Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
Steve Jobs
Abandoned and choosen child
Steve jobs knew from his early years that he was adopted, “My parents were very open with me about that,” he recalled. Paul Jobs was an engine technician who worked on cars, it was he who introduced Steve to engineering designs.
Steve Jobs had no idea what to feel toward his two sets of parents. He explained a vivid memory of sitting on the lawn of the house one day, when he was six or seven years old, talking with a girl who lived across the street, she said: “So, does that mean your real parents didn’t want you?” According to Jobs, “Lightning bolts went off in my head,” “I remember running into the house, crying. And my parents said, ‘No, you have to understand.’ They were very serious and looked me straight in the eye. They said, ‘We specifically picked you out.’ Steve parents specifically emphasized every word in that sentence.
Abandoned. Chosen. Special. Became the critical concepts of how Jobs regarded himself. His closest friends think being put up for adoption at an early age left Jobs with broken glass. Coming to know he was given up at birth left some scars.
At a young age, Steve’s parents moved to Palo Alto, California, the famous Silicon Valley, when the technological boom was at its peak.
Before Jobs got into elementary school, his mother taught him how to read. He was, therefore, bored for the first few years, occupying himself by getting into trouble for pranks. It was also evident at this stage that Jos by nature was averse to authority.
He was sent home two to three times before third grade, instead of being mad at him, his father Paul Jobs treated him as a special, and he made it clear the school should do the same. Steve Job recalls his father told the school, “If you can’t keep him interested, it’s your fault.”
Even though Jobs parents were not fervent about their faith, they wanted him to have a religious upbringing, so they took him along to Lutheran church where they attend occasionally. But it all came to an end when he became thirteen. There was a publication in Life magazine in July 1968, where there were pictures of starving children in Biafra. Steve Jobs took the magazine to church and confronted the pastor; “If I raise my finger, will God know which one I’m going to raise even before I do it?” The church pastor answered; “Yes, God knows everything.” Jobs then pulled out a copy of that magazine and asked, “Well, does God know about this, and what’s going to happen to those children?” The pastor replied, Steve, I know you don’t understand, but yes, God knows about that.” And that was the last time Jobs had anything to do with church and worship. He, however, spends a couple of years practicing Zen Buddhism.
The only time when Jobs father was mad at him was when he found out about Steve brief stint with Marijuana and LSD. During his high school days, Steve found appreciation in other things other than electronics such as arts and music.
The odd couple: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
During his high school days, Steve became friends with Stephen Wozniak, a school legend and wizard in his class. Wozniak was five years older than Jobs and had a better understanding of electronics. Both emotionally and socially, Wozniak was a high school geek.
Just like Jobs, Wozniak learned most of what he knew from his father, but they had different lessons. Paul Jobs was a high school dropout, who ended up fixing cars for a living. Francis Wozniak known as Jerry was an excellent engineer who graduated from Cal Tech. He loves engineering and looks down at others in sales, business, and marketing. According to the author, “I remember him telling me that engineering was the highest level of importance you could reach in the world,” Steve Wozniak later recalled. “It takes society to a new level.
Woz spent most of his time at home reading his father’s electronic journals, and he became fascinated by stories about computers, such as the ENIAC. Woz was very good at Boolean algebra and marveled at how computers were simple rather than complex. Woz built a calculator in eighth grade, it included one hundred transistors, two hundred resistors, and two hundred diodes on ten circuits board. The invention won the top prize in a local contest organized by the Air Force, even though he competed with students up to the twelfth grade.
Even though Woz was five years older than Jobs, their mind was alike, the mixture of prank and electronics and they met in a mutual friend garage and began the project called the “Blue Box.” It was a device that could fool the system into allowing a user to make a long distance call without incurring extra charges.
At first, the blue box was used for pranks and fun, but Jobs came up with the idea that more blue box could be built and sold for profit. Jobs cost the component parts, from the power supply to the casing, keypads and it was $40, and Jobs decided they should sell the blue box for $150. According to Jobs, “We made a hundred or so Blue Boxes and sold almost all of them,”
This partnership paved the way for a bigger adventure later on. Jobs recalled, “If it hadn’t been for the Blue Boxes, there wouldn’t have been an Apple.” It was the avenue Woz, and Jobs learned to work together. The adventure also helps instill confidence that they would surmount technical problems and put something to production.
Jobs in Atari and his trip to India
In February 1974, Jobs decided to move to his parents’ home in Los Altos, and look for employment. This was not a difficult search as there were up to sixty technology help-wanted ads. One of them caught Job’s eye. It states, “Have fun, make money.” Jobs walked into Atari, a video game manufacturer. The personnel manager was startled at the sight of a teenager with unkempt hair and attire looking for a job.
He appeared in the lobby wearing sandals and demanded a job, saying he was not going to leave until he was hired. The chief engineer at Atari, Al Alcorn, was summoned by the personnel manager, asking if the cops should be called on Jobs or to let him in. Al Alcorn replied, “Bring him on it!”
Jobs became one of the fifty employees at Atari, working as a technician for $5 an hour. According to Alcorn, “In retrospect, it was weird to hire a dropout from Reed,” Alcorn recalled. “But I saw something in him. He was brilliant, enthusiastic, excited about tech.” Jobs was assigned to work with a straitlaced engineer named Don Lang, and the next day, he wanted Jobs fired. “This guy’s a goddamn hippie with b.o. Why did you do this to me? And he’s impossible to deal with,” he said.
Jobs had a belief that his fruit-heavy diet would prevent body odor and mucus, even if he didn’t shower regularly or use deodorant. Don Lang and the others wanted to cut Jobs lose, but Bushnell came up with a solution, Jobs was placed on a night shift. He would come in, long after everyone has gone home.
The main reason Jobs wanted to make some money in 1974 was because his friend Robert Friedland had traveled to India the summer before and had encouraged Jobs to bring his spiritual journey there.
When he told the folks at Atari he was quitting to search for a guru in India, Alcorn was amused. According to Jobs, “He says, ‘No shit, that’s super. Write to me!”
Early 1975, Al Alcorn was in his office when Ron Wayne burst in and shouted, “Stevie is back” “Wow, bring him on it,” Alcorn replied. Jobs walked in with barefoot, wearing his saffron robe, and carried a copy of Be Here Now. He handed the book to Alcorn and asked he read it, why saying, “Can I have my job back?” Alcorn recalled, “He looked like a Hare Krishna guy, but it was great to see him,” “So I said, sure!”
For the sake of peace, Jobs worked only at night. Alcorn gave a challenge to Jobs to create a one player version of the company’s game Pong, and offered incentives for every fewer chip tan fifty that he used. Jobs enlisted the help of Woz and completed the tasks in four days.
The Apple I
In Santa Clara Valley late 1960s, various cultural currents flowed together. This was the period of a technology revolution that started with the growth of military contractors, which later included video game designers, microchip makers, electronics firms, and computer companies.
The fusion of processor power and flower power, enlightenment and technology was embodied by Jobs, who during his morning meditations dreamed of starting his own business, audited physics classes at Stanford and worked the night shift at Atari. According to Jobs, “There was just something going on here,” he said, looking back at the time and place. “The best music came from here—the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin—and so did the integrated circuit, and things like the Whole Earth Catalog.”
Allen Baun spotted a flyer on the HP bulletin and called Woz who agreed to attend the event with him. That event turned out to be the most important of his life. There was a demonstration of the new Altair, but of more importance for Woz was seeing the specification sheet for a microprocessor.
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” ~ Steve Jobs
Wozniak thought about the microprocessor–described as a chip with a central processing unit on it, and he had an idea. At that point, he was designing a terminal with a monitor and keyboard that could relay to a distant minicomputer. But with a microprocessor, he could place the capacity of the minicomputer into the terminal itself, so it can become a stand-alone computer. It was a vivid picture, a screen, a keyboard, and a computer all in one as an integrated package. “This whole vision of a personal computer just popped into my head,” Wozniak said. That night, he sketched out on paper what was later referred to as the Apple I.
Woz attempted to use the same processor found in the Altair, an Intel 8080, but they cost more than his house rent, so he searched for alternatives.
After months of testing, soldering to the motherboard and handwriting codes, the computer was ready to be tested. According to Wozniak, “I typed a few keys on the keyboard, and I was shocked! The letters were displayed on the screen.” It was Sunday, June 29, 1975, a milestone for the personal computer. “It was the first time in history,” Wozniak later said, “anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on their own computer’s screen right in front of them.”
Wozniak wanted to gift the design for free, but Jobs found a way to monetize it, and that was how Apple was born.
The Dawn of a New Age; The Apple II
On Labor day, Woz worked on the prototype of the new machine, Jobs had hoped will take them to the next level, a machine to be named Apple II. The prototype was brought out only late at night for testing, to see how it projected on the color television in the conference rooms. Wozniak has engineered some machine chips to create colors, and wanted to see the result on a movie like a screen “I figured a projector might have a different color circuitry that would choke on my color method,” he recalled. “So I hooked up the Apple II to this projector, and it worked perfectly.” As Woz typed on the keyboard, there were colorful lines and swirl burst on the screens across the room. The hotel’s technician was the only outsider to see the Apple II, and he said he had checked all the other machines, this was the only one he would be buying.
Producing Apple II would require huge sums, so they consider selling the rights to a richer company. Jobs went to Atari, he asked Al Alcorn for a chance to pitch it to Atari’s management. A meeting was set with Joe Keenan, the company’s president who was a lot more conservative than Bushnell and Alcorn.
Jobs step up to pitch, but Joe couldn’t stand his hygiene. He was barefoot and placed his feet on the desk at some point. “Not only are we not going to buy this thing,” Keenan shouted, “but get your feet off my desk!”
Eventually, Wozniak and Steve got a line of credit of up to $250,000 from Markkula, in return for being a one-third equity participant. Apple got incorporated, he along with Wozniak and Jobs each own 26% of the stock. The rest was reserved to be sold to future investors. The deal was signed and sealed in the cabana by Markkula’s swimming pool.
The Apple II was marketed in various models for the next sixteen years, and sold up to six million products, more than any other machine sold in the personal computer industry.
Wozniak is credited as being the brain behind the design of the awe-inspiring circuit board, and the related operating software’s. Jobs was responsible for integrating Wozniak’s boards into a consumer-friendly package, from the sleek case to the power supply. He also created the company that revolves round Wozniak’s machines. According to Regis McKenna, “Woz designed a great machine, but it would be sitting in hobby shops today were it not for Steve Jobs.”
The Apple Marketing Philosophy
Mike Markkula, the angel investor of Apple computers, taught Steve Jobs vital business strategies such as: never start a company to get rich. The goal of starting the company should be based on things you believe in and to build a company to last.
Markkula wrote these principles in a one-page paper, he titled “The Apple Marketing Philosophy.” In this paper, he stressed three critical points:
First, empathy – sharing an intimate connection with the customer’s feelings. He further stated, “We will truly understand their needs better than any other company.”
The second was a focus — Markkula wrote: “to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities.”
“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.
The third was awkwardly named impute. It explains that opinions about the company will be formed by the signals the company or its products convey. Markkula wrote “People do judge a book by its cover, “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.”
Throughout Steve Jobs career, he had a better understanding of the desires and needs of customers better than any other business leaders. Jobs could focus on a couple of core products, and he would obsessively care about the image and marketing and every bit of detail about it, he said “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,” he said. “Mike taught me that.”
Good artists copy, great artists steal!
This is about what is considered one of the biggest heists of the computing industry. It is the raid on Xerox PARC by Apple.
In December 1979, Steve Jobs convinced Xerox’s venture capital to show him and his chosen colleague what they have been working on in terms of research, development, and technology.
Up to that point, Jobs have never shown a flair for technologies such as word processors publicly. So it was easy for him to convince Xerox investors to help him facilitate getting access to what they were working on.
Xerox project managers and team engineers were very furious; they were angry but had no option but to follow the instructions laid down by their bosses. Steve Jobs and his team were shown everything, they were astonished! Steve Jobs beamed from side to side and waved his arms excitedly.
Steve Jobs was the exclamation point for every piece of tech shown, and he kept asking questions after questions. At a point, he shouted, “You’re sitting on a gold mine,” “I can’t believe Xerox is not taking advantage of this.”
During the tour, Jobs and his team discovered that the graphical interface was facilitated by the presence of a bitmapped screen on the computers. “It was like a veil being lifted from my eyes,” Steve recalled. “I could see what the future of computing was destined to be.”
Jobs and his engineers spend countless hours improving the graphical interface, they saw at Xerox PARC. This led to the implementation of the technology in ways Xerox could never accomplish. For instance, the Xerox mouse was fitted with three buttons and was complicated to use, costing $300 apiece. They also did not roll smoothly.
A few days after the visit, Steve visited a local industrial design firm, IDEO, he told Dean Hovey, one of the founders, he wanted a simple single-button model that will cost only $15, “...and I want to be able to use it on Formica and my blue jeans.” Dean Hovey complied.
The improvement to the graphical interface was not only in the design but a change in the entire concept. Xerox mouse was unable to drag a window around the screen. This design was revamped by Apple’s engineers, such that you would not only drag a window screen but could also move files around and drop them in a folder.
Also, while the Xerox system required a user to select a command to perform an action, from changing the extension that located a file to resizing the window. The Apple system transformed the concept by allowing users to drag, manipulate, touch, and relocate things directly.
Apple engineers worked together with its designers, with Steve Jobs spurring everyone on daily to improve the desktop by adding beautiful icons and menus that form a pull-down menu from a top bar on each window, and the ability to open a folder when you double click.
Recalling this incident, Job once said:”
“Picasso had a saying — ‘good artists copy, great artists steal’ — and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”
Going Public — Steve Jobs becomes a man of wealth and fame
When Markkula joined Steve Jobs and Woz to turn their partnership into the Apple Computer Co. in 1977. The company was valued at just $5,309. In less than four years after going public, Apple Computer Co. was valued at $1.79 billion. At this time, it would make three hundred people millionaires.Before and after Jobs became rich, and throughout his life that included spells of being broke and a billionaire, his attitude towards wealth was complex. Jobs is an antimaterialistic hippie, someone who capitalized on the innovation of a close friend who wanted to give them out for free. He was also a Zen devotee who went on a pilgrimage to India, before deciding his calling was to create a business.
These different characters seem to weave together rather than conflict. Jobs had a great love for material objects, especially finely designed and crafted products like Mercedes and Porsche cars, BMW motorcycles and Ansel Adams prints, Henckels knives and Braun appliances, Bang & Olufsen audio equipment, and Bösendorfer pianos.
Yet, the houses Jobs lived in, no matter how rich he was, tended not to be ostentatious. They were simply furnished in a way that would have put a Shaker to shame. There was no time that he traveled with an entourage or kept a personal staff, not even for security.
Jobs bought a nice car but always drove himself. When Markkula requested a Lear jet, Jobs declined (although he eventually demanded a Gulfstream from Apple to use).
Like his father, Jobs was flinty when bargaining with suppliers, he never allowed the need to make profits to cloud his passion for building top-quality products. Thirty years after Apple went public, Jobs recalled what it felt like to suddenly come into money:
“I never worried about money. I grew up in a middle-class family, so I never thought I would starve. And I learned at Atari that I could be an okay engineer, so I always knew I could get by. I was voluntarily poor when I was in college and India, and I lived a pretty simple life even when I was working. So I went from fairly poor, which was wonderful because I didn’t have to worry about money, to being incredibly rich, when I also didn’t have to worry about money. I watched people at Apple, who made a lot of money and felt they had to live differently. Some of them bought a Rolls-Royce and various houses, each with a house manager and then someone to manage the house managers. Their wives got plastic surgery and turned into these bizarre people. This was not how I wanted to live. It’s crazy. I made a promise to myself that I’m not going to let this money ruin my life.”
The reality distortion field; Jobs play by his own set of rules
According to George Crow, Joanna Hoffman, Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, and Jerry Manock (the Macintosh team), Jobs had a reality distortion field. When Jobs is around, reality becomes malleable. He can convince anyone to do practically anything, but this wears off when he is no longer around, making it hard to have realistic schedules. It is not advisable to get caught up in the Jobs distortion field, but this is what led him to change reality.
Jobs distortion field is a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and the eagerness to bend facts to fit any purpose at hand. When Jobs is around, there is nothing that can shield you from this distortion field. It becomes even more effective when you are acutely aware of it.
“The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.”
Some people believed calling it a reality distortion field is a smart way to say Jobs tended to lie. But it was something more, Jobs could start by asserting something, be it a recounting who suggested an idea at a meeting or a fact about world history — without even considering the truth. This ability comes from willfully defying reality, not just to others but to himself. “He can deceive himself,” according to Bill Atkinson, “It allowed him to con people into believing his vision, because he has personally embraced and internalized it.”
When the Macintosh team got ensnared in this reality, they became hypnotized. “He reminded me of Rasputin,” said Debi Coleman. “He laser-beamed in on you and didn’t blink. It didn’t matter if he was serving purple Kool-Aid. You drank it.”
Like Woz, Debi believed the reality distortion field was empowering: it was how Jobs was able to inspire the Apple team to alter the course of computer history and with just a fraction of the resources available in IBM or Xerox. “It was a self-fulfilling distortion,” she claimed. “You did the impossible because you didn’t realize it was impossible.”
Birth of rounded corner rectangles in computer graphics; Real Artist simplify
Unlike the kids that grew up in Eichler homes, Jobs liked the notion of simple and modern designs produced for the mass market. He also enjoyed listening to his father talks about the intricate styling of various cars. So from the start, he believed a great industrial design, a colorful logo, and a sleek case could set Apple apart and make its products distinctive.
Apple first office, after moving from his family garage was in a small building it shared with Sony sales office. Sony was well known for its signature style and beautiful product designs, so Jobs could go into the Sony office to study their marketing material. “He would come in looking scruffy and fondle the product brochures and point out design features,” said Dan’l Lewin, who worked there. “Every now and then, he would ask, ‘Can I take this brochure?” By 1980, Jobs hired Lewin.
Steve Jobs was obsessed with equal intensity and the outlook of what appears on the screen. One afternoon, Bill Atkinson marched into Texaco Towers all excited. He had just uncovered a brilliant algorithm that could help users draw ovals and circles on the screen quickly. Everyone was impressed except Jobs “Well, circles and ovals are good,” he said, “but how about drawing rectangles with rounded corners?”
Atkinson countered, “I don’t think we really need it,” and it is almost impossible to implement. Atkinson wanted to keep the graphics routines simple and limit them to primitive designs. “Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere!” Jobs said, standing from his chair and getting intense. “Just look around this room!” pointing out the tabletop, whiteboard and other objects that come with a rectangular rounded corner. “And look outside, there’s even more, practically everywhere you look!” Jobs dragged Atkinson outside for a walk, pointing out street signs, billboards, and car windows. Within three blocks, Jobs showed Atkinson seventeen samples, pointing out everything until he was convinced.
On getting to a No Parking sign, Atkinson said okay Jobs, you are right, I give up. I understand the need to have a rounded-corner rectangle as a primitive. Bill returned to Texaco Towers that day, his demo now included drawing rectangles with beautifully rounded corners. Eventually, the dialogue boxes and the windows on the Mac and Lisa, and almost all subsequent computers after that encounter ended up rendered with rectangular rounded corners.
Building the Mac – The journey is the reward
In August 1981, IBM introduced its personal computer, Jobs and the team at Apple, bought one and dissected it. The general consensus was that it sucked! According to Chris Espinosa, “It is a half-assed, hackneyed attempt,” and you wouldn’t argue with his assertion. IBM used an old command line prompt, and the PCs did not support bitmapped graphical displays.
The Apple team became cocky, forgetting that corporate technology buyers were more comfortable buying from established technology companies like IBM rather one named after a fruit. This was also the day Bill Gates came for a meeting at the Apple headquarters, “They didn’t seem to care,” Gate said. “It took them a year to realize what had happened.”
Apple did a full-page advertorial on the Wall Street Journal, with a cheeky headline that goes “Welcome, IBM. Seriously.” Apple cleverly made the incoming personal computer battle to be a contest between the rebellious and spunky Apple and the Goliath corporation IBM. It also cleverly relegated other computer companies such as Osborne, Tandy, and Commodore, who were doing just as fine as the Apple.
Throughout Jobs career, he saw himself as an enlightened rebel who is fighting against evil empires, something like a Buddhist samurai or Jedi warrior fighting the forces of darkness, and IBM was his perfect foil. Jobs always cast upcoming computer battles, not as a business competition but a spiritual struggle. “If for some reason, we make some giant mistakes and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter sort of a computer Dark Ages for about twenty years,” Jobs once told an interviewer. “Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation.” Even thirty years later, reflecting back on the competition, Jobs cast it as a holy crusade: “IBM was essentially Microsoft at its worst. They were not a force for innovation; they were a force for evil. They were like ATT or Microsoft, or Google is.”
Jobs took another perceived enemy to the Macintosh: Apple’s Lisa. This was psychological, he had been ousted from the group designing the product and now wanted to beat it. He also saw an avenue to use healthy rivalry to motivate his troops. He even went as far as having a bet of $5,000 with John Couch, that the Mac will be shipped before the Lisa.
“Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them.”
This rivalry became unhealthy, as Jobs portrayed the engineers working on the Lisa as the coolest on the block, in contrast to those working on the Lisa. More significantly, he deviated from the original mac design as an inexpensive, underpowered portable device, to a desktop machine having a graphical interface. The Mac became a scale down version of Lisa, and that would likely affect its price in the marketplace.
Jobs had a favorite maxim, it was a koōan-like phrase “The journey is the reward.” He liked to emphasize his Mac team as a special group with a noble mission. He reflected that someday, they would all look back on their journey together, laughing off the painful moments, which would be regarded as one of the magical moments in their lives.
At the end of a presentation at a retreat in September 1982, someone asked if they needed to conduct market research to know what the customers wanted, “No,” he replied, “because customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” Then he pulled out a device that was about the size of a desk diary. “Do you want to see something neat?” Jobs flipped the device open, and it became a mock-up of a computer that could fit on your lap, with a keyboard and a screen attached like a notebook. He said, “This is my dream of what we will be making in the mid to late eighties,” Jobs was building a company that would invent the future.
Enter Sculley — the Pepsi challenge
Jobs got the then CEO of Pepsi, John Sculley to take over the role at Apple using a famous line “You want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”.
But in two months, the honeymoon was over. By the second half of 1984, Macintosh sales begin to wane because of several technical issues. This brought a rift between the pair.
There were other reasons for the rift between Jobs and Sculley in 1985. On the Jobs part, the problem was Sculley did not become a product person. He saw no effort on his part or the capacity to understand the fine points of what the team at Apple were building.
On Sculley’s part, Jobs was no longer in manipulative or courtship mode, he was continually nasty, selfish, rude, and obnoxious to other people. Sculley found Jobs behavior boorish. Jobs found Sculley lack of passion for the finer details of the products despicable.
Sculley decided to reorganize Apple in May 1985, and proposed a plan to the board that has Steve Jobs removed from the Macintosh group and placed in charge of “New Product Development.” This plan will render Jobs powerless within Apple.
Having heard of the plan. Jobs put plans into motion to have to get rid of Sculley and take over Apple; however, this plan got leaked. Jobs offered to leave Apple and tendered his resignation letter, which was rejected by the board. Sculley also informed Jobs he had all the votes needed to reorganize Apple. A few months later, Jobs submitted his letter of resignation to the Apple board. He and five senior employees resigned and started a new venture NeXT.
Think Differently - Jobs as ICEO
In 1996, Apple Computer Co. announced it was buying NeXT for $427 million. This deal brought Steve Jobs back to the company he co-founded. To return Apple to profitability, Jobs terminated some projects such as Cyberdog, and Newton in March 1998. In the months after this, many employees were scared of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, many were afraid they might not be in a job when the elevator doors open. But in reality, Jobs summary executions were rare, but a few victims were a good enough number to terrorize the whole company.
iMac
The iMac was the first great design to come from the Jobs-Ive collaboration. It was a desktop computer targeted at the home consumer market. Steve Jobs had specifications for the product, an all-in-one computer having a keyboard and monitor ready to use right out of the box.
The computer should come with a distinctive design and a brand statement and will be sold for $1,200 or so. There was no Apple computer selling for less than $2,000 at the time. Jos said “he wanted Apple to go back to the roots of the original 1984 Macintosh, an all-in-one consumer appliance,” recalled Schiller. “That meant design and engineering had to work together.”
“On the day he unveiled the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked Jobs what type of market research he had done. Jobs responded by scoffing, "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?”
There were design changes, it was the first computer to ship without a floppy disk drive. Steve Jobs explained why by quoting Wayne Gretzky’s maxim, a hockey star “Skate where the puck’s going, not where it’s been.”
It has a plastic casing, sea-green in color as proposed by Ive and Coster. The casing was transparent, so you could see the insides of the machine. The plastic casing was simply built yet complex. Each case cost more than $60 per unit, that’s three times the price of a regular personal computer case.
Other tech companies could demand studies and presentations to proof the translucent cases will increase sales to justify the extra cost. Steve Jobs did not ask for such an analysis.
The iPhone design
On many of Jobs major projects such as the Apple store and the first Toy Story, as they neared completion, he paused and decided they needed to make major modifications. The iPhone was no different.
The iPhone had a problem, the selling point was the display, but in the current design, the case competed with the screen, it was getting in the way of the display. Jobs said told Ive’s team. “Guys, you’ve killed yourselves over this design for the last nine months, but we’re going to change it.” “We’re all going to have to work nights and weekends, and if you want, we can hand out some guns so you can kill us now.” Ive’s team did not back down, “It was one of my proudest moments at Apple,” Steve recalled. The new iPhone design ended with up a thin stainless steel bezel which allows the gorilla glass display to go right to the edge. In stark contrast to the initial design, every part of the device now defers to the screen. The new iPhone was austere but friendly. The iPhone could be fondled, but it meant redoing the antenna, circuit board and the processor inside the phone, but Steve ordered the changes. According to Fadell, “Other companies may have shipped,” said Fadell, “but we pressed the reset button and started over".
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