Steve Jobs

Everybody knows how the story of the Apple founder ends but not everybody is aware of way he worked and lived.  I just finished the book by Walter Isaacson, the authorized biography of Jobs that he wanted to chronicle his life, warts and all, so his children would get to know him better and learn what he was doing while spending so much time at work. 

There’s no other way to put it: Jobs was an asshole.  He admitted he was an asshole.  He saw everything in black and white and he saw people as brilliant or idiots. Once you were categorized it was impossible to change his mind. He ruled Apple and Pixar and made deals with other companies via emotion. He also cried easily and sometimes hard, descending into racking sobs, in public, in meetings, wherever.

There’s no doubt his name will rest alongside the great inventors in history. Jobs insisted that Apple’s products had to be beautiful as well as functional.  The iPad was actually closer to market than the iPhone but Jobs thought the smartphone should come first so he funneled energy into that division. Many years earlier, before was ousted from his own company in a classic stabbed-in-the-back story, Jobs pitted two divisions against each other – the one making the Lisa computer (never heard of it?) against the team working on the Mac.  He was brutal in his assessment of months of work. “This is shit!” he would sometimes yell at cowering engineers. Still, despite the culture at Apple, some of the brightest minds were clamouring to work there.

While most product-makers design the outside around the necessary components, Jobs would choose the design first and then drive his engineers crazy by forcing them to make the components fit.  The iPod had to be good looking, fit easily into the hand and not look disposable.  He favoured the rounded rectangle which is obvious in the Apple products.  He convinced Corning to restart work on a special glass called gorilla glass for the iPad.  They devoted an entire factory to it.  He fussed over the tiniest details that most of us won’t even notice.  And through it all he only ever had flashes of empathy for anyone.  He was cold.

The success of Toy Story and the rise of Pixar into an animation powerhouse were mostly Steve’s doing.  He had an intuition and sense that few could match, not even the head of Disney who – in this book – looks like an absolute buffoon. But how can you come across as anything but a fool when you’ve openly opposed the opinions of a genius? Jobs left a lot of roadkill along life’s highway and if Isaacson’s assessment is correct, he rarely looked back.

Even his family experienced his chronic prickliness and distance. He really was a jerk. Worst of all, he delayed surgery when his cancer was first found and that allowed the tumour to get a strong foothold in his system and eventually kill him.

Jobs always believed that Samsung stole iPad and iPhone technology for their own line of tablets and smartphones and vowed to spend every last dime to defeat them in court and make them pay.  The book is clear on this point: everybody stole from everybody else.  They all work together and they pilfer each others’ ideas.  Jobs and Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates knew each other well and had grudging respect for each other.  They would also wipe the other off the planet if they could.  Apple’s patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung is just getting underway in Silicon Valley.  The smart money has them settling out of court.  After all, Samsung supplies computer chips to Apple.  If Apple wins, the price of those chips will probably skyrocket.

Steve Jobs the book is a fascinating read.  The first 30 pages or so are dry as a bone but once you get past all of that into the products we’re all familiar with, it’s an exciting – if long – read.  I had no idea how the computer industry was actually born and splintered off into different sets of operating systems and success stories. Now I know.  And I respect the hell out of Steve Jobs. I’m just glad I never had to work for him.