a new mouse that was capable of smoothly moving in any direction. This required installing a ball under the mouse rather than the usual two wheels that only allowed for strict up-down/left-right movement. This was the first mouse to ever move like this.
- Interesting Fact — Bill Atkinson created the ability (one that we know and love today) for windows to overlap so the “top” one clips into the ones “below” it on the same screen. Atkinson made it possible to move these windows around, just like shuffling papers on a desk, with those below becoming visible or hidden as you move the top ones. To create the illusion of overlapping windows required complex coding.
- Internal Friction — As the Lisa was being developed, Jobs was insulting people and driving everybody crazy with his behavior. In September 1980, Markkula and another company president plotted a secret reorganization and stripped Jobs of any operating control. They essentially took him off the Lisa project.
Ch. 9: Going Public
- Going Public — Less than four years after Jobs, Woz, and Markkula turned their partnership into Apple Computer Co., the company decided to go public with an IPO. On December 12, 1980, Apple went public at $22 per share. The company was worth $1.79 billion and Jobs was worth $256 million at age 25.
Ch. 10: The Mac is Born
- The Beginnings of Mac — In 1979, Jef Raskin, a developer at Apple, began working on what we know today as the Mac. His vision was to build an inexpensive computer for the masses. Raskin envisioned it selling for less than $1,000 with a screen, keyboard, and computer all in one unit.
- Jobs Takes Over — Because he wanted to keep the price down, Raskin wasn’t in favor of implementing all of the cool graphics, icons, windows, mouse, and menus that Jobs wanted and had learned about at Xerox PARC. He and Jobs fought about the vision of the Mac frequently, and Jobs ended up bullying his way onto the project. In 1981, Apple President Mike Scott allowed Jobs to take the lead on it and Raskin left the company. This was ultimately a good thing for Apple — with the Mac, Jobs created a “mini Lisa” and the device completely transformed personal computing forever.
- Interesting Fact — The Mac project was initially given a secret code name of “Annie,” but Raskin felt it was sexist to name computers after women. He instead renamed the project in honor of his favorite type of apple, the McIntosh. He changed the spelling to Macintosh to avoid conflict with a different company.
- Interesting Fact — After the Apple II, Woz wasn’t very involved with the company’s other devices. In 1981, Jobs tried to get him engaged with the Mac, but Woz crashed his plane and barely survived. After recovering, he went back to UC Berkeley to finally get his degree, enrolling under the name of Rocky Raccoon Clark.
Ch. 11: The Mac is Born
- Intimidating Personality — By all accounts, Jobs was a terrible person to work for. He was loud, bratty, disruptive, rude, and abusive. He would bend the rules in his favor and create sometimes unrealistic expectations of his employees. He was intimidating, manipulative, and most employees feared him. He was a control freak.
- Quote (P. 119): “At the root of the reality distortion was Jobs’s belief that the rules didn’t apply to him… If reality did not comport with his will, he would ignore it, as he had done with the birth of his daughter, and would do years later, when first diagnosed with cancer. Even in small everyday rebellions, such as not putting a license plate on his car and parking in handicapped spaces, he acted as if he were not subject to the strictures around him.”
- Passion for Perfection — Although he should have gone about it better, all of Jobs’s antics were driven by his passion for perfection. The man wanted to create perfect, life-changing products, and he viewed Apple’s products as ‘art.’ If an engineer, or anybody else, refused to do what he wanted, he would fight it. Strangely, his antics worked. Although people were intimidated by him and feared him, he had a way of getting the most he possibly could out of people. His behavior made employees dig deeper than they thought possible.
- Quote (P. 119): “But like Wozniak, she (Debi Coleman) believed that the reality distortion field was empowering: It enabled Jobs to inspire his team to change the course of computer history with a fraction of the resources of Xerox or IBM.”
- Interesting Fact — Beginning in 1981, the Mac team gave out an annual award for standing up to Jobs. It was partly a joke, but partly real. The award was given to the person who did the best at holding his/her ground when Jobs went on one of his tantrums. Jobs knew about the award and liked it; he respected people that didn’t back down to him and countered with sensible arguments.
- Quote (P. 122): “(Bill) Atkinson taught his team, to put Job’s words through a translator. ‘We learned to interpret: ‘This is shit’ to actually be a question that means: ‘Tell me why this is the best way to do it.’’”
Ch. 12: The Design
- Obsession for Design — Throughout his career, Jobs was obsessed with the design and presentation of his products, commercials, advertising, and other marketing materials. He completely believed in a simple design for everything He was also obsessed with the small details, including icons on the graphical user interface, typography, fonts, title bars, etc. Everything needed to be presented beautifully and simplistically, even internal parts of the product (like the circuit board) that would never be seen by the consumer. He truly viewed the design of his products as art and approached it with that mindset.
- Quote (P. 126): “He (Jobs) repeatedly emphasized that Apple’s products would be clean and simple. ‘We will make them bright and pure and honest about being high-tech, rather than a heavy industrial look of black, black, black, black, like Sony,’ he preached. ‘So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.’”
- Takeaway — Less is more. In all forms of design and presentation, whether it’s product design or designing marketing materials, you’re better off keeping things simple. In marketing, use fewer words. Use subheads, bullets, etc, to give the material a clean presentation. Overcomplicating the design, or using too many words, negatively impacts the reader/user. Jobs was obsessive about design and presentation.
- Quote (P. 126): “He (Jobs) repeatedly emphasized that Apple’s products would be clean and simple. ‘We will make them bright and pure and honest about being high-tech, rather than a heavy industrial look of black, black, black, black, like Sony,’ he preached. ‘So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.’”
- Snow White — Jobs was primarily working on the Mac in the early 1980s, but he wanted a consistent design feel across all of Apple’s products. He set up a contest to choose a world-class designer; the project was given the name of Snow White. Hartmut Esslinger, a German designer, won the contest. He and his firm, frogdesign, moved to California in 1983 to be Apple’s designer on a $1.2 million annual contract. Jobs loved the Snow White color, and the first Mac, along with many of Apple’s products, came out in that color.
Ch. 13: Building the Mac
- Undercutting the Lisa — After Jobs took over for Raskin, the Mac became a scaled-down, less expensive version of the Lisa, the project Jobs was removed from earlier. By creating a similar but more adorable product, Jobs essentially undercut the Lisa in the market and destroyed any hopes of it becoming a success. Apple launched the Lisa in January 1983 — a full year before the Mac was ready. With the Mac later competing, the Lisa was a failure and was discontinued in 1985.
- End-to-End Control — With the Mac, Jobs was adamant about making sure the computer’s hardware and software were tightly linked. But by taking this approach, Apple was essentially creating an operating system that could not be used by other companies — the software would not work on other computers because it was designed specifically for the Mac and the Mac’s hardware would not work with software from other companies. This was Job’s preferred strategy with all products, but it meant Apple couldn’t really dominate the market because it was limited.
- Quote (P. 137): “The best products, he (Jobs) believed, were ‘whole widgets’ that were designed end-to-end, with the software closely tailored to the hardware, and vice versa. This is what would distinguish the Macintosh, which had an operating system that worked only on its own hardware, from the environment that Microsoft was creating, in which its operating system could be used on hardware, made by many different companies.”
- Takeaway — Jobs always wanted Apple’s hardware and software to be exclusively linked. He felt that when the hardware and software were specifically designed and created to work with each other exclusively, it created a better user experience. Other companies at the time, like Microsoft, were creating hardware and software products that could be used by other companies in a number of different ways. This is why, for example, Apple’s ‘Safari’ or ‘Notes’ programs aren’t offered on anything else; they are available exclusively on Apple products.
- Quote (P. 137): “The best products, he (Jobs) believed, were ‘whole widgets’ that were designed end-to-end, with the software closely tailored to the hardware, and vice versa. This is what would distinguish the Macintosh, which had an operating system that worked only on its own hardware, from the environment that Microsoft was creating, in which its operating system could be used on hardware, made by many different companies.”
- ‘The Journey Is the Reward’ — This was one of Jobs’s favorite phrases and one he used frequently. The message behind the phrase is that the daily grind is ultimately what is most rewarding when attempting to accomplish any goal. Even when it’s difficult, you have to enjoy the daily grind because that’s where the progress is.
Ch. 14: Enter Sculley
- John Sculley — Entering 1983, Mike Markkula, one of the original Apple partners and a mentor to Jobs, decided to step away from his role as president of the company. Jobs was still too young and reckless to become Apple’s president, so the company began looking for outside alternatives. The headhunting team decided to pursue John Sculley, president of the Pepsi-Cola division of PepsiCo who was considered a marketing genius after helping launch the highly successful Pepsi Challenge campaign in the 1970s. After Jobs courted him for months, Sculley agreed to become Apple’s new president. He was offered an annual salary of $1 million and a $1 million signing bonus.
- Sculley & Jobs — Although Jobs really liked Sculley while they were chasing him, the two began to clash soon after Sculley joined. Sculley was very nice and polite, which conflicted with Jobs’s aggressive and menacing leadership style. Sculley was obsessed with Jobs and was always pointing out their similarities, even though the two weren’t very similar at all. Jobs could sense Sculley’s fascination and used it to manipulate him.
- Pricing the Mac — One of the big early clashes between Jobs and Sculley was over the pricing of the Mac. Jobs wanted to sell the Mac for $1,995, while Sculley insisted on selling it for $2,495 to account for the big marketing campaign Apple was planning to run with the computer’s big launch. Jobs wanted to sell it for cheaper because he wanted to get the Mac in every household; he wanted to make sure it was affordable. Sculley wanted to sell it for $500 more because he was looking at the profit margins and knew they could not sell it for that cheap while also running a big marketing campaign to launch the Mac. Sculley ultimately won, which made Jobs and the Mac engineers mad.
Ch. 15: The Launch
- Apple vs. IBM — IBM released its first personal computer in 1981. Apple thought it was terrible. At that point, IBM was the big competition for Apple. IBM had been around forever and was well known around the world; Apple was the startup company still in its infancy. In 1983, over 1.4 million IBM computers were sold compared to 400,000 Apple IIs. IBM was winning the battle. Apple was hopeful that the 1984 release of the Mac would change that.
- The 1984 Ad — In 1983 Jobs commissioned a commercial to announce the Mac’s launch. The 60-second commercial was led by Lee Clow of the Chiat/Day advertising agency and directed by Ridley Scott, who had just directed the hugely successful movie Blade Runner. The commercial had an unprecedented $750,000 budget and portrayed the Mac as a rebellious computer who was going against the establishment. It was built like a scene out of a sci-fi movie and aired during Super Bowl XVIII between the Raiders and Redskins. Over 96 million people saw the commercial and it was later named the greatest commercial of all time by TV Guide and Advertising Age. Interestingly, Jobs showed the commercial to the Apple Board of Directors ahead of time and they hated it. They wanted to sell it and get their money back.
- Quote (P. 162): “The ad cast Macintosh as a warrior for the latter cause — a cool, rebellious, and heroic company that was the only thing standing in the way of the big evil corporation’s plan for world domination and total mind control.”
- Generating Buzz — For every Apple product launch, Jobs had a playbook for getting some good publicity for the company and the product. He found success with the following formula:
- Commercial
- Press Preview Stories
- Live Audience Product Reveal
- Revealing the Mac — After years of work, Jobs revealed the Macintosh to the world at Apple’s annual stockholders’ meeting on January 24, 1984 at the Flint Auditorium of De Anna Community College. Jobs gave the live audience a demo of the Mac and even had it talk. The audience loved it. It was a monumental moment in the history of computers.
Ch. 16: Gates and Jobs
- Bill Gates — Born in 1955 (the same year as Jobs), Gates was the son of a prominent Seattle lawyer. He excelled in school and attended Harvard before dropping out to start Microsoft. He was dramatically different than Jobs both in personality and skillset. There was a bit of a ‘good vs. evil’ feel to Jobs-Gates rivalry. For example, while Jobs was inventing the Blue Box to rip off phone companies in high school, Gates was creating a program to help students schedule classes. They were very different, but equally brilliant.
- Quote (P. 172): “Gates was good at computer coding, unlike Jobs, and his mind was more practical, disciplined, and abundant in analytic processing power. Jobs was more intuitive and romantic, and had a greater instinct for making technology usable, design, delightful, and interfaces friendly. He had a passion for perfection, which made him fiercely demanding, and he managed by charisma and scattershot intensity. Gates was more methodical; he held tightly scheduled product review meetings where he would cut to the heart of issues with lapidary skill.”
- Apple vs. Microsoft — The big difference between Apple and Microsoft (and Jobs and Gates) was their approach to business. Apple was all about creating and delivering hardware, software, and content that was integrated and bundled in one package. Microsoft was primarily a software programming company that licensed its operating systems (Windows) and products — like Word, Excel, etc. — to different companies that made computers, including IBM and Apple.
- Quote (P. 230): “Beneath their personal rivalry — and occasional grudging respect — was their basic philosophical difference. Jobs believed in an end-to-end, integration of hardware and software, which led him to build a machine that was not compatible with others. Gates believed in, and profited from, a world in which different companies made machines that were compatible with one another; their hardware ran a standard operating system (Microsoft Windows) and could all use the same software apps (such as Microsoft Word and Excel).”
- Interesting Fact — Early in the Mac’s development, Jobs and Gates struck a secret deal where Microsoft would give Apple exclusive rights to Excel, Word, and a few other programs, basically blocking out IBM, Apple’s biggest competitor. The plan was to bundle those Microsoft software programs with the Mac; when a customer bought a Mac, he would receive those programs as part of the package. Jobs ultimately cancelled the deal at the last second, a decision that actually ended up hurting Apple more than Microsoft. Microsoft was free to sell its programs to any company.
- Microsoft Windows — In November 1983 Gates announced that Microsoft planned to develop and release a new operating system exclusively for IBM PCs featuring a graphical interface with windows, icons, and a mouse for point-and-click navigation. It was a graphical interface that resembled many of the ideas Apple had with the Mac. Jobs was furious. He felt that Gates and Microsoft copied Apple by creating a strikingly similar graphical user interface with the same features. Windows 1.0 was released in the fall of 1985. It didn’t get great reviews initially, but, over time and even today, it has become the dominant operating system.
- Quote (P. 179): “And yet Jobs’s dismay was understandable. Apple had been more innovative, imaginative, elegant in execution, and brilliant in design. But even though Microsoft created a crudely copied series of products, it would end up winning the war of operating systems.”
- Takeaway — What happened here was that Jobs stole the revolutionary graphical user interface idea (along with the accompanying desktop, icons, navigation, etc.) from Xerox to create the Mac and its operating software. Then, while working with Jobs as the Mac was being built, Gates turned around and copied Apple by creating the Microsoft Windows operating system software for IBM PCs.
- Quote (P. 179): “And yet Jobs’s dismay was understandable. Apple had been more innovative, imaginative, elegant in execution, and brilliant in design. But even though Microsoft created a crudely copied series of products, it would end up winning the war of operating systems.”
Ch. 17: Icarus
- Post-Mac Life — Following the successful release of the Mac, Jobs became a rock star. As he became famous around the world, his ego got bigger and his attitude got worse. He became more and more difficult to control. Making matters worse, Sculley, still Apple’s president at the time, continued to be so fixated on being buddies with Jobs that he allowed Jobs to run all over him.
- Mac Sales — Sales of the Mac were initially very impressive in 1984 but quickly dropped off. The primary issue was that the Mac was slow and underpowered. The revolutionary graphical user interface that set the Mac apart from other computers required a lot of code, and the Mac simply didn’t have enough RAM (memory) to make it all work smoothly. People quickly realized how limited it was and stopped buying.
- Fremont Factory — Jobs decided to build a state-of-the art factory in Fremont to manufacture the Mac. His passion for aesthetics, design, and presentation were on display again; he insisted that the factory be painted completely white with the machinery painted in bright blue, yellow, green, and red to match the Apple logo color scheme. This caused issues with members of his team. His team tried to tell him that an all-white factory would show dust everywhere and bright colors can cause issues with precision machines. Jobs, wanting to replicate the perfection he had seen in the factories he visited in Japan, went forward anyway.
- Exodus — Led by the Mac’s disappointing sales numbers, Apple entered a tailspin. The company was beginning to fall apart. The drama and headaches Jobs was causing led three of the Mac team’s top engineers — Andy Hertzfeld, Burrell Smith, and Bruce Horn — to resign.
- Woz Leaves — Woz also resigned from his full-time job as an engineer and manager in the Apple II division to start a new company that would sell a universal remote control device he had invented. Woz was frustrated with Jobs and the entire Apple leadership team because they constantly dismissed the Apple II as an inferior team/product, despite the fact that the Apple II was responsible for 70% of the company’s sales as of Christmas 1984. After a messy divorce with Apple — Woz and Jobs went back and forth in the media over the marketing designs for his new remote control company — Woz ultimately agreed to stay on in a part-time spokesman role.
- Showdown, Spring 1985 — All of Apple’s issues came to a head in the spring of 1985. Jobs was continuing to abuse people and act like a brat, and sales of the Mac continued to disappoint. Meanwhile, Jobs and Sculley were feuding. Jobs was annoyed with Sculley’s lack of interest in understanding Apple’s products (Sculley had come from Pepsi, where he didn’t have to worry about the recipes/products) and his obsession with being pals. Sculley was annoyed with Jobs’s pickiness and the way he treated other people. Employees were begging Sculley to do something about Jobs. There was a huge amount of confusion, paranoia, and drama at the company.
- The Board Intervenes — The Apple Board of Directors had had enough; in April 1985 the board set up private meetings with both Jobs and Sculley. Jobs made a case for getting rid of Sculley because he didn’t know anything about computers. Sculley told the board he would leave unless they gave him the power to remove Jobs from the Mac division. The board voted unanimously in Sculley’s favor. Sculley then took Jobs off of the Mac division and offered him a chance to instead work on developing new products.
- Plotting a Coup — Jobs was furious about being removed from the Mac division and refused to take any other role offered to him, so he began to plot a coup to change the board’s mind and get rid of Sculley. The coup was supposed to happen while Sculley was in China for a business meeting, but Jobs made the mistake of talking about his plan with Jean-Louis Gassée, the leader of Apple’s primary store in France and the very man who was supposed to replace Jobs in Apple’s Mac division. Gassée proceeded to tell Sculley what was happening. Sculley cancelled his trip to China.
- May 23-29 — From May 23-29, 1985, Jobs and his inner circle tried, and failed, to execute their coup, even with Sculley still in town. But in an executive committee meeting on May 24, Sculley confronted Jobs in front of everyone. He called for a poll of the room as to who should stay and who should go. The executives backed the board’s earlier decision in April and voted in favor of Sculley. Although Jobs still tried various things to change everybody’s mind in the following days, it was the end of the line. On May 28, the company’s new reorganization plan, including Gassée’s promotion to head man in the Mac division, was announced to employees and Jobs was relegated to a Chairman of the Board who had “no operational control.” He was still part of the company as a chairman and was allowed to attend executive meetings, but he basically was stripped of all control and responsibilities.
Ch. 18: NeXT
- Moving On — Jobs’s next move after being outed from Apple was explosive. In the fall of 1985, he decided to start his own company that would rival Apple. The new company would design and create a computer for the higher education market. To help get the company off the ground, he recruited/stole five talented but disgruntled Apple employees. When Jobs told the Apple board of his plans on September 13, they initially supported him but quickly turned on him for “breaching his duties as chairman and displaying stunning disloyalty to the company.” They felt Jobs had lied by saying the new company wouldn’t compete with Apple, which clearly wasn’t the case. Jobs then resigned as chairman and sold his 6.5 million shares of Apple (11% of the company) for $100 million. He was now completely detached from the company he co-founded.
- Quote (P. 217): “He (Jobs) was furious, and that was reflected in his passion to start what was, no matter how he spun it, a rival company.”
- NeXT — The new company Jobs started was called NeXT, and it aimed to bring a high-performing computer/workstation to schools and universities. Jobs worked with various people and companies to implement a spreadsheet program, dictionary, thesaurus, and Oxford Dictionary of Quotations into the first NeXT computer. He contributed $7 million of his own capital, but it looked like the company might run it of money in 1986 before the computer was even released.
- Quote (P. 219): “At the company he founded after being ousted from Apple, Jobs was able to indulge all of his instincts, both good and bad. He was unbound. The result was a series of spectacular products that were dazzling market flops. This was the true learning experience. What prepared him for the great successes he would have in Act III was not his ouster from his Act I at Apple, but his brilliant failures in Act II.”
- Interesting Fact — Jobs, who was always obsessed with design and presentation, paid legendary designer Paul Rand $100,000 to create the NeXT logo. Rand created the IBM, ABC, and UPS corporate logos and was considered the best. It took Rand just two weeks to create the NeXT logo and Jobs loved it right away.
- NeXT Unveiled — Jobs unveiled the NeXT computer on October 12, 1988 in San Francisco. The product launch session was entertaining, but the NeXT was unimpressive. Jobs announced that the computer would cost $6,500 — over $3,000 more than what his panel of academic advisors had suggested — and it wouldn’t go on sale until 1989. The computer had some nice features, but it didn’t measure up well to the competition from a hardware and software perspective. It went on sale in mid-1989 and was a failure.
Ch. 19: Pixar
- Jobs & Lucasfilm — In 1985, as he was being removed from Apple, Jobs began to negotiate with George Lucas and his team to buy the computer division at Lucasfilm. Lucas had put the division up for sale following the completion of his first Star Wars trilogy because he was in a messy divorce with his wife and needed to sell it quickly. The computer division made hardware and software for rendering digital images, and it had a group of computer animators making short films to show off the hardware and software. Jobs initially took a trip to see it in the summer of 1985, and bought 70% of the division for $10 million a few months later. He quickly turned the division into his own standalone company.
- Pixar Is Born — The Lucasfilm computer division’s most important piece of hardware was called the Pixar Image Computer. Jobs liked the name ‘Pixar’ and named the new company after it. At the start of this endeavor, the main source of revenue was supposed to come from selling the Pixar Image Computer and other hardware the company owned. But the equipment was just too expensive for most consumers and didn’t really sell well. The exception was Disney, which bought several Pixar Image Computers and used them to revive the company’s fading animation department. Disney used Pixar Image Computers to help create several animated movies, starting with The Little Mermaid in 1988.
- John Lasseter — Lasseter was a talented digital animator who created several animated short films for Pixar. The idea with these short films was to show off Pixar’s hardware and software so people/companies would buy the equipment, but Lasseter’s talent helped launch Pixar’s animated film business. He created the short film Luxo Jr., a two-minute film about a parent lamp and a child lamp pushing a ball back and forth until the ball bursts. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1986. Luxo Lamp is the little animated lamp you see hopping around the Pixar logo before every Pixar film.
- Animation Takes Over — Pixar’s hardware and software products — which were what attracted Jobs in the first place — turned out to be failures. It was the Lasseter-led animated film component of the company that ended up becoming highly successful. Although Pixar was struggling to make money in the late 1980s, Jobs believed in animation and continued to pour money into the projects. In 1998, Lasseter created a short animated film called Tin Toy that became the first computer-generated film to win an Academy Award. The victory led Disney to pursue Lasseter, who turned down the company’s offer and stayed with Pixar. Disney then decided to partner with Pixar to create animated films.
- Quote (P. 248): “His (Jobs) belief that ordinary consumers would love to do 3-D modeling on Pixar software turned out to be wrong, but that was soon replaced by an instinct that turned out to be right: that combining great art and digital technology would transform animated films more than anything had since 1937, when Walt Disney had given life to Snow White.”
- Takeaway — The hardware and software divisions of Pixar are what intrigued Jobs when he bought the division from Lucasfilms in 1986. These were two of the three components of the company, and both failed. The animated films component went on to change the world by combining art and technology.
- Quote (P. 248): “His (Jobs) belief that ordinary consumers would love to do 3-D modeling on Pixar software turned out to be wrong, but that was soon replaced by an instinct that turned out to be right: that combining great art and digital technology would transform animated films more than anything had since 1937, when Walt Disney had given life to Snow White.”
Ch. 20: A Regular Guy
- Meeting Mom & Sister — Jobs in 1986 was able to track down his biological mom and sister, Joanne (Schieble) and Mona Simpson. Mona was a novelist living in New York, while Joanne lived in Los Angeles. Jobs met both in 1986 and maintained a friendly relationship with each of them. He later located his biological father but had no interest in meeting him.
- Loving Lisa — As Lisa Brennan got older, Jobs became more interested in spending time with the daughter he had all but abandoned up to that point. Lisa was 8 years old in 1986 when it became apparent that she was extremely smart and a talented writer. Jobs began to spend more time with her and turned some of his focus towards being a better father.
Ch. 21: A Family Man
- Laurene Powell — Jobs met his future wife, Laurene Powell, in October 1989 while speaking one night at a Stanford Business School class. Powell was a graduate student at the time. Jobs proposed a few months later on New Year’s Eve. She accepted. The two got married on March 18, 1991 at Ahwahnee Lodge in Yosemite National Park.
- Interesting Fact — Kona Village in Hawaii was Jobs’s favorite vacation spot.
- Interesting Fact — Mona Simpson, Jobs’s biological sister, married a man named Richard Appel, a lawyer who went on to become a television comedy writer and create the show The Simpsons. In the show, Appel named Homer’s wife after his wife, Mona. Jobs’s sister was inspiration for the character Mona Simpson on The Simpsons.
- Children — In addition to Lisa, who he had with Chrisann Brennan, Jobs went on to have three more kids with Powell. Reed Jobs was born in 1991; Erin Jobs was born in 1995; and Eve Jobs was born in 1998.
Ch. 22: Toy Story
- Toy Story Is Born — In May 1991, Pixar and Disney agreed to begin creating Toy Story. In the contract, Disney was given the right to own the film and its characters. Pixar received 12.5% of the ticket revenues. Because Disney had control over many aspects of the creative vision, Woody’s character kept getting changed during the review process to the point where he was quite mean and the film was rather creepy. When Pixar’s team showed the film to Disney’s top creative animation artists, the movie was shot down and discontinued. Lasseter went back to the drawing board and made the characters and overall story a lot friendlier. Everybody agreed with the new vision, and the film returned to production.
- Quote (P. 289): “He (Jobs) had been talking to various companies, ranging from hallmark to Microsoft, about selling Pixar, but watching Woody and Buzz come to life made him realize that he might be on the verge of transforming the movie industry.”
- Toy Story Premier — Toy Story debuted in November 1995 and became the top-grossing film of the year with $192 million receipts domestically and $362 worldwide. The huge success of Toy Story led to a big debate about which studio led the way. Disney was more of the distributor and marketer, while Pixar created the film and the animated characters. Jobs wanted to make it clear that Pixar deserved the majority of the credit for the film.
- Pixar Goes Public — One week after the premier of Toy Story, Pixar went public via an IPO because the company badly needed cash. The price started at $22 per share and quickly shot up to $45 before settling down to $39. It was the biggest IPO of the year. Jobs, who was looking to sell the company earlier that year to get back the $50 million he invested in it initially, earned $1.2 billion because he owned 80% of the company’s shares. Jobs took the company public because he didn’t like how Disney had all the leverage in their partnership and provided most of the funding for the movie. When Toy Story was being created, Disney was able call most of the shots because Pixar was low on cash and needed Disney more than Disney needed Pixar. The IPO leveled the playing field as Pixar was now loaded.
- New Deal — Following the IPO, Jobs was able to go back to Disney and demand a new partnership with new terms. Following the new 5-movie deal with Disney, Pixar received half of the profits from their future combined movies and Pixar was granted co-branding on all movies, toys, and advertising. The new agreement went into effect in early 1997.
Ch. 23: The Second Coming
- NeXT Fails — By the early 1990s, NeXT was still sputtering and Jobs was forced to do something he never liked to do: license his operating software to other companies. The move was made because the company was struggling to sell computer and make money, and Sun Microsystems was blowing NeXT out of the water. By 1993, Jobs was forced to stop making hardware altogether. NeXT became a company that only sold its software to other companies.
- Apple Falling — Windows 95 was released in 1995 and became the most successful operating software ever. Apple, on the other hand, was losing customers and its stock price was crashing. By 1996, Apple’s market share had dropped from a high of 16% in the late 1980s to 4%. Its stock price fell from $70 in 1991 to $14. None of Apple’s new products were getting the job done. The company needed a new leader and direction.
- Returning to Apple — By 1996, Apple had fallen so hard that it needed a boost and a new product to rally around. Apple considered buying out a few different software companies to infuse some life, including NeXT. Jobs was eager to sell NeXT to Apple because the company was failing and he wanted to return to the company he co-founded after 11 years of being away from it. Apple wanted NeXT’s software and its group of engineers, so a deal between the two parties was made. On December 20, 1996 Apple announced that it had purchased NeXT at $10 per share, a 400 million valuation. Jobs was back, but in more of an advisory-type role.
Ch. 24: The Restoration
- Plotting for Power — Jobs was also motivated to get back to Apple because he was somewhat interested in eventually becoming President and CEO. A few years earlier, Gil Amelio was hired as Apple’s CEO to replace Sculley. Amelio was terrible. Apple’s sales and market share plummeted under his guidance. Jobs knew that if he could get back into Apple by selling NeXT to them, he would have a good shot of taking over for Amelio once he inevitably crashed and burned. The Apple board decided to fire Amelio in July 1997 following a horrible Q2 earnings report. At first, Jobs didn’t take the CEO role; he continued to serve in more of an advisory role. He was the CEO at Pixar and wasn’t sure if he wanted to add another CEO job to his plate.
- Starting Fresh — Although he was wishy washy on whether he wanted to come back full time, one of the first things Jobs did after Amelio was fired was to ask all members of the Apple board — except Ed Woolard and Gareth Chang — to step down. He felt that a fresh new start was essential if Apple was going to avoid bankruptcy and make a comeback. Jobs joined the new board alongside Woolard and Chang, and together the three recruited several more high-profile members to complete the board.
- Microsoft Partnership — At Apple’s ‘Macworld’ event in August 1997, Jobs led a presentation where he shared updates about the company and what to expect in the future. He still wasn’t officially the CEO at this point, but all signs indicated that he would take that role soon. Towards the end of the presentation, Jobs announced that Apple had made a deal with rival Microsoft. The deal involved a commitment and an investment from Microsoft — Microsoft committed to building software for the Mac and invested $150 million into Apple. The investment ensured that Microsoft had a stake in Apple’s success or failure.
- Surprising Announcement — The partnership was very surprising at the time because Apple and Microsoft had been at war for over a decade; Apple had sued Microsoft several times, claiming that Microsoft stole Apple’s graphical user interface (GUI) technology that debuted on the first Mac in the 1980s. The partnership was partly done because Apple was in such bad financial shape and was desperate to get out of the hole. The partnership announcement worked. By the end of the Macworld event, Apple’s stock price jumped from $19.75 to $26.31, adding $830 million to Apple’s market capitalization.
Ch. 25: Think Different
- ‘Think Different’ Campaign — In July 1997, shortly after Amelio left the company, Jobs called up Lee Clow, the creative director at Chiat/Day. Jobs wanted Clow’s help in creating a great marketing campaign that would reignite the Apple brand. Clow and his team came up with a campaign centered around the idea that people who buy Apple products ‘Think Different.’ The slogan, along with Apple’s logo, was placed in the corner of several black and white images of high-profile people who have done amazing things, including Picasso, Amelia Earhart, Martin Luther King Jr., and more. The campaign was not about Apple’s products, it was about Apple’s mission/purpose. The campaign was designed to attract customers who also had a desire to ‘think different.’ It went on the become one of the most memorable marketing campaigns in history.
- Quote (P. 328): “So they (Clow and Jobs) wanted a brand image campaign, not a set of advertisements featuring products. It was designed to celebrate not what the computers could do, but what creative people could do with the computers.”
- Takeaway — This is a good example of storytelling in marketing. In marketing, you always want to put yourself in the shoes of the audience and try to connect with their wants, needs, and pain points. Apple wanted to connect with creativity and rebellion, and its marketing campaigns did that really well by telling a story, both in the ‘Think Different’ campaign and the ‘1984’ Mac campaign.
- Quote (P. 332): “Starting with, the ‘Think Different’ campaign, and continuing through the rest of his years at Apple, Jobs held a freewheeling three hour meeting every Wednesday afternoon with his top agency, marketing, and communications people to kick around messaging strategy.”
- Takeaway — Marketing and messaging are really important! Bill Gates once called Jobs a “super salesman,” and he’s right in many ways. Jobs wasn’t very involved in engineering, but he cared about marketing, positioning, and presentation. He obsessed over these things. He knew that a product — regardless of how good it was — could not succeed if it was presented and distributed poorly.
- Quote (P. 328): “So they (Clow and Jobs) wanted a brand image campaign, not a set of advertisements featuring products. It was designed to celebrate not what the computers could do, but what creative people could do with the computers.”
- Becoming CEO — Jobs officially became Apple’s new CEO in December of 1997. It wasn’t his preference — he worked with the board to try to find a suitable replacement for Amelio. But it became clear that he needed to take the position for Apple to have any chance of turning things around. After taking the role, he told Apple employees, “We’re trying to get back to the basics of great products, great marketing, and great distribution. Apple has drifted away from doing the basics really well.”
- Killing the Clones — One of Jobs’s first moves as CEO was to break off the licensing agreements Apple had made with other companies. Sculley and Amelio had made deals with other computer companies to sell them the Mac operating system. Jobs always believed that software and hardware should be integrated, so he quickly broke off those partnerships.
- Focused Products — Jobs’s second move was to tighten up Apple’s focus. While he was away from the company, Apple had begun making too many products. The company got away from what it did best. When Jobs became CEO, he eliminated 70% of the products Apple was working on. He also laid off 3,000 people. After two years of posting horrible losses, Apple make a $45 million profit in Q1 1998. For the full fiscal year of 1998, the company turned a $309 million profit. Jobs was back and so was Apple.
- Interesting Fact — The ‘i’ in front of Apple’s products (i.e. iPhone, iPad, etc.) is to emphasize that the device can be seamlessly integrated with the Internet.
Ch. 26: Design Principles
- Prioritizing Design — As discussed earlier in the book, Jobs was always obsessed with design and presentation, whether it was the product itself or the packing. Jony Ive was Apple’s lead designer when Jobs became CEO, and the two formed a special bond. At most companies, the internal elements of a product are created and the design follows. This is what happened at Apple when Jobs was no longer there. When Jobs returned, the design of the product came first again — design once again dictated the engineering. Jobs understood that design and presentation was a competitive advantage for the company and helped differentiate Apple from its competitors.
- Quote (P. 344): “At most other companies, engineering tends to drive the outer design elements of a product. The engineers set forth their specifications and requirements, and the designers come up with cases and shells that will accommodate them. For Jobs, the process tended to work the other way. In the early days of Apple, Jobs had approved the design of the case of the original Macintosh, and the engineers had to make their boards and components fit.”
- Quote (P. 347): “Early on, Mike Markkula had taught Jobs to ‘impute’ — to understand that people do judge a book by its cover — and therefore to make sure all the trappings and packaging of Apple signaled that there was a beautiful gem inside. Whether it’s an iPod Mini, or a MacBook Pro, Apple customers know the feeling of opening up the well-crafted box, and finding the product nestled in an inviting fashion.”
Ch. 27: The iMac
- Creating the iMac — Apple’s resurgence continued with the birth of the iMac, a desktop computer aimed at the home consumer market that was introduced in May 1998. Jobs and Ive came up with a sleek design that featured a sea-green, translucent casing that allowed customers to see inside of the machine. Like the original Mac released in 1984, the iMac was a revolutionary product — there was nothing like it on the market. It looked amazing, and included the computer, a keyboard, and a mouse all in one package.
- Selling the iMac — Like all of his product reveals, Jobs introduced the iMac by putting on a show in May 1998 in front of a big crowd at De Anna Community College in Cupertino, the same location where he introduced the original Mac. Everybody loved it. And unlike the original Mac, the iMac was also a hit in stores — it went on sale in August 1998 for $1,299 and sold 278,000 units in its first six weeks. It also sold 800,000 units by the end of the year, making it the fastest-selling computer in Apple history. Jobs and Ive went on to add five other colors that customers could choose from. The iMac was Jobs’s first product release after returning to Apple, and it was instrumental in helping the company get back on track.
Ch. 28: CEO
- Tim Cook — Job’s streak of great moves as CEO continued with the hiring of Tim Cook in 1998. After majoring in industrial engineering at Auburn and later getting a business degree at Duke University, Cook had worked at IBM for 12 years before taking a job at Compaq Computers. He interviewed with Jobs and was offered the position of operations manager at Apple. He accepted and immediately made a big impact on the company in many areas — from shrinking Apple’s high inventory to speeding up the manufacturing process for building an Apple computer. Cook and Jobs clicked really well, so much so that Cook succeeded Jobs in the role of CEO when Jobs left the company due to health reasons.
- Interesting Fact — One of Jobs’s signature characteristics was his love of the black turtleneck. He wore one almost daily and considered it part of his ‘uniform.’ The black turtleneck was created by Issey Miyake, a famous Japanese designer who sent Jobs over 100 of them.
- Collaboration — Although Jobs was ruthless at times, he valued a culture of collaboration at Apple. He liked meetings over presentations or proposals because it gave him a chance to hash things out with several different departments at once. He wanted all departments to work together rather than individually. He felt that type of process and culture led to great collaboration and integrated products. He also applied this collaborative approach to hiring — all candidates had to meet with the leaders of several departments, not just the one they were interviewing with.
- Quote (P. 362): “Because he (Jobs) believed that Apple’s great advantage was its integration of the whole widget — from design to hardware to software to content — he wanted all departments at the company to work together in parallel. The phrases he used were ‘deep collaboration’ and ‘concurrent engineering.’ Instead of a development process in which a product would be passed sequentially from engineering to design to manufacturing to marketing and distribution, these various departments collaborated simultaneously.”
Ch. 29: Apple Stores
- Apple Stores — Beginning in 1999, Jobs began secretly working with a few designers on the idea of Apple stores. He wasn’t satisfied with Apple’s products sitting on the shelves of various random retailers; he wanted to control the environment in which they were being displayed and sold. As usual, he obsessed over every little detail that might impact the customer experience. The Apple board didn’t like the idea when Jobs presented it to them, but it eventually approved a trial run of four Apple Stores. Just before opening the first store, Jobs and his team decided to change everything. Initially, the stores were just a place to house Apple’s products. The team later decided to use the products in a way that gave the customer a chance to engage with it and see what it could do. This change set the company back about 4 months, but worked well.
- Simplicity — As he did with his products, Jobs obsessed over making Apple stores simple. He wanted to remove as many steps in the customer experience as possible. For example, he created an exact process detailing how he wanted the checkout line to operate in an Apple store..
- Takeaway — This is a good takeaway from the book. Throughout his career, Jobs always prioritized processes and simplicity. It’s important for any company or organization to follow that approach. You want to make things as easy and simple as possible for all people involved. Streamline everything.
- Simplicity — As he did with his products, Jobs obsessed over making Apple stores simple. He wanted to remove as many steps in the customer experience as possible. For example, he created an exact process detailing how he wanted the checkout line to operate in an Apple store..
- Store Features — Jobs essentially wanted to create a glass cube stocked with Apple products and Apple employees. The stores oozed simplicity and elegant design. He was a really artistic person, so there are naturally many jaw-dropping and unique features in the stores. Some of these include:
- Glass Staircases — Jobs is listed as the lead inventor on two different types of glass stairwells that are found in Apple stores
- Genius Bar — In every Apple store there is a ‘bar’ with Apple products. The bar is surrounded by ‘geniuses’, employees who can answer any question a customer might have. They are experts.
- Italian Stones — The floor is made up of gray-blue Pietra Serena Italian stone. Jobs came across this type of stone while visiting Florence in 1985. The street sidewalks are lined with it. Apple initially started with wood flooring, but Jobs got tired of it and replaced it with these stones.
- Apple Stores Open — The first Apple store opened in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. The skeptics were wrong — the stores were a huge success. By 2004, Apple stores were averaging 5,400 visitors a week and finished the year with $1.2 billion in revenue, setting a record in the retail industry for reaching the billion-dollar milestone. In July 2011, a decade after opening the first store, there were 326 Apple stores. The biggest was in London’s Covent Garden. The tallest was in Tokyo’s Ginza. The average annual revenue per store was $34 billion.
- Interesting Fact — Jobs has a patent on the packing of Apple products. He believed unboxing an Apple product was an experience, and he filed patents on the various elements and details of the packaging to protect that experience.
Ch. 30: Connecting the Dots
- The Digital Hub — By 2001, many people were over the personal computer. It was limited in what it could do. Jobs came up with the idea of using the personal computer as a ‘digital hub’ that would serve as the centerpiece for a person’s music, pictures, text, and videos. All of a person’s devices would be able to hook up and sync to his personal computer. Apple ended up dropping the word “computer” at the end of its name to reflect this change in approach. In Apple’s mind, the Mac would become the centerpiece for new devices like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. By connecting and syncing devices to the Mac, Apple made it possible for a person to create his own content, like short movies, music, and more. Nothing like this had been done before.
- iTunes — The first big piece of Apple’s ‘digital hub’ was iTunes. Microsoft and HP had music software, but neither of the offerings were very user friendly. A former Apple engineer had developed a music management software for the Mac called SoundJam, and Jobs swooped in and bought the company. He then helped the engineers mold SoundJam into iTunes. He pushed the engineers to make the application simpler and more fun. iTunes was unveiled as part of the ‘digital hub’ strategy at Macworld in 2001.
- iPod — After iTunes was released, the obvious next move was for Apple to build its own music playing hardware. What came of this project was the iPod, a device that took Apple from a computer company to the world’s most valuable company. At the time, the devices on the market were awful; they were difficult to use and understand. With the Mac serving as a person’s digital hub, Jobs knew Apple would be able to create portable devices that were simple to use and could plug into and sync with the Mac. From there, a person would be able to use the Mac to manage the content on their portable devices. The devices that were already on the market had a ton of buttons that were designed to manage the content on the device. Jobs saw things differently and helped Apple create the iPod, which was released in December 2001. By 2007, iPod sales were half of Apple’s revenue.
- Quote (P. 388): “Once the project was launched, Jobs immersed himself in it daily. His main demand was ‘Simplify’ He would go over each screen of the user interface and apply a rigid test: If he wanted a song or a function, he should be able to get there in three clicks.”
- Takeaway — Simple is always better. As other books have talked about, you have to make things easy on people. If it’s too complicated, you lose them. Jobs understood that and tried to make Apple’s devices — from the Mac to the iPod and iPhone — as simple to use as possible. This law of simplicity applies to everything, from building products to writing marketing material, to creating processes for people to follow. Make it simple and make it easy.
- Quote (P. 388): “Once the project was launched, Jobs immersed himself in it daily. His main demand was ‘Simplify’ He would go over each screen of the user interface and apply a rigid test: If he wanted a song or a function, he should be able to get there in three clicks.”
- Integration — Going back to the start of his career, Jobs always believed that hardware, software, design, content, and functionality should all be integrated and work together as one. This approach, at times, hurt Apple in the 1980s because competitors like Microsoft were building software that could be used with any piece of hardware, which led to the potential for more sales, while Apple was somewhat limited. With the birth of the digital hub, iTunes, and the iPod, the integrated approach dominated. People were able to plug in and sync to a central Mac computer. If you bought an iPod, you wanted a Mac. If you bought a Mac, you wanted an iPod. The integrated approach had so many different advantages. And because Apple had always done things with that approach, it capitalized in the early 2000s.
- iTunes Store — Jobs began pursuing the idea of the iTunes Store primarily to combat and take advantage of the piracy epidemic that was sweeping the country. People were using piracy websites to download their favorite songs. Apple went to work on building a music management software where people would be able to buy and download their favorite songs or albums and sync them to their iPod in a matter of minutes without feeling like a thief. The store was genius — it helped solve the piracy issues and it simultaneously pushed sales of the iPod and Mac. The most difficult part was getting the music companies to agree to offering their artists’ content on the iTunes Store. The store was launched in 2003 and sold its billionth song in 2006.
Ch. 31: The iTunes Store
- iTunes Store — Jobs began pursuing the idea of the iTunes Store primarily to combat and take advantage of the piracy epidemic that was sweeping the country. People were using piracy websites to download their favorite songs. Apple went to work on building a music management software where people would be able to buy and download their favorite songs or albums and sync them to their iPod in a matter of minutes without feeling like a thief. The store was genius — it helped solve the piracy issues and it simultaneously pushed sales of the iPod and Mac. The most difficult part was getting the music companies to agree to offering their artists’ content on the iTunes Store. The store was launched in 2003 and sold its billionth song in 2006.
Ch. 32: Music Man
- Bob Dylan and U2 — Jobs’s favorite all time artist was Bob Dylan, and Apple was able to work out a deal with the singer to offer all of his songs in a collection on the iTunes Store. They also created an ad with Dylan. Bono, the lead singer for the band U2, reached out to Jobs about an ad and special iPod. Apple created a special black and red iPod for U2 and created an ad that U2 appeared in for free.
- Reverse Marketing — Companies normally pay artists to appear on their commercials, but Apple had become so popular that artists wanted to appear in iPod commercials for free. The association with Apple often sent the artist’s sales to the moon.
Ch. 33: Pixar's Friends
- Pixar Juggernaut — Pixar’s second big film following Toy Story was A Bug’s Life. It was Lasseter’s idea and the movie debuted in the fall of 1998. It was really successful, grossing $163 million domestically and $363 million worldwide. Under Jobs and Lasseter, Pixar went on to create some of the most successful animated films of all time. Huge hits include:
- Toy Story 2
- Toy Story 3
- Finding Nemo
- Monsters, Inc.
- The Incredibles
- Cars
- Ratatouille
- Up
- Disney Buys Pixar — What originally started as a four-movie deal with Disney later turned into Disney buying Pixar. There was a lot of drama on the Disney side, but in 2005, Bob Iger replaced Michael Eisner as Disney CEO and worked out a deal with Jobs to buy Pixar outright. Iger, unlike Eisner, knew that Disney’s animated films had been terrible lately and the company’s future depended on creating great animated movies that could spawn toys, rides, musicals, etc. That had been a winning formula with Toy Story. So in 2006, Disney purchased Pixar for $7.4 billion in stock and Jobs became Disney’s largest shareholder with 7% of the company’s stock. Lasseter was able to continue running the Pixar studio under the new deal.
Ch. 34: Twenty-First-Century Macs
- Partnering With Intel — In 2005, Apple began using Intel chips inside its computers. To that point, Apple had partnered with Motorola for its chips, but Jobs became annoyed with how slow the company was when it came to developing a newer, faster chip in the early 2000s. He decided to change course and partner with Intel.
Ch. 35: Round One
- Cancer — Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. Despite doctors and loved ones begging him to have the tumor removed immediately via surgery, Jobs resisted initially, instead electing to use alternative methods like acupuncture and heavy vegetable diets to fend it off. In 2004 the tumor had grown and Jobs finally opted for surgery. On July 31, 2004, the procedure was performed.
- Stanford Commencement Speech — Jobs delivered a commencement speech to the Stanford University class of 2005. He was reflective and poignant. One of the key points of his speech was about understanding how fragile life is.
- Quote (P. 457): “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because, almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There’s no reason not to follow your heart.”
- Interesting Fact — In ancient Rome, when a victorious general paraded through the streets, legend has it that he was sometimes trailed by a servant whose job it was to repeat to him, “Memento Mori,” which means “remember you will die.”
Ch. 36: The iPhone
- Developing the iPhone — There were a couple of factors that led to the iPhone. The first involved the fact that the iPod was such a huge success; in 2005, 20 million were sold and the product had become 45% of Apple’s revenue. Jobs was worried that mobile phones could implement a music player and kill Apple. He wanted to negate that by creating his own phone. The second involved the fact that the mobile phones on the market at the time were truly awful. There was room for a new, dynamic mobile phone. The market was also huge — more than 825 million mobile phones were sold in 2005.
- Secret Project — One of the early problems Apple had when building the iPhone was the user interface. At first, they tried to modify the iPod to make the iPhone, but the trackwheel was not an efficient navigation tool. At the time, a few of the company’s designers were working on a secret tablet computer (the iPad),and they had developed the idea of a multi-touch screen for the tablet that would allow a user to use his fingers and hands to navigate. When they presented the multi-touch feature to Jobs, he immediately decided to put a hold on the tablet project (iPad) for the time being and use the technology for the iPhone.
- FingerWorks — At the time, there was a small company called FingerWorks in Delaware that had already refined and perfected the multi-touch technology. Apple quietly bought the company and all of its patents, and the engineers there began working on the iPhone for Apple.
- Simple, Simple, Simple — One of the defining features of the iPhone was the fact that it was mostly a screen. There wasn’t a keyboard or stylist like many of the mobile phones at the time, like the Blackberry. People were able to use their hands to navigate. Throughout his career, Jobs was obsessed with keeping things simple, and that mentality once again payed dividends with the iPhone. The iPhone was so simple and easy to use in a world where mobile phones were really complicated and clunky. When possible, keep things simple!
- The Launch — The iPhone was launched in June 2007 and went on to sell over 90 million units by 2010. The phone completely dominated the market and revolutionized the mobile cell phone.
Ch. 37: Round Two
- Cancer Spreads — By 2008, it was clear that Jobs’s cancer had spread. He was told by his doctor he would need a liver transplant, and he was able to get one in 2009 after rising up the wait list in Memphis, Tennessee. He got the transplant just in time and nearly died at one point during the recovery process. By the fall of 2010, he was back to full strength and back to doing good work at Apple. The cancer wasn’t gone, but he was feeling better.
Ch. 38: The iPad
- iPad Development — Similar to the iPhone, Jobs was fixated on making it simple to use and outlawed a stylus, something a Microsoft beloved in when it was developing a tablet. The iPad was actually a secret project in development at Apple before the iPhone. When Jobs saw the multi-touch technology his team was creating for the iPad, he decided to use it to create the iPhone first. After the iPhone was released, the company turned its attention back to the iPad.
- iPad Launch — Like so many of its other products, the iPad was revolutionary and set the standard for tablets. The iPad was released on April 5, 2010 and sold a million units in its first month, which was twice as fast as it took the iPhone to reach that mark. By March 2011, 15 million iPads had been sold, making it arguably the most successful consumer product launch in history.
- Apps — Although the idea of applications (apps) debuted on the iPhone in 2007, they took off with the iPad. Apps single-handily launched a new generation of entrepreneurs by giving people a chance to create their own unique apps for people to download through the App Store. To prevent anybody from controlling the experience too much, Apple put in place certain guidelines that had to be passed by app developers in order to have the app featured in the App Store. By July 2011, there were 500,000 apps for both the iPhone and iPad, and there were 15 billion downloads. Apps transformed the media, journalism, and gaming industries.
Ch. 39: New Battles
- Battling Google — In 2010, Google’s phone, the Android, began to rise in popularity. Jobs was pissed at Google because he felt they had stolen many of the iPhone’s features. Eventually Apple sued Google. The battle with Google was reminiscent of Apple’s battle with Microsoft in the 1980s, when Jobs was furious at Microsoft for “stealing” many of the ideas Apple developed for the Mac.
- Open vs. Closed — At the heart of both issues was the open vs. closed experience debate. Jobs and Apple always believed in integrating a product’s hardware, software, and functionality to create a great user experience and have complete control of it. Microsoft and Google believe in an open approach where the software could be licensed to other manufacturers to be used with other hardware. By favoring a closed experience, Apple sacrificed market share, which is why both Microsoft and Google were able to gain customers. It’s also why Microsoft dominated the PC era despite its products not being as good as Apple’s.
Ch. 40: To Infinity
- Quote (P. 528): “Living with a disease like this, and all the pain, constantly reminds you of your own mortality, and that can do strange things to your brain if you’re not careful. You don’t make plans more than a year out, and that’s bad. You need to force yourself to plan as if you will live for many years.”
- Takeaway — This was a quote from Jobs as he was dealing with cancer. The takeaway is that you should always have plans for the future and goals that you’re striving for. You want to live in the moment, but you also need to have plans and goals for yourself because that’s what keeps you going. That’s what keeps you motivated and driven. That’s what gives you purpose and gets you up in the morning. If you don’t have plans and goals for yourself, you end up living in a monotonous rut every day.
- iCloud — By 2008 Jobs had a new vision for the next wave of the digital era. In the future, he believed your desktop computer would no longer serve as the hub for your content. Instead, the hub would move to “the cloud.” In other words, your content would be stored on remote servers managed by a company you trusted, and it would be available for you to use on any device, anywhere. With your photos, texts, emails, apps, notes, etc. constantly syncing to the cloud automatically throughout the day, you would never have to physically sync your content to a computer using a USB cable ever again.
- Customer Stickiness — iCloud was revealed in 2011 and was a big success in large part because of Apple’s “closed experience” approach where hardware, software, and content were tightly integrated. Because of this approach, syncing to the iCloud was extremely simple and easy. And it kept people with Apple because moving all of your content to a different device would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. The iCloud is one of the many reasons people are so loyal to Apple.
- Quote (P. 534): “Of course, it (iCloud) worked seamlessly only if you were using an Apple device and stayed within Apple’s gated garden. That produced another benefit for Apple: customer stickiness. Once you began using iCloud, it would be difficult to switch to a Kindle or Android device. Your music and other content would not sync to them; in fact they might not even work.”
- Customer Stickiness — iCloud was revealed in 2011 and was a big success in large part because of Apple’s “closed experience” approach where hardware, software, and content were tightly integrated. Because of this approach, syncing to the iCloud was extremely simple and easy. And it kept people with Apple because moving all of your content to a different device would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. The iCloud is one of the many reasons people are so loyal to Apple.
- New Campus — In 2011 Jobs revealed the designs for a brand new four-story, three million-square-foot Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California. He led the design and, as usual, was extremely picky and controlling throughout the process. The campus featured huge floor-to-ceiling panes of glass, and was designed in the shape of a circle from the aerial view. The center courtyard was 800 feet across (three football fields) and has thousands of trees and apricot orchards. Jobs was nearing the end of his life at the time he began designing this building, and he looked at it as a legacy project.
- Interesting Fact — Jobs was obsessed with glass. Whether it was designing Apple stores, his personal yacht, or the company’s new “spaceship” campus in Cupertino, he was a huge fan of glass and used it often when designing things. Large, customized panes of glass were a big part of his signature style.
Ch. 41: New Battles
- Twilight — In 2010 and 2011, the cancer was spreading and taking a toll on Jobs. He was always in pain and had very little energy. His doctors continued to do their best to treat him, but it was getting tough. Jobs had also lost a ton of weight because he had no appetite. On August 24, 2011, Jobs announced to the Apple board that he needed to resign as CEO of the company. Tim Cook, who had previously led the company in Jobs’s absence, was tapped as his replacement.
Ch. 42: Legacy
- Quote (P. 566): “Steve Jobs thus became the greatest business executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered a century from now. History will place him in the pantheon right next to Edison and Ford. More than anyone else of his time, he made products that were completely innovative, combining the power of poetry and processors. With a ferocity that could make working with him as unsettling as it was inspiring, he also built the world’s most creative company. And he was able to infuse into its DNA the design sensibilities, perfectionism, and imagination that make it likely to be, even decades from now, the company that thrives best at the intersection of artistry and technology.”
- Legacy — Jobs died on October 5, 2011. He was an extraordinarily brilliant but complicated man with a personality that had some serious rough edges. He was driven not by profits but by products. He had an unbelievable will to get things done that seemed impossible. A few of the traits that marked Jobs’s personality include:
- Simplicity — Jobs was fixated on creating products that were as simple as possible. Whether it was hardware, software, content, product design, or user interface, Jobs eliminated anything that wasn’t necessary. He tried to make things as simple as he possibly could. His simplistic approach came from his dedication to Zen.
- Focus — When Jobs returned to Apple in the 1990s, he immediately cut 70% of the company’s ongoing projects and fired a bunch of employees who were then no longer needed. He learned early in his career the value of focusing on a few things and doing them exceptionally well.
- Art & Design — Jobs was truly passionate about the design of every product. He believed he was creating art with his designs. He even had all members of the original Mac team sign their names on the circuit board that went inside the machine.
- Closed Experience — Throughout his career, driven by his passion for products over profit, Jobs favored a closed, integrated approach to his products. The hardware, software, interface, design, and content had to be tightly integrated. This allowed him to have complete control of the user experience, but it meant that he had to sacrifice market share. Microsoft, and later Google with the Android, at times had greater market share than Apple because they created operating systems and software that could be used on many different pieces of hardware made by other manufacturers. Jobs resisted this; he wanted to the user experience to be tightly integrated end-to-end.
- ‘Reality Distortion Field’ — Jobs had an unbelievable ability to will himself and others to do things that seemed impossible. He pushed people to their limits and willed them to do things they didn’t think they could do. This is partly why Apple was, and is, such an innovative company, and it led to the creation of so many great products and features. He had a way of getting crazy things done. He was normally very rude about it though, and that’s the challenge — how rude do you need to be to get the most out of people?
- Intensity — If something peaked his interest, Jobs would zone in it with a relentless and intense focus until the job was done. If it was something that he had no interest in dealing with — his daughter Lisa, Chrisann Brennan, family issues, a law suit, etc. — he had an uncanny ability to just act like it didn’t exist.
- Temper — Jobs was not a very nice man. His rough edges were part of his complicated personality. He had a way of being able to understand what would hurt someone, and then he did that exact thing to abuse the person. He was insanely difficult to work for and had many, many shouting matches with employees. He was brutally honest and would tell you that your work sucked if he thought that.
- Crazy Diets — Throughout his life, Jobs was obsessed with crazy vegan and fruit diets and genuinely believed early in his life that these diets meant he wouldn’t give off odor and therefore didn’t need to shower. He would also fast for weeks on end. His dedication to these diets became problematic when he got cancer and needed to be eating more protein.
