我的书签
添加书签
移除书签Having reported and written about Steve Jobs from 1986 through 2011, Rick and I have literally thousands of pages of our own notes and transcripts, hundreds of hours of recorded interviews, scores of published stories, and who knows how many unrecorded experiences to draw from. We suppose it would have been easier in some ways to simply recycle parts of what I wrote at the time because that was when it was freshest in my mind and when the impressions were most vivid.
But those stories were written with a different and more immediate objective than what we are trying to achieve with this book, which is this: providing a deeper understanding of Steve Jobs’s ever-evolving arsenal of entrepreneurial skills and capabilities, and the deepening of his almost messianic drive to have an impact on his world. We want to show how it was fueled to an unusual degree by his unique gift for being an autodidact, and by genuine idealism as well as his occasionally scary obsessions, his rigid and austere yet consistently well-thought-out aesthetic standards, his often pompous sense of mission. All along, he held a genuine compassion for the anxieties and needs of ordinary people who want to find new tools to empower and improve themselves in a world that grows more complex, cacophonous, and confounding every day.
So for us, this is an entirely new story. One that is in part recycled from the old, but also augmented with fresh observations and reflections from those who were closest to our subject; people who shared particular memories that have had a chance to settle and steep into a deeper understanding of who their friend or colleague or rival Steve Jobs really was. With these source notes, we attempt to provide more specific information about the breadth of sourcing of information and analysis that helped to inform various passages throughout the book.
Most of the prologue is based upon my own recollections and notes from my first interview with Steve Jobs, which took place in Palo Alto on April 17, 1986. Other observations were drawn from the cumulative experience of my more than one hundred fifty meetings, interviews, phone calls, emails, and informal conversations with him between that date and his death on October 5, 2011. All the quotations from him throughout this book are from those meetings, phone calls, or email exchanges, unless otherwise noted. Some of the quotations have appeared previously, in whole or in part, in feature articles that I wrote that were published by Fortune or the Wall Street Journal. None of those articles is reprinted or excerpted in any form in this prologue, however, or elsewhere in the book, unless specifically noted.
Steve Jobs’s birthdate is February 24, 1955; mine is April 9, 1954. Both of us graduated from high school in the spring of 1972. Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, this chapter also drew from an interview with Regis McKenna on July 31, 2012, and another with Ed Catmull on January 16, 2014.
Chapter 1: Steve Jobs in the Garden of Allah
This chapter establishes a baseline from which Steve Jobs would evolve over the rest of his life. The central anecdote of this chapter was provided by Dr. Larry Brilliant, then CEO of the Skoll Global Threats Fund and a close friend of Jobs since the mid-1970s. We interviewed him on two occasions—August 23, 2013, and again on January 17, 2014. We also visited the Garden of Allah in Mill Valley, California, with Brilliant and his wife, Girija, who was a cofounder of the Seva Foundation. Other key interviews included one with Laurene Powell Jobs on October 14, 2013, one with Lee Clow on October 14, 2013, and one with Regis McKenna on July 31, 2012.
Biographical dates and details for the chapter were culled from many published sources, including Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson’s “authorized” biography, and The Little Kingdom, Michael Moritz’s history of early Apple. Details about Stephen Wozniak’s life and contributions to Apple came primarily from his memoir iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It, which he wrote with the help of Gina Smith. This is also a source for many of the details about the collaboration between Wozniak and Jobs on the Blue Box digital telephone dialers.
For background information on the Homebrew Computer Club we relied primarily upon iWoz, by Wozniak with Smith, although we also drew from Moritz’s The Little Kingdom and other sources. I also discussed the club with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on several occasions during meetings during the past twenty years.
The filing of the prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission for Apple Computer Inc.’s initial public offering on December 12, 1980, provided the statistics about Apple’s early growth—“Apple sold approximately 570, 7,600, 35,100, and 78,100 Apple II computer mainframes during the six-month period ending September 30, 1977, and during the fiscal years ending September 30, 1978, September 30, 1979, and September 26, 1980, respectively.”
We also relied upon the following online sources: The Seva Foundation website at www.seva.org; the Ralston White Retreat (the current official name of the Garden of Allah) website at www.ralstonwhiteretreat.org/history.asp; Fortune’s “Most Admired Company in the World” 2008–2014 compendium, published online at www.time.com/10351/fortune-worlds-most-admired-company-2014; and the Smithsonian Institution’s Oral and Video Histories interview of Steve Jobs on April 20, 1995, posted at http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/sj1.html. Another useful resource for this chapter was a website called foundersatwork.com, www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html, an online adjunct to Klaus Livingston’s book Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days.
Chapter 2: “I Didn’t Want to Be a Businessman”
This chapter explains Jobs’s idiosyncratic early attitudes toward being a business executive and drew many of its details from books and magazine articles about the early days of Apple Computer Inc., informal reminiscences of Jobs himself during one of our many meetings, and the recollections of other people who worked with him at that time. Of particular value were the reminiscences and personal archives of Regis McKenna, who generously shared his collection of notes, drawings, advertising copy, annual reports, and correspondence from this period. We also relied upon our interviews with him in the summer of 2012, and upon his book Real Time: Preparing for the Age of the Never Satisfied Customer. In all, we interviewed him at length on three occasions in 2012 and 2013.
Other books we consulted were Wozniak and Smith’s iWoz; Moritz’s The Little Kingdom; Swimming Across: A Memoir, by Andrew S. Grove; Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American, by Richard S. Tedlow; The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution, by T. R. Reid; and The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley, by Leslie Berlin. We also quoted at length from “Digitization,” an article in the Talk of the Town department of The New Yorker magazine that was published on November 14, 1977. And we also culled information from the 1980 SEC prospectus for Apple Computer’s initial public offering.
Chapter 3: Breakthrough and Breakdown
This chapter describes the circumstances that led to Steve Jobs being stripped of executive authority and eventually quitting under pressure from the board of directors. Once again we synthesized information from many different sources, from books to our own interviews and government filings, such as annual reports, and Jobs’s own episodic reminiscences during our many meetings over the years after we first met in 1986. The narrative of the sequence of events leading to Jobs’s demotion in April 1985 and the ultimate conflict with Apple’s board that led to his resignation also benefitted from many recent interviews of people who were there at the time, as well as published reports from the time of the event.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Susan Barnes on July 24, 2012; Lee Clow on October 14, 2013; Regis McKenna on July 31, 2012; Bill Gates on June 15, 2012; Mike Slade on July 23, 2012; and Jean-Louis Gassée on October 17, 2012.
We also relied on passages from the following books: Gates, by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews; Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future, by John Sculley; The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs, by Chrisann Brennan; Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company, by Owen W. Linzmayer; Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age, by Michael A. Hiltzik; and Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything, by Steven Levy; as well as Moritz’s The Little Kingdom, and Wozniak and Smith’s iWoz.
Other journalistic sources included “The Fall of Steve” by Bro Uttal, published in Fortune on August 5, 1985; and the PBS television documentary The Entrepreneurs, broadcast in 1986. The Golden Gate Weather website, http://ggweather.com/sjc/daily_records.html#September, provided the precise weather data for the day of Jobs’s visit to the Garden of Allah. And statistical data on unit sales were drawn from Apple Computer’s annual reports from 1980 to 1984.
This chapter marks the beginning of my frequent meetings with Jobs, first as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and later as Fortune’s Silicon Valley writer. Ironically, I didn’t write all that many stories about Steve or his two pet entrepreneurial projects, NeXT and Pixar, for the first three years because neither company was publicly held and hence neither was a high priority for the Journal. After moving to Fortune in 1989, however, I made it a point to write about Steve with much greater frequency, and tried to cultivate what was becoming a closer personal relationship. Much of what is described in this chapter is drawn from my own notes and interview transcripts and recollections of events. Lengthy recent interviews with Jobs’s colleagues at that time provided valuable background for the chapter.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Dan’l Lewin on July 26, 2012; Susan Barnes on July 24, 2012; Avie Tevanian on November 12, 2012; and Jon Rubinstein on July 25, 2012. We also benefitted from lengthy email correspondence with Allison Thomas on January 20, 2014.
We relied for some additional general background about NeXT on two books: Randall Stross’s Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing; and Owen W. Linzmayer’s Apple Confidential 2.0.
The descriptions of the rapid growth of Sun Microsystems and the competitive landscape for computer workstations were drawn from reporting for my own stories in Fortune from 1998 to 2004 (see bibliography). The narrative details of the introduction of the NeXTcube is drawn primarily from my own experience at the event and my reporting for a Wall Street Journal front-page story that followed it on October 13, 1988, titled “Next Project: Apple Era Behind Him, Steve Jobs Tries Again, Using a New System.”
Statistics about the relative capacities of hard drives and the transistor counts of semiconductors were drawn from two primary sources: For our descriptions of semiconductor transistor densities we relied upon Pat Gelsinger’s article “Moore’s Law—The Genius Lives On,” which appeared in the Solid State Circuits newsletter, July 13, 2007; and our data on trends in hard drive densities came from Chip Walter’s “Kryder’s Law,” which appeared in Scientific American’s July 25, 2005, issue.
Other magazine articles we found helpful were a Newsweek story from October 24, 1988, by John Schwartz, titled “Steve Jobs Comes Back,” and we refer at length to a magazine article by Joe Nocera from the December 1986 issue of Esquire titled “The Second Coming of Steven Jobs.” We also refer again to the PBS television documentary The Entrepreneurs broadcast in 1986.
Online resources for this chapter include the digital archive of the National Mining Hall of Fame, Leadville, Colorado, http://www.mininghalloffame.org/inductee/jackling; Philip Elmer-DeWitt, “Inside Steve’s Teardown Mansion,” April 27, 2009, Fortune.com, http://fortune.com/2009/04/27/inside-steve-jobs-tear-down-mansion/; and http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?company=sun+microsystems&owner=exclude&action=get company for financial information about Sun Microsystems gleaned from the company’s SEC filings.
This chapter describes the origin of Jobs’s purchase of what eventually came to be called Pixar. Once again, this chapter draws primarily from my own extensive previous reporting for stories that appeared in Fortune from 1989 to 2006 (see bibliography). We also benefitted from recent interviews with Ed Catmull and from Catmull’s recently published book about his experiences at Pixar, Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. For verification of some of the historical facts we also relied upon Karen Paik’s book To Infinity and Beyond: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Susan Barnes on July 24, 2012; Ed Catmull on January 16, 2014; John Lasseter on May 8, 2014; Bob Iger on May 14, 2014; and Laurene Powell Jobs on October 25, 2013.
Chapter 6: Bill Gates Pays a Visit
This unusual chapter is based upon a single historic meeting, one of only two “on the record” lengthy encounters between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. As such, there aren’t many outside sources beyond my interview transcripts, my notes, and my own recollections and analysis of the industry at that time.
We retrieved statistical information from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Affairs, Annual Industry Accounts—1976–2012, which can be found at https://www.bea.gov/scb/pdf/2005/01January/0105_Industry_Acct.pdf.
For background information on Gates we consulted an article by Bro Uttal, published in Fortune on July 21, 1986, called “The Deal That Made Bill Gates, Age 30, $350 Million”; an interview with Mike Slade on July 23, 2012; and an exclusive, more recent interview with Gates himself on June 15, 2012.
This chapter describes how Pixar evolved into a maker of computer animated feature films. It is based in large part on our own recent interviews with Pixar’s principals, and is supplemented by the many feature stories I had written over the years about Pixar’s remarkable run as a maker of animated feature films (see bibliography). Ed Catmull and John Lasseter were both very generous with their time for profile stories I had written about each, and made themselves available again during our research for this book. We also drew from my previous interviews with Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks and Michael Eisner of Disney in the late 1990s. Ed Catmull’s book Creativity Inc. also provided lots of useful background information.
Other published sources included two books: Karen Paik’s official corporate history, To Infinity and Beyond: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios; and The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company, by David A. Price. And for information on how it was his investment in Pixar that eventually made Steve Jobs a genuine billionaire, we consulted the website for Forbes; specifically an interactive article called “Two Decades of Wealth,” located at www.forbes.com/static_html/rich400/2002/timemapFLA400.html.
We also relied upon the website of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to confirm details of Netscape Communications Inc.’s initial public offering on August 9, 1995. The company offered 3.5 million shares at a price of $28 a share, generating proceeds of $98 million.
Above all, however, we benefitted from our lengthy interviews with Ed Catmull on January 16, 2014; John Lasseter on May 8, 2014; and my many encounters over the years with Jobs.
Chapter 8: Bozos, Bastards, and Keepers
This chapter reflects an unusual period in my relationship with Jobs because it coincides with a time that Jobs, who was CEO of both NeXT and Pixar, was calling me seemingly out of the blue to talk about what was going on at Apple Computer. Previously, we hadn’t talked much about his original entrepreneurial fling, mainly because he wasn’t one to look in the rearview mirror. But he seemed genuinely alarmed at what appeared to be the beginnings of a death spiral for Apple. I spent the better part of a year reporting off and on to prepare what was supposed to be a cover story about the breadth and depth of Apple’s troubles, informed not only by what Steve whispered in my ear, but also by grumblings from other people inside and outside the company. The story, called “Something’s Rotten in Cupertino,” wasn’t published until the March 3, 1997, issue of Fortune, more than two months after Apple’s hasty decision to acquire NeXT Computer. The reporting that went into that particular story, plus other stories I reported and wrote about Microsoft, NeXT, and Pixar during 1995 through 1997, informed much of this chapter. Numerical data about Apple came from Apple’s annual reports during this period. Two lengthy interviews with Fred Anderson in August 2012 were particularly helpful in explaining how he was able to mastermind Apple’s escape from a dire fiscal situation when he arrived there in the spring of 1996.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from those interviews with Anderson; and others with Mike Slade on July 23, 2012; Ed Catmull on January 16, 2014; Jean-Louis Gassée on October 17, 2012; Avie Tevanian on November 12, 2012; Andy Grove on June 20, 2012; and Bill Gates on June 15, 2012.
Other sources of information include archival video of Jobs addressing MacWorld Boston, August 6, 1997, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEHNrqPkefI; and an article in the New York Times of March 19, 1992, titled “Business People: NeXT Finds a President in Telephone Industry,” by Lawrence Fisher, which provided background information about Peter van Cuylenberg.
Chapter 9: Maybe They Had to Be Crazy
This chapter covers the first four years after Steve Jobs had returned to the helm of Apple, and relies primarily upon my own reporting and writing about Apple during the time period that it covers, 1997 through 2001. Despite Apple’s precarious situation and widespread skepticism, there was tremendous interest among techies and businesspeople of all stripes in what Jobs might have up his sleeve that could turn things around at the iconic company. Jobs knew it was in his interest to be fairly open with me about his initial strategies to stabilize things, and by this time we had developed solid trust. Consequently, he was not nearly as secretive during these first few years back at Apple than he would be after the turn of the century.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Lee Clow on October 14, 2013; Jon Rubinstein on July 25, 2012; Avie Tevanian on November 12, 2012; Rubinstein and Tevanian together on October 12, 2012; Jony Ive on June 10, 2014; Bill Gates on June 16, 2012; and Mike Slade on July 23, 2012.
The financial numbers and headcount statistics and other numerical information in this chapter came primarily from Apple’s SEC filings reporting its financial results for 1996 through 2000, so we are not citing them here individually. The notorious quote from Michael Dell suggesting that Jobs should simply liquidate Apple came during a Q and A session at the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97 in Orlando, Florida, on October 6, 1997, http://news.cnet.com/Dell-Apple-should-close-shop/2100-1001_3-203937.html. Background information about Dieter Rams, the design genius who was the primary inspiration of Jony Ive, Apple’s head of design, came from the website of the German furniture design company Vitsœ, https://www.vitsoe.com/us/about/dieter-rams and https://www.vitsoe.com/us/about/good-design. The technical details we cite about the iMac and other computer models came from www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_ab.html.
Chapter 10: Following Your Nose
This chapter describes how Apple finally invented its way back to growing again namely by entering and shaking up an entirely different business, in this case personal audio electronics with the introduction of the iTunes music management application and the iPod portable digital music player. It also demonstrates in great detail the new methodology Jobs had come to embrace, which he called “following your nose,” rather than plotting out some sort of predetermined strategic “road map.” The significance of iTunes, the iPod, and later the iTunes Music Store is in how one led to the next and then to the next. I described this process in piecemeal fashion at Fortune as these products rolled out. Only in hindsight can you see how each was a case of Steve and his team following their noses, seeing what might be possible after each successive step. Again, the stories we reported, wrote, and edited for Fortune provide most of the factual basis of this chapter.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Tony Fadell on May 1, 2014; Eddy Cue on April 29, 2014; Jony Ive on June 10, 2014; Tim Cook on April 30, 2014; and Jon Rubinstein and Avie Tevanian on October 12, 2012.
The information and background about Gates’s keynote presentation at CES was drawn from Microsoft’s online press release archive. Financial statistics came from online SEC filings. Apple Computer Inc. online business document archive was the source of a press release dated January 16, 2001, “iTunes Downloads top 275,000 in First Week” and Apple Computer Inc.’s Annual Report for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2001. Other online resources for this chapter include Gartner Group website for various market statistics, http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2301715; and Quora.com, http://www.quora.com/Steve-Jobs/What-are-the-best-stories-about-people-randomly-meeting-Steve-Jobs/answer/Tim-Smith-18.
Chapter 11: Do Your Level Best
This chapter essentially tells the story of Steve Jobs, the merchandiser. Two stories by other Fortune writers provided some of the background: a 2003 cover story by Devin Leonard about the evolution of iTunes into a music retailing juggernaut, and another story by Jerry Useem, published in 2007, that describes how Apple’s retail stores became some of the highest-grossing stores of any kind in the world. Rick’s experiences as editor of Entertainment Weekly also contributed to our explanations of the dynamics of the music industry as they made a leap of faith into the digital future, by signing onto Apple’s iTunes Music store.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Eddy Cue on April 29, 2014; Tim Cook on April 30, 2014; and Laurene Powell Jobs on October 14, 2013.
Magazine articles we cited include “Apple: America’s Best Retailer,” by Jerry Useem, which appeared in the March 8, 2007, issue of Fortune; “Songs in the Key of Steve Jobs,” by Devin Leonard, which appeared in the May 12, 2003, issue of Fortune; and “Commentary: Sorry Steve: Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work,” by Cliff Edwards, which appeared in the May 20, 2001, issue of BusinessWeek.
This chapter primarily chronicles the circuitous process of Jobs and his team arriving at the decision to make a mobile “smartphone.” We relied upon several new interviews to tell this story, as well as on Fred Vogelstein’s Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution for some of the background details, and Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs.
We also consulted various books and online articles, including Myron W. Krueger’s Artificial Reality II, to provide background on the evolution of the multi-touch user interface.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Jim Collins on April 15, 2014; Jony Ive on May 6, 2014, and on June 10, 2014; Tony Fadell on May 1, 2014; Laurene Powell Jobs on October 14, 2013; Tim Cook on April 30, 2014; and Eddy Cue on April 29, 2014.
Online resources we consulted include the Mitsubishi Research Laboratories website for an article titled “DiamondTouch: A Multi-User Touch Technology,” by Paul Dietz and Darren Leigh, published in October 2003, and reproduced online at http://www.merl.com/publications/docs/TR2003-125.pdf; the National Cancer Institute website, for background information on pancreatic cancer, http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/isletcell/HealthProfessional; and Apple’s online press release archive for Apple Computer Inc. financial results, August 2, 2004, and other corporate data.
This chapter describes Steve Jobs’s commencement address to the Stanford University graduating class of 2005. It was an unusual event because Jobs so rarely spoke publicly at anything other than Apple or Pixar events, and even then, only when he had a new product or technology to tout. Much of the chapter is derived from one of our interviews with Laurene Powell Jobs, who shared her recollections of her husband’s obsessive preparation for the speech, and also of the family’s misadventures on Commencement Day. Apple and Laurene Powell Jobs also granted permission to reproduce the memorable address in its entirety.
Aside from Jobs’s speech, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Tim Cook on April 30, 2014; Katie Cotton on April 30, 2014; Jim Collins on April 15, 2014; and Laurene Powell Jobs on October 25, 2013, December 6, 2013, and April 30, 2014.
Chapter 14: A Safe Haven for Pixar
This chapter is the largely untold, inside story of how Steve Jobs came to sell Pixar Animation Studios to the Walt Disney Company in early 2006, at a time when the relations between the two companies was particularly fraught. We relied upon the recollections of Disney CEO Robert Iger, Pixar founder Ed Catmull, and Pixar’s driving creative spirit John Lasseter to tell this tale, not unlike the plot of a Pixar movie, which almost always chronicles the personal growth of characters who sometimes stumble over their own feet. We benefitted from lengthy, enlightening interviews with all three in early 2014.
For background we also relied on two books: James B. Stewart’s Disney War and Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with John Lasseter on May 8, 2014; Tim Cook on April 30, 2014; Ed Catmull on January 16, 2014; and Robert Iger on May 14, 2014.
This chapter has several threads that reflect the new complexity in managing the company, soon to be called simply Apple Inc., as its business and product line broadened. Between late 2004 and 2008, Apple gave birth to the iPhone, endured a changing of the guard in the executive ranks, and entered into a new kind of business partnership with AT&T even as the company’s sales and ranks of employees nearly tripled. Meanwhile controversy returned to Cupertino, in the form of an SEC investigation into its procedures for awarding executive stock options, public criticism of working conditions at its contract manufacturer in China, and accusations of antitrust violations in its collusion with book publishers over electronic book prices and with other Silicon Valley employers to reduce “poaching” of key employees. Apple kept on growing, and with the iPhone’s surging success, Jobs had completed his trifecta of landmark computers. All this despite the fact that his health continued to decline visibly. We benefitted from lengthy interviews with key current and former executives at Apple, including CEO Tim Cook, senior vice president of design Jony Ive, senior vice president of Internet software and services Eddy Cue, vice president of corporate communications Katie Cotton, and Tony Fadell, the founder of Nest Labs, which is now a subsidiary of Google. We also relied upon Apple press releases and SEC filings and court records about the stock option controversy.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Eddy Cue on April 29, 2014; Fred Anderson on August 8, 2012; Avie Tevanian on October 11, 2012; Tim Cook on April 30, 2014; Jon Rubinstein on July 25, 2012; Jony Ive on May 6, 2014, and June 10, 2014; John Doerr on May 7, 2014; Jean-Louis Gassée on October 17, 2012; and Marc Andreessen on May 7, 2014.
Online resources we consulted include Fastcodesign.com, the Fast Company magazine website that focuses on design, May 22, 2014, http://www.fastcodesign.com/3030923/4-myths-about-apple-design-from-an-ex-apple-designer; and the blog by former Apple engineer Don Melton, donmelton.com/2014/04/10/memories-of-steve/. Also, Apple SEC filings provided unit sales data each quarter from Fiscal Year 2000 through Fiscal Year 2013.
Chapter 16: Blind Spots, Grudges, and Sharp Elbows
This is an unusual chapter because rather than explain a sequence of events, we try to put into perspective certain of Steve Jobs’s more controversial characteristics and patterns of behavior, especially in the context of both Apple’s meteoric growth and success, and the pressures brought on by living with a terminal illness. Some of Jobs’s decisions and actions led to legal challenges in court and reprimands from federal regulators. Others resulted in nagging public relations problems. Still others were merely examples of a man who refused to sugar coat his opinions. We relied mainly upon court records and newspaper and magazine stories for the background of several of these debacles, and also asked Jobs’s closest work colleagues to reflect upon them. We don’t try to pass definitive judgment, especially on those legal cases that are ongoing. But we felt it was important to try to describe how these issues reflected aspects of Jobs’s personality and temperament at the peak of his success. We also describe some of the interpersonal dynamics of the executive team Jobs had assembled, and the period of transition in the mid-2000s when several key members left.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs over the years, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Tim Cook on April 30, 2014; Eddy Cue on April 29, 2014; Katie Cotton on April 30, 2014; Fred Anderson on August 8, 2012; Jon Rubinstein on July 25, 2012; Avie Tevanian on October 11, 2012; and Bill Gates on June 15, 2012.
Online sources quoted or consulted include a New York Times op-ed column “Talking Business: Apple’s Culture of Secrecy” by Joe Nocera, published on July 26, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/business/26nocera.html?pagewanted=all; the online press release archive of the Securities and Exchange Commission litigation archive for Release No. 20086 regarding the settlement of stock option dating issues, http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2007/lr20086.htm; the online archive of the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the antitrust complaint against Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar for conspiring to prevent competition for the hiring of technical employees, http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f262600/262654.pdf, and the complaint against Apple and several book publishers for conspiring to fix prices of ebooks, http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f299200/299275.pdf; “Thoughts on Flash,” an open letter from Steve Jobs explaining his reasoning for not allowing Adobe Corp.’s Flash media player software on the Apple iPhone, https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/; Apple Inc.’s archive of news releases for information about the company’s litigation against Samsung, which for many years was the leading maker of smartphones that used Google’s Android operating system; “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work,” by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, published in the New York Times on January 21, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html; “In China, Human Costs Are Built into an iPad,” by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, published in the New York Times on January 25, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html; “How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Taxes,” by Charles Duhigg and David Kocieniewski, published in the New York Times on April 28, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html; “Apple’s Retail Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay,” by David Segal, published in the New York Times on June 23, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/business/apple-store-workers-loyal-but-short-on-pay.html.
We also consulted Vogelstein’s Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution for background information.
Chapter 17: “Just Tell Them I’m Being an Asshole”
This final chapter also covers a lot of ground, from my own interactions with Jobs over the last few years of his life, to the unusual circumstances surrounding his liver transplant in 2009, to the public criticism of working conditions at Apple’s contract manufacturer in China, to accusations of antitrust violations in its collusion with book publishers over electronic book prices and with other Silicon Valley employers to reduce “poaching” of key employees. We also describe how the iPad came to be Apple’s fastest-selling new product ever. The chapter’s primary intent, however, is to put in perspective the evolution of Steve Jobs from a reckless young entrepreneur into a seasoned builder of new consumer technologies and the businesses infrastructures required to deliver and support them. For this we draw largely upon the comments and experiences of many who knew him best.
Descriptions of the private burial service were provided to us by several individuals who were present but did not want their recollections attributed to them. The transcript of Laurene Powell Jobs’s tribute given at the public memorial for Steve Jobs on October 17, 2011, is used with her permission.
Aside from snippets from my own encounters with Jobs, most of the direct quotations in this chapter were drawn from interviews with Tim Cook on April 30, 2014; Bob Iger on May 14, 2014; Eddy Cue on April 29, 2014; Lee Clow on January 20, 2014; Bill Gates on June 15, 2012; Laurene Powell Jobs on April 30, 2014; John Lasseter on May 8, 2014; Jim Collins on April 15, 2014; and Mike Slade on July 23, 2012.
We relied on the Cupertino City Council video archive to obtain exact quotes from Jobs’s presentation of plans for a new Apple headquarters, June 7, 2011, http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?recordid=463&page=26; and upon Apple’s online video archives to obtain the comments by Bill Campbell and Jony Ive speaking at the memorial for Jobs at Apple Inc. headquarters, October 20, 2011, http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/10oiuhfvojb23/event/index.html.
