Steve Jobs: How to live before you die

The facts

Full name: Steven Paul Jobs

Birthdate: 24 February 1955

Birth location: San Francisco, California

Social background: lower middle-class. Father was fixing cars for a living.

Education: high-school certificate. Dropped out of Reed College after one semester.

Occupations: chairman & CEO at Apple Inc. + Director at The Walt Disney Company

Net worth: $5.5 billion according to Forbes' 2010 ranking — 136th richest man on Earth

Annual salary: $1

Family

Biological parents: Joanne Simpson and possibly Abdulfattah Jandali, political sciences professor from Syria

Adoptive parents: Paul and Clara Jobs, both deceased

Siblings: adoptive sister: Patti Jobs (born 1958), biological sister: Mona Simpson (born 1957)

Spouse: Laurene Powell (born 1964), married in 1991

Children: Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), with unmarried girlfriend Chris-Ann Brennan. Reed (born 1991), Erin Siena (born 1995) and Eve (born 1998) with wife Laurene.

Personal tastes & opinion

Political orientation: Democrat. Steve funds the Democratic Party (using his wife’s name) for each Presidential election, and he entertained the Clintons several times at his home in Palo Alto. Steve himself thought of running for the office of governor of California after he left Apple in 1985 — but gave up in the end. He knew Gov. Jerry Brown from his days at the Los Altos Zen Center in the 1970s.

Spirituality: Steve studied Zen Buddhism in his youth. He often said that he thought of becoming a monk up in a monastery in Japan instead of starting Apple, but his guru Kobun Chino convinced him otherwise. That same Zen master was a spiritual adviser at NeXT and married Steve and Laurene in Yosemite in 1991.
A lot of critics of Steve’s tough management style point out: “Imagine what he’d be like if he hadn’t studied buddhism...” This is one of Steve’s many paradoxes: how could a real Buddhist make a living out of selling gadgets to the masses?

Favorite places: We know from Steve himself and the story of his life that he loves Yosemite, in which he demanded to be married, as well as Europe in general and Paris in particular. He said to French journalists that one of his biggest pride was to see an Apple billboard next to the Louvre.
Yet his favorite place on earth is probably his home, Silicon Valley. He reportedly delights in driving on the scenic I-280, and spending hours hiking on the hills surrounding Stanford campus in Palo Alto.

Favorite music: Steve’s favorite musician is definitely Bob Dylan, whose tunes he played throughout his youth with his guitar at home. He would discuss their lyrics with his friends, such as Bill Fernandez or Woz. Some people believe he dated Joan Baez mostly because she was Dylan’s ex.
Steve also loves The Beatles and Grateful Dead, all part of the rock scene of the 1960s (thus before he came of age). He describes himself as an audiophile: after he became rich, one of the only pieces of furniture he bought was a $100,000 stereo system. It is still true today.

Favorite art: we can’t say for sure but we know that Steve loves photography. For a long time his home was only decorated with large black-and-white photographs of cultural icons such as Einstein, or the California landscape, mostly by Ansel Adams. He also had Japanese prints.

More can be read in Steve at home.

The trouble with Steve 

JobsBack to top

This is the title of one of the many press articles about Steve’s difficult character (from Fortune). Asked to comment on it, Stanford management science professor Robert Sutton, author of best-seller The No Asshole Rule, said: "As soon as people heard I was writing a book on assholes, they would come up to me and start telling a Steve Jobs story. The degree to which people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Jobs is unbelievable. He made people feel terrible; he made people cry.”

This reputation Steve earned since his very first years at Apple. As early as 1981, Macintosh project founder Jef Raskin wrote a note to Apple president Mike Scott complaining about the chairman of the board-enfant terrible that seemed to grow an interest in his pet project. It said:

1. Jobs regularly misses appointments
2. He acts without thinking and with bad judgement
3. He does not give credit where due
4. Jobs often reacts ad hominem
5. He makes absurd and wasteful decisions by trying to be paternal
6. He interrupts and doesn’t listen
7. He does not keep promises or meet commitments
8. He makes decisions ex cathedra
9. Optimistic estimates
10. Jobs is often irresponsible and inconsiderate

There are indeed several accounts of Steve getting angry at random employees and firing them on the spot for trivial reasons. Such famous (and likely exaggerated) examples are: Steve firing an employee in the elevator at Apple, firing an assistant for having brought him the wrong brand of mineral water, or calling a prospective employee a virgin (this particular example appears in the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley).

Steve’s bad temper has notoriously caused him to break important business relationships. He fired Raskin after he learned about the note. He had Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith leave the company after they had a loud argument which involved Alvy mocking Steve’s NeXT and Steve deriding Alvy’s Southwestern accent. And he trashed an IBM contract crucial to NeXT’s future because he declared he wouldn’t sign anything more than ten pages long.

Terror in Cupertino: Apple’s cult of secrecy

Apple employees are well aware of their boss’ reputation, and it shows. A former Apple employee told Valleywag: “No one greets him or says hi to him. Low ranking employees are afraid of him. I remember him walking around the campus one time and groups of people in his way would just split and let him walk through.” Another testified on his blog: “the level of paranoia was directly related to the closeness to the top floor at One Infinite Loop” (Steve’s office). Employees are careful what they do. They know some mistakes are not forgivable: “You’d ask your coworkers, ‘Can I send this email, or file this report?’ People would say, ‘you can do whatever you want on your last day at Apple.’” They are watchful when talking to F.O.S. (Friends of Steve), people who know him quite well. And none of them, including his executive team, would get anywhere near one of his famous pet peeves, the white board in his office (for a video of Steve using the white board at NeXT, click here).

But the biggest reason for fear among Apple employees is the company’s cult of secrecy, a brainchild of Steve. He had practiced the art of enforcing omerta during his NeXT days: before they were hired, his employees weren't even allowed to see the machine they would have to work on. This was called “a leap of faith”. When Steve came back to Apple, the place was constantly feeding the press and business partners with rumors about their ongoing projects. The minute he was in charge, it was over. He hung a WWII poster in his desk: “Loose lips might sink ships,” and made it clear to anyone that talking to the press would get them out the door, and quick.

This obsession of secrecy is not a subject of shame at Apple. While still a senior executive there, Jon Rubinstein laughed: “We have cells, like a terrorist organization! Everything is on a need-to-know basis.” this is because secrecy is an integral part of Apple’s marketing strategy, as discussed in Steve on stage. Rumors that start months before a product is released offer a ton of free publicity, especially since they are now relayed by the mass media.

To keep employees from knowing too much, nothing seems excessive. Software engineers work on big boxes and hardware engineers never see the software that will run on their machines — less than a dozen people had actually seen an actual iPhone before Steve unveiled it at Macworld 2007; this is an incredible achievement considering the number of people involved in its creation! In a recent Times article, one could also read that “executives feed deliberate misinformation into one part of the company so that any leak can be traced back to its source. Workers on sensitive projects have to pass through many layers of security. Once at their desks or benches, they are monitored by cameras and they must cover up devices with black cloaks and turn on red warning lights when they are uncovered.” It is rumored that on Apple’s campus, Steve would often ask for an employee’s iPhone at random, and fire that person if her iPhone is not password-protected.

These extreme measures are usually described as annoying and unproductive by Apple employees (wishing to remain anonymous of course). There was especially a big controversy when one of Apple’s sub-contractor in China lost an iPhone prototype, and eventually killed himself as he couldn’t stand the guilt... But most Apple employees can also recognize the value of keeping the company’s plans very hush-hush. None of them complains of the incredible attention the firm gets in the media. As Woz, who doesn’t hesitate to criticize his old friend, puts it: “I was glad that Apple tightened things up. That's part of what creates the passion — a new product comes and it seems new.”

A controversial character

Of course there wouldn’t be an Apple if there were only negative sides to Steve Jobs’ personality. He is a very complex guy. As one can see from his public performances, the thing that strikes people most is how charming he can be, when he is willing to be. His co-workers experience that every day. This contrast has become famous under the name of “hero/shithead roller-coaster.”That term was coined at NeXT to describe how a given employee could switch from being called a “bozo” whose work was“worthless shit,” work real hard to improve it, then hear he was a “genius.” This had the ability to drive some people nuts. Those that could stand it still work for Steve, some of them in his top executive team.

One of the reasons for this is the very nature of Steve’s character. "That's the way it went with Steve — flip-flopping from a soaring high, when he was an absolute delight to be around, to a mood of extreme anger or intense gloom that excluded any rational or civil conversation. I would get to see so many varieties of moods that I never knew exactly who I would be facing," said former Apple CEO Gil Amelio. Same could be said of Steve’s famed flip-flops: “He has this ability to change his mind and completely forget his old opinion about something,” according to an anonymous former colleague of him. “It's weird. He can say, 'I love white; white is the best.' And then three months later say, 'Black is the best; white is not the best.' He doesn't live with his mistake. It evaporates.” This is not conscious on Steve’s part. In his sister’s novel about him, A Regular Guy, the girlfriend of the Tom Owens/Steve Jobs character says of him: “He’s like that. He forgets.”

But not everything Steve does is unconscious. Some of it is totally deliberate:"Steve might be capable of reducing someone to tears," according to NeXT former director Pat Crecine, "but it's not because he's mean-spirited; it's because he's absolutely single minded, almost manic, in his pursuit of quality and excellence." John Sculley adds: “He possessed an innate sense of knowing exactly how to extract the best from people.” Even Steve admits to this: “My job is not to be easy on people. My jobs is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.”

In addition to the hero/shithead roller-coaster, another popular method of his are the public dressing-downs. After a team has failed, is late or simply does not meet Steve’s standards, he would go to them, ask for some people’s names and publicly humiliate or fire them in front of their peers. Many Apple employees have testified of this, and they all acknowledge it is obviously a calculation on their CEO’s part. A recent example would be the ouster of several MobileMe team members in public after the several troubles experienced during that product’s launch.

To make it short, calling people names then flattering them is Steve’s way of motivating his teams. And, despite what can be learned in most schools of management, it works. When asked about his friend’s temper, Steve Wozniak said: “When you judge Steve as a person — the great things he brings to the world versus, maybe, these encroachments on personal decency or personal honesty with other people or disrespect of people when they've worked very hard and do a great job and he'll say, "Oh, that's just shitty," that sort of thing — those are probably outweighed by the good that he does for the world.” Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple executive who was instrumental in Steve’s ouster in 1985, put it in those words: "Democracies don't make great products. You need a competent tyrant."

(For a funny look on all this, check out this Fake Steve Jobs post: Regarding my management style)

Yet it will never be stressed enough that what makes it all works is the charm Steve deploys with the very same people. He can be the most convincing of men, especially when trying to recruit someone he was told was the best in his field. Examples abound, from this Andy Hertzfeld story to a former NeXT employee whose recruiting call from Steve began by: “Hey, I hear you're the hottest designer on the planet.” (He can also be a bit blunter: Engineer Bob Belleville recalls Jobs recruiting him from Xerox in 1982 with the words: “I hear you're great, but everything you've done so far is crap. Come work for me.”)

Of all people, journalists also experience such ambivalence, and it is therefore widely documented. In the Wall Street Journal, Forbes editor Rich Karlgaard, who during the NeXT years was planning on writing a story about the company’s failure, wrote: “On the phone Mr. Jobs cooed and threatened, including warnings to ‘watch my backside’ and, strangely, ‘don’t ride a bicycle alone on dark roads.’” Yet he also confesses: “America loves Steve Jobs. Me, too, though I shouldn’t.” This is exactly the kind of emotion Steve Jobs conveys to anyone dealing with him. Despite that he is well known for playing off journalists’ rivalries in order to get maximum coverage for a given product, and to basically think of them as insects, the same journalists always seem delighted to be around him for an interview.

1985

A mellowed Steve?

When Steve Jobs came back at Apple in 1997, it was not uncommon to read that the dreadful manager had mellowed into a patient, much more reasonable manager. For example, Pixar employee Pamela Kerwin said in a 1997 article: "After the first three words out of your mouth, he'd interrupt you and say, 'O.K., here's how I see things.' It isn't like that anymore. He listens a lot more, and he's more relaxed, more mature." Steve himself acknowledged this change by saying in a 1998 interview: “So when we laid some people off at Apple a year ago, or when I have to take people out of their jobs, it's harder for me now. Much harder. I do it because that's my job. But when I look at people when this happens, I also think of them as being 5 years old. And I think that person could be me coming home to tell my wife and kids that I just got laid off. Or that could be one of my kids in 20 years. I never took it so personally before.”This personal change is also documented in Mona Simpson’s A Regular Guy: basically, growing a family and facing the failure of his grandiose NeXT plans humbled him quite a bit.

Yet it is hard to know whether that situation still holds. Most Apple employees confessed (off-record) that since Apple’s resurgence to greatness, the impetuous Steve has come back. Alan Deutschman argues in his biography The Second Coming of Steve Jobs that this whole talk of a nicer Steve is pure spin. It is plausible since one could read the same words quite often in the early days of NeXT, yet everybody who worked there acknowledged the situation hadn’t gotten better than Apple — it had gotten worse. A common joke at NeXT was: “You put in your two cents' worth; Jobs puts in his $50 worth.” In any event, certainly a most credible source is Steve’s long-time friend and father figure John Warnock, who admits: “I think he mellowed during the NeXT years and he’s not so mellow anymore.”

Steve's work habits at AppleBack to top

What does Steve do at Apple? “My job is thinking and working with people and meeting and email,” says he. Let’s explore this in more details.

A typical working day

Steve already described his typical day to journalists (although it was in the late 1990s and might have changed since). He said all his files were stored on a server and he carried none of them with him. He has very high-speed access to them either from his home or office computer, “so [his] office is at home too.” He added: “when I'm not in meetings, my work is fundamentally on email. So I'll work a little before the kids get up. And then we'll all have a little food and finish up some homework and see them off to school. If I'm lucky I'll stay at home and work for an hour because I can get a lot done, but oftentimes I'll have to come in. I usually get here about 9. 8 or 9. Having worked about an hour or half or two at home.” He also said often that he can call anyone even late at night if he has a bright idea and wants to share it (especially since the advent of iChat AV). One can therefore conclude that he works basically all day, but that doesn’t mean he is at the office all day — unlike in the early days. In addition, he does have a very strong sense of family duties: when Maria Shriver asked him to come to the ceremony inducting him into the California Hall of Fame, he said he wouldn’t on the claim that it conflicted with his family night (he came eventually). So clearly his family has changed how much time he devotes to his work — just like many entrepreneurs.

What Steve works on

“I did everything in the early days — documentation, sales, supply chain, sweeping the floors, buying chips, you name it. I put computers together with my own two hands. And as the industry grew up, I kept on doing it.” This is Steve’s way of saying he is still very involved in an unusually wide array of activities at Apple, way beyond the usual work of a CEO.

Vision: Steve’s real genius

As Apple’s uber-boss, Steve has to set the direction the company is going. This involves mainly two things: following industry trends carefully, and using his own guts.

For the first task, it mainly consists of keeping up with industry news as well as simply checking his email. “There's a certain amount of homework involved, true; but mostly it's just picking up on things you can see on the periphery. [...] I subscribe to a half-dozen Internet news services, and I get 300 emails a day, many from people I don't know, hawking crazy ideas. And I've always paid close attention to the whispers around me.” In another interview, he said: “All these customers email me all these complaints and questions, which I actually have grown to like. It's like having a thermometer on practically any issue. If somebody doesn't flush a toilet around here, I get an email from Kansas about it. I zing 'em around, and it's good to keep us all in touch.”

For the second, the guts, we are dealing with what may be Steve Jobs’ real genius. It is important to recall that he has no formal training whatsoever: not in management, and certainly not in engineering. Yet many engineers he’s worked with are amazed at his capacity to take critical engineering decisions solely based on his instinct. Often times, he was proven right. Woz said of it: “Steve did an excellent job of melding the marketing, operations and technology. He understood which technology was good and what people would like. It was a weird situation. He couldn't design a computer — he was never a designer or a programmer — but he could understand it well enough to understand what was good and what was bad.” Even Bill Gates said it was what he envied most in him: “I’d give a lot to have Steve’s taste. I think in terms of intuitive taste, both for people and products, you know, we sat in Mac product reviews where there were questions about software choices, how things would be done, that I viewed as an engineering question, because that’s just how my mind works. And I’d see Steve make the decision based on a sense of people and product that is even hard for me to explain. The way he does things is just different, and I think it’s magical.” This amazing ability he has is clearly a decisive factor in his rise as the world’s top technology democratizer. And this he had from day one, as if it were innate.

Product development

The one domain where Steve is probably the most hands-on, and the one he enjoys the most, is product development: “we've got such great people [in the top executive team] that I've been able to move about half of the day-to-day management of the company to them, so I can spend half my time on the new stuff,” says he. “I get to spend my time on the forward-looking stuff. My top executives take half the other work off my plate. They love it, and I love it.”

And indeed, this is overall the most important part of Apple’s business, its very raison d’être, since the company describes itself as a product company. Everything starts and ends with the product. Steve is at the core of the process, rejecting or pushing forward ideas, as well as putting his own contribution. This is why he is listed as co-inventor on over a hundred separate Apple patents, from the iPod user interface to the support system for the glass staircase used in Apple's retail stores (he loves architecture too).

Essential to this process is Steve’s testing of the products. As Fake Steve Jobs/Dan Lyons puts it: “he is the ultimate end-user, the guy who is on our side.” Steve himself often admitted to that. He’s gonna use the product for some time and give its engineers a lot of feedback. This is why Apple doesn’t use consumer testing: it doesn’t need it. Steve Jobs alone is Apple’s consumer testing. The exceptional ease-of-use that distinguishes Apple from its competitors is largely attributable to this technique. Steve will not green-light a product that does not fully satisfy his standards — and these standards are pretty high.

...and the rest

Steve Jobs used to focus almost only about product development, but these days are over. Member of the board Ed Woolard said, referring to Steve’s comeback: "It wasn't like he was some mythical creative genius and leaving the rest of the company to itself. It may have been true in the past. It was not true when he came back. He clearly was deeply involved in all the practical operations of Apple."

Steve is especially focused on marketing, which has always been one of his premier domains of expertise. He is well known for having worked on a large number of Apple’s TV commercials and promotional videos, starting with the 1984 and Think Different ads, some of Apple’s most brilliant pieces of marketing. Of course this all culminates in his keynotes, which are discussed in Steve on stage.

But besides that, he cares about many different parts of Apple’s business (leaving perhaps finance on the side). For instance, he admitted having run Apple’s operations for several months before he could find the genius he was looking for, in the person of Tim Cook. He personally checks everything of importance to him, down to the fine prints of Apple’ press releases. But he does leave behind things most CEOs of Fortune 500 companies think of major importance, such as Wall Street analysts conferences.

Who Steve works with

Obviously, Steve mostly works with his top executive team. Other than them and perhaps the level below them, he is a fairly private person on campus. “I don't get a chance to interact with 10,000 people. The number of people I get to interact with in this company is probably about 50 on a regular basis. Maybe 100,” said he.

Yet he knows his employees very well. He knows a large number of engineers and designers and why they are at his company. If he needs something and knows who’s likely to get it done, he will pick up his phone and ask it directly to her. In this regard he has no respect for the hierarchy. The hierarchy at Apple is actually very flat, with only six levels from the very bottom to the iLeader. One other thing that’s typical of him is actually his life-long habit of dropping in unannounced on different departments or teams and ask their members what they’re working on. It keeps most people on their toes, thus compelling them to do great work even when their boss is not around. “You might go awhile without seeing him,” confessed a former software engineer. “But you are constantly aware of his presence. You are constantly aware that what you're doing will either please or displease him. I mean, he might not know who you are. But there's no question that he knows what you do. And what you're doing. And whether he likes it or not.”

As far as Steve’s executives are concerned, he considers them all exceptionally bright and that’s why he feels no restraint in delegating work to them. They are also just as important in advising Steve on Apple’s goals: “A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why a lot of people at Apple get paid a lot of money, because they're supposed to be on top of these things.”

We’ve already talked about how he recruited people usually regarded as the best in their fields: “One of the things that I've always felt is that most things in life, if you get something twice as good as average you're doing phenomenally well,” Steve once said.“Usually the best is about 30% better than average. Two to one's a big delta. But what became really clear to me in my work life was that, for instance, Woz was 25 to 50 times better than average. And I found that there were these incredibly great people at doing certain things, and you couldn't replace one of these people with 50 average people. They could just do stuff that no number of average people could do.” Steve’s elitism has for consequence another key part of his job, to attract great talents. And keep them with generous stock options.

How does it all work?

The organization of Apple Inc. is quite peculiar. We’ve mentioned its very flat hierarchy before. It is in part due to Steve’s entrepreneurial belief that small groups of smart people work better than anything else: “small and medium-sized teams of these [very bright] people can accomplish extraordinary things and run circles around large large teams of normal people.”

But the most striking difference between Apple and other technology companies is the way products are developed. Head of design Jony Ive says it best: "We get involved really early on. There's a very natural, consistent collaboration with Steve, with the hardware and software people. I think that's one of the things that's distinctive at Apple. When we're developing ideas there's not a final [technical] architecture established.”

Apple employees refer to that as "cross-pollination" or "concurrent engineering." It means that the development of new products isn’t sequential, passing from team to team; it's all simultaneous and organic. Products get worked on in parallel by all departments at once — design, hardware, software — in endless rounds of interdisciplinary design reviews. There is a lot of debates and arguments at Apple. Steve encourages them and delights in them. This is his way of attaining perfection.

Another side to this comprehensive approach to the business is Steve’s habit of holding Monday morning executive committee meetings. This is when all of his top executives meet with him and when big decisions are taken. These meetings reflect the company’s philosophy in both the way they work (simply and effectively) and what they deal with: "We don't sit around talking about how to drive up the stock or how to stick it to the competition. It's always about the products," said Jon Rubinstein while still at Apple.

Steve's influence on AppleBack to top

“He didn’t create anything really, but he created everything.”
- Former Apple CEO John Sculley on Steve Jobs’ contribution to Macintosh

"His DNA was built into this company. And when he came back, everything fell into place — a return to excellence in design, to listening to the consumer, to developing cool products."
- Heidi Roizen, one of Steve’s long-time business partners

“The Mac is the expression of his creativity, and Apple as a whole is an expression of Steve.”
- Larry Ellison, one of Steve’s best friends

As you can see, the case of whether or not Apple is an emanation of Steve Jobs is pretty much closed. Yes, it is large company whose products are the result of the work of thousands of astounding employees. Yes, it is a public company whose best interests are those of its shareholders. But its very soul, its DNA as he himself puts it, has only one source: Steve himself.

Among the many traits that Apple “inherited” from its father Steve, one can underline:

His great aesthetic sense

Whether it be hardware of software, Steve has always pushed for excellency in the look of Apple’s products, starting with the Apple II’s plastic case. His sense of design, what he describes as “taste”, really made a difference in the computer industry as a whole.

According to Steve: “Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” We’ve seen a consequence of this philosophy in Apple’s product development method. Another consequence is Steve’s fanatical obsession about the inside of his machines. This is another of his pet peeves; he insisted the Mac team redesign the computer’s main circuit board because he thought it wasn’t pretty. Of course it didn’t work... But later, at NeXT, where his will was never challenged, he actually succeeded in making a motherboard that worked AND that he considered beautiful. The NeXT Cube was one of the last computers to have all its components on a single board, and a picture of it was put on every brochure. This obsession can still be seen today: just watch the latest MacBook presentation video, in which Jony Ive keeps repeating how the laptops are beautiful inside. There are also long shots of the factory, another of Steve’s obsession, as exemplified in this anecdote out of an article about NeXT: “Jobs watches as robot hands install the state-of-the-art chips that will power the computer. For a second, he looks almost teary. 'It's beautiful', he says softly.”

Another way of seeing this trait of Steve is his constant talk about merging art and technology: “I've never believed that they're separate. Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist and a great scientist. Michelangelo knew a tremendous amount about how to cut stone at the quarry. The finest dozen computer scientists I know are all musicians.” He also keeps repeating that he never distinguished between great computer scientists and great artists; this can all be traced back to his Macintosh days.

His perfectionism

Steve will only settle for the absolute best in everything he does (even in his private life, for that matter). This standard of excellence drives many of his employees crazy, but, as stated above, it also pushes them to their very best and make them achieve extraordinary performances. If an employee is not able to meet Steve’s standards, he will not hesitate to fire him — hence many of his critics. But he always had excellent relationships with exceptionally bright people for the same reason: they understand his quest for the best.

A striking example of Steve’s perfectionism is the number of Apple projects that he had started over or even canceled at the very last moment. We know now that he canceled an Apple PDA and a set of Web services at the very last minute. The original iMac, the Apple retail stores, the iPhone, and the rumored Apple tablet have allegedly been started over too.

As a result of this philosophy, Apple does not produce bottom-line computers. Steve reminded a journalist of this at a press conference in 2007: “We can’t ship junk. We just can’t do it.” He refuses that the company build commodity products that he would not use himself.

His sense of mission

Steve found out about his destiny pretty early on in life, and that was to change the world by making computer power available to the masses. Woz recalled: “He really wants to move the world forward and not be just another company making the same old thing to earn a buck. That was exactly what he wanted the day I met him when we were in high school. He admired these top people in the world — the Newtons and the Shakespeares. He thought that there were very few people who had really changed life forever for all of us. He obviously wanted to be one of them”. The way to do that was to build the best possible computers... this is at the core of Apple’s philosophy. As said earlier, Apple is a product company: “our primary goal here is to make the world's best PCs — not to be the biggest or the richest.”

Every Apple employee is expected to share that vision. They are highly skillful people out there to change the world for the better by making superior, easy-to-use, mind-blowing hi-tech products. Steve is not ashamed to say this is part of his company’s essence: "The people around here — some of them left," he confessed."Actually, some of them I got rid of. But most of them said, 'Oh, my God, now I get it.' We've been doing this now for seven years, and everybody here gets it. And if they don't, they're gone."

What Apple is experiencing right now is Steve’s dream coming true. For example, he always talked about how he admired Sony, how the Japanese consumer electronics company was a model for him, even back in the 1980s. At first he just wanted Apple to be “the Sony of the computer business,” and it certainly was that. But now, Apple is even better; it’s out-done Sony in its own market! Ever since the iPod came out, and now with the iPhone (iPod hi-fi and Apple TV have not met great success), Apple is a leader in the consumer electronics business... What a success for Steve — and what a vision he imposed on his company. Just read what John Sculley wrote about his plans after he had Steve leave Apple in 1985: "Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company... This was a lunatic plan. High tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product." Enough said.

His arrogance

One quality that Steve Jobs doesn’t have is modesty. As an Apple employee put it, "Steve is always the smartest guy in the room — and he knows it.”

This is another of Apple’s characteristics. To paraphrase the quote above: Apple does the best products in the world — and they know it. Steve is the first ambassador of this spirit of course: “he oozes smug superiority, lacing his public comments with ridicule of Apple's rivals, which he casts as mediocre, evil, and — worst of all — lacking taste.” You can find examples of such (delightful) comments in the Movie Theater section.

Apple’s arrogance also transpires in its advertising, which of course is largely based on Steve’s view of the company. Such ads as “Snail” (depicting the Pentium as a snail because it’s so slow), “Move to Intel” (“the Intel chip - for years it’s been trapped inside PCs, inside dull little boxes, dutifully performing dull little tasks, when it could have been doing so much more... starting today, the Intel chip will be set free, and get to live life inside a Mac”), or the whole “I’m a Mac - I’m a PC” campaign, are famous examples of that presumption.

But it is safe to assume that this pride is essential to keep insufflating the passion into Apple, both its employees and customers. Especially since the company still has a one-digit market share of the PC industry. As journalist David Plotnikoff put it: “There is simply no way the Mac could have been born without that supreme confidence.”

Steve at PixarBack to top

Before Pixar merged with Disney in 2006, Steve Jobs was also CEO of the leading animation studios. Interestingly enough, his management of Pixar was entirely different from his work at Apple or NeXT. For basically the first decade of his Pixar ownership, he was just focused on NeXT, and considered Pixar his “hobby.” Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith had to drive down to Redwood City to let him know how the business was doing. It remained so until it became obvious that Toy Story would end up a huge success. He took the company public and started to get increasingly involved in the studio’s affairs.

However his aura was never the same at Pixar as it was at his computer firms. He was considered a genius and visionary in the PC industry, but of course for Pixar employees he was just the owner of their company, whose leadership clearly belonged to Catmull and Lasseter. As a result, he could not impose his views so easily at Pixar.

After Steve returned to Apple, he focused all his energies on the fruit company, and things went back the way they were before Toy Story. Steve’s involvement was not in the production of films, but in the implementation of Pixar’s business strategy. He took the company public, cut major deals with Hollywood, and partook in the planning of the Emeryville campus — but he clearly spent his days at Apple, not Pixar. Director Brad Bird had a funny way of putting it: he would describe the Catmull-Lasseter-Jobs triumvirat as “the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.”

LifestyleBack to top

Bachelor days

Before his marriage, Steve Jobs was a real workaholic. He would spend far more time at work than home, where he would only show up for a quick dinner in the kitchen and a short night. While he was living in his Woodside mansion in the 1990s, dinner was prepared by a young couple of Berkeley alumni who lived in the huge, empty house.

Family life

All of this changed after he married Laurene in 1990. Humbled by NeXT’s failure, he spent increasingly more time with his newborn son Reed, followed by daughters Erin and Eve. His then-teenage daughter Lisa also joined the family. Pretty much everyone agrees Steve was transformed by his newfound role of caring father. He looks a lot after his kids and their education; for example, he goes to parents meetings, forbids them to watch TV, and makes sure they eat healthy food. He often talked about how he tried to balance his busy life with the duties of pater familias.

In 2005, he said in an interview: “That was one of the things that came out most clearly from this whole experience [with cancer]. I realized that I love my life. I really do. I've got the greatest family in the world, and I've got my work. And that's pretty much all I do. I don't socialize much or go to conferences. I love my family, and I love running Apple, and I love Pixar. And I get to do that. I'm very lucky.” That’s how he envisions his life.

Food habits

Ever since his teenage years, Steve has been a militant vegan. The root of it all can be traced back to when he was 19 in Reed College, and started exploring strange diets that he pretended would allow him to eliminate all mucus and therefore the need to shower. At one point he was a “fruitarian” i.e. he ate only fruits. He also started an habit he kept a very long time: that of fasting. He was convinced digestion was burning too much of his energy, the energy he needed at work when he stayed up several nights in a row.

Nevertheless, Steve is still a strict vegan to this day, like his wife Laurene. He is known for lecturing his guests about eating meat, and he makes no concession to himself, apart from eating fish (sushi especially). One of his favorite meals is known to be raw carrot, without any kind of dressing. For example a journalist invited at his home described the meal he was served: “We dine as the Jobses always do: both are strict vegans, eating no meat products. Dinner is pasta with raw tomatoes, fresh raw corn from the garden, steamed cauliflower and a salad of raw shredded carrots. While the adults eat, their six-year-old son picks lemon verbena and other herbs in the garden for the after-dinner tea.” He buys his organic vegetables from the Palo Alto Whole Foods Market, where he is often seen walking barefoot. Other of his favorite local restaurants include the Palo Alto caterer Il Fornaio (whom he hired to run Apple’s cafeteria), where he likes to eat pasta, the Fraiche yoghurt café, various restaurants and cafés on Stanford campus, and Sushi Ran in Sausalito.

Clothing habits

“I don’t give a shit what I look like,” Steve once confided to friends. This is why he is always seen in his Levi’s blue jeans and black mock turtleneck, even for public occasions. Indeed, he dresses this way pretty much all the time, although sometimes he is seen wearing shorts and sandals. It is a bold change from his dashing days at Apple and NeXT, where he would wear the most expensive Brioni suits.

He is not burdened by the paradox of being a multi-billionaire and wearing blue jeans with holes in them. In fact, always dressing the same makes perfect sense to him; he often declared the rationale was “to save him some time in the morning, not having to decide what to wear.”

Home & means of locomotionBack to top

Houses

Steve’s most famous home is probably his Woodside mansion, which he bought in 1984 and in which he lived throughout the 1990s. The house was famous for its grandiose dimensions (it was the party house of a copper magnate) and, especially, for its total lack of furniture.

This is one aspect of Steve’s personality that hasn’t changed in decades: he is such a perfectionist that he can never decide on what to buy, thus ends up buying nothing. As a bachelor he only had a mattress, huge Ansel Adams prints, and a super-expensive stereo system as pieces of furtniture. He did not sleep on a bed for years — even though he was a multi-millionaire. At Woodside the kitchen was the only room that was fully furnished. He did have a Bosendorfer grand piano and a BMW motorcycle in his living room however, testaments of his love of German engineering.

A glimpse at Steve's home in Palo Alto.

Steve’s current house in Palo Alto is still decorated with austerity, although Laurene has tempered that quite a bit. Here’s how a Time journalist described it: “The Steve Jobs who is currently running two sophisticated companies lives in a turn-of-the- century English-style country house in Palo Alto with his wife Laurene [...]. The house is run with a distinct 1960s flavor. Laurene has planted a garden of wildflowers, herbs and vegetables all around. The rooms are sparsely decorated, the only extravagances being Ansel Adams photographs.” Some things never change...

Cars

Steve’s father Paul was a machinist who fixed cars to make extra money. His son certainly has inherited his Californian love of cars.

Although Steve enjoys quite a humble lifestyle, compared to the megalomaniac habits of people of this kind of wealth (cough-Larry Ellison-cough), he always delighted in driving fast, powerful cars. For decades he has driven German cars, Porsches first, then Mercedes. These cars inspired him for designing his computers, as he reportedly asked for the Macintosh design to be “like a Porsche”, and wanted the NeXT Cube to be “the black Porsche of computers” (computer artist Susan Kare viewed it more as the“Death Star of computers”).

It is pretty easy to recognize Steve’s car on Apple’s parking lot:
1. It's a Mercedes, and Steve loves German engineering
2. It's parked on an handicapped spot
3. It has no licence plate

The parking on a handicapped spot is no news, as exemplified by this Andy Hertzfeld anecdote.

Plane

Check out this page about Steve’s Gulfstream V jet.

Steve Jobs: How to live before you die

Stanford University, Filmed Jun 2005; Posted Dec 2009

Steve Jobs' Childhood

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, to Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, who was a professor of political science. His mother was an American while his father was from Syria. A week after Steve’s birth, he was put up for adoption. Justin and Clara Jobs, residing in Mountain View, Santa Clara County in California, adopted Steve and named him Steven Paul. He spent his childhood in the South Bay area. This region came to be known as the Silicon Valley. Steve was a student of the Cupertino Junior High School and then Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. It was here that he attended his first electronics class and made friends with Bill Fernandez, who was equally passionate about electronics. During the early years of his education, Jobs attended after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Paulo Alto. The company hired Jobs and he got an opportunity to work with Steve Wozniak, who would later co-found Apple Computers with him.

After completing his schooling, Steve Jobs was admitted to the Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He dropped out from college but continued with calligraphy classes. This course helped Jobs in creating multiple typefaces for Mac. This was perhaps the classic example of the fact that nothing learned is ever wasted! During the years he was learning calligraphy, no one would have probably thought that calligraphy would form the basis of the font system in Mac. But it did.

Steve Jobs' childhood gives us a glimpse of his skills to do different things and do them differently. He went on to become a giant in the computer industry and a source of inspiration for many budding business entrepreneurs.

Steve Jobs is a Pisces by birth, as his birthday falls on February 24, 1955. His father belonged to Syria and worked as a professor and his mother was of American origin. But soon after a week the Jobs couple, who resided in Mountain View in California, adopted and named him Steven Paul.

His childhood was spent in the Silicon Valley. Steve started schooling in Cupertino Junior High School and later on Homestead High School. This was the place where the seed of electronics was sowed into his head. Bill Fernandez became friends with Steve, who was also equally interested in electronics. Jobs took up with after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company that hired Jobs later and it was here that he met Steve Wozniak, with whom he jointly made an entry it into the world of electronics.
Childhood had been very remarkable for Steve Jobs. At the age of seven he got to know about President Kennedy's assassination with which he had quite a few disturbing nights to follow up. His father, Paul Jobs was a machinist and a hard worker who was a genius too. He had made a separate section on his workbench for Steve and also gave a hammer and a saw and taught him how to work with it. Then a man, who was working as an engineer, came to reside nearby. This man was named Larry Lang and he taught Steve about the heath kits and the way to use them. So, it is right from his childhood that Steve Jobs started exploring, learning and thereby understanding even the most complex things and got his self-confidence boosted.