Steve Jobs Read online

  FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING BIOGRAPHIES OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND ALBERT EINSTEIN, THIS IS THE EXCLUSIVE BIOGRAPHY OF STEVE JOBS.

  Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

  At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

  Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing offlimits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

  Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

  Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been the chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Einstein: His Life and Universe, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, and Kissinger: A Biography, and is the coauthor, with Evan Thomas, of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He and his wife live in Washington, D.C.

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  ALSO BY WALTER ISAACSON

  American Sketches

  Einstein: His Life and Universe

  A Benjamin Franklin Reader

  Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

  Kissinger: A Biography

  The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made

  (with Evan Thomas)

  Pro and Con

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  First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition November 2011

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-1-4516-4853-9

  ISBN 978-1-4516-4855-3 (ebook)

  The people who are crazy enough

  to think they can change

  the world are the ones who do.

  —Apple’s “Think Different” commercial, 1997

  CONTENTS

  Characters

  Introduction: How This Book Came to Be

  CHAPTER ONE

  Childhood: Abandoned and Chosen

  CHAPTER TWO

  Odd Couple: The Two Steves

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Dropout: Turn On, Tune In . . .

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Atari and India: Zen and the Art of Game Design

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Apple I: Turn On, Boot Up, Jack In . . .

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Apple II: Dawn of a New Age

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Chrisann and Lisa: He Who Is Abandoned . . .

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Xerox and Lisa: Graphical User Interfaces

  CHAPTER NINE

  Going Public: A Man of Wealth and Fame

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Mac Is Born: You Say You Want a Revolution

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Reality Distortion Field: Playing by His Own Set of Rules

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Design: Real Artists Simplify

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Building the Mac: The Journey Is the Reward

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Enter Sculley: The Pepsi Challenge

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Launch: A Dent in the Universe

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Gates and Jobs: When Orbits Intersect

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Icarus: What Goes Up . . .

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  NeXT: Prometheus Unbound

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Pixar: Technology Meets Art

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A Regular Guy: Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Family Man: At Home with the Jobs Clan

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Toy Story: Buzz and Woody to the Rescue

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Second Coming:

  What Rough Beast, Its Hour Come Round at Last . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Restoration: The Loser Now Will Be Later to Win

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Think Different: Jobs as iCEO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Design Principles: The Studio of Jobs and Ive

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The iMac: Hello (Again)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CEO: Still Crazy after All These Years

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Apple Stores: Genius Bars and Siena Sandstone

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Digital Hub: From iTunes to the iPod

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The iTunes Store: I’m the Pied Piper

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Music Man: The Sound Track of His Life

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Pixar’s Friends: . . . and Foes

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Twenty-first-century Macs: Setting Apple Apart

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Round One: Memento Mori

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The iPhone: Three Revolutionary Products in One

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Round Two: The Cancer Recurs

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

&nb
sp; The iPad: Into the Post-PC Era

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  New Battles: And Echoes of Old Ones

  CHAPTER FORTY

  To Infinity: The Cloud, the Spaceship, and Beyond

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Round Three: The Twilight Struggle

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Legacy: The Brightest Heaven of Invention

  Acknowledgments

  Sources

  Notes

  Index

  Illustration Credits

  Photos

  CHARACTERS

  AL ALCORN. Chief engineer at Atari, who designed Pong and hired Jobs.

  GIL AMELIO. Became CEO of Apple in 1996, bought NeXT, bringing Jobs back.

  BILL ATKINSON. Early Apple employee, developed graphics for the Macintosh.

  CHRISANN BRENNAN. Jobs’s girlfriend at Homestead High, mother of his daughter Lisa.

  LISA BRENNAN-JOBS. Daughter of Jobs and Chrisann Brennan, born in 1978; became a writer in New York City.

  NOLAN BUSHNELL. Founder of Atari and entrepreneurial role model for Jobs.

  BILL CAMPBELL. Apple marketing chief during Jobs’s first stint at Apple and board member and confidant after Jobs’s return in 1997.

  EDWIN CATMULL. A cofounder of Pixar and later a Disney executive.

  KOBUN CHINO. A Soōtoō Zen master in California who became Jobs’s spiritual teacher.

  LEE CLOW. Advertising wizard who created Apple’s “1984” ad and worked with Jobs for three decades.

  DEBORAH “DEBI” COLEMAN. Early Mac team manager who took over Apple manufacturing.

  TIM COOK. Steady, calm, chief operating officer hired by Jobs in 1998; replaced Jobs as Apple CEO in August 2011.

  EDDY CUE. Chief of Internet services at Apple, Jobs’s wingman in dealing with content companies.

  ANDREA “ANDY” CUNNINGHAM. Publicist at Regis McKenna’s firm who handled Apple in the early Macintosh years.

  MICHAEL EISNER. Hard-driving Disney CEO who made the Pixar deal, then clashed with Jobs.

  LARRY ELLISON. CEO of Oracle and personal friend of Jobs.

  TONY FADELL. Punky engineer brought to Apple in 2001 to develop the iPod.

  SCOTT FORSTALL. Chief of Apple’s mobile device software.

  ROBERT FRIEDLAND. Reed student, proprietor of an apple farm commune, and spiritual seeker who influenced Jobs, then went on to run a mining company.

  JEAN-LOUIS GASSÉE. Apple’s manager in France, took over the Macintosh division when Jobs was ousted in 1985.

  BILL GATES. The other computer wunderkind born in 1955.

  ANDY HERTZFELD. Playful, friendly software engineer and Jobs’s pal on the original Mac team.

  JOANNA HOFFMAN. Original Mac team member with the spirit to stand up to Jobs.

  ELIZABETH HOLMES. Daniel Kottke’s girlfriend at Reed and early Apple employee.

  ROD HOLT. Chain-smoking Marxist hired by Jobs in 1976 to be the electrical engineer on the Apple II.

  ROBERT IGER. Succeeded Eisner as Disney CEO in 2005.

  JONATHAN “JONY” IVE. Chief designer at Apple, became Jobs’s partner and confidant.

  ABDULFATTAH “JOHN” JANDALI. Syrian-born graduate student in Wisconsin who became biological father of Jobs and Mona Simpson, later a food and beverage manager at the Boomtown casino near Reno.

  CLARA HAGOPIAN JOBS. Daughter of Armenian immigrants, married Paul Jobs in 1946; they adopted Steve soon after his birth in 1955.

  ERIN JOBS. Middle child of Laurene Powell and Steve Jobs.

  EVE JOBS. Youngest child of Laurene and Steve.

  PATTY JOBS. Adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs two years after they adopted Steve.

  PAUL REINHOLD JOBS. Wisconsin-born Coast Guard seaman who, with his wife, Clara, adopted Steve in 1955.

  REED JOBS. Oldest child of Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell.

  RON JOHNSON. Hired by Jobs in 2000 to develop Apple’s stores.

  JEFFREY KATZENBERG. Head of Disney Studios, clashed with Eisner and resigned in 1994 to cofound DreamWorks SKG.

  DANIEL KOTTKE. Jobs’s closest friend at Reed, fellow pilgrim to India, early Apple employee.

  JOHN LASSETER. Cofounder and creative force at Pixar.

  DAN’L LEWIN. Marketing exec with Jobs at Apple and then NeXT.

  MIKE MARKKULA. First big Apple investor and chairman, a father figure to Jobs.

  REGIS MCKENNA. Publicity whiz who guided Jobs early on and remained a trusted advisor.

  MIKE MURRAY. Early Macintosh marketing director.

  PAUL OTELLINI. CEO of Intel who helped switch the Macintosh to Intel chips but did not get the iPhone business.

  LAURENE POWELL. Savvy and good-humored Penn graduate, went to Goldman Sachs and then Stanford Business School, married Steve Jobs in 1991.

  GEORGE RILEY. Jobs’s Memphis-born friend and lawyer.

  ARTHUR ROCK. Legendary tech investor, early Apple board member, Jobs’s father figure.

  JONATHAN “RUBY” RUBINSTEIN. Worked with Jobs at NeXT, became chief hardware engineer at Apple in 1997.

  MIKE SCOTT. Brought in by Markkula to be Apple’s president in 1977 to try to manage Jobs.

  JOHN SCULLEY. Pepsi executive recruited by Jobs in 1983 to be Apple’s CEO, clashed with and ousted Jobs in 1985.

  JOANNE SCHIEBLE JANDALI SIMPSON. Wisconsin-born biological mother of Steve Jobs, whom she put up for adoption, and Mona Simpson, whom she raised.

  MONA SIMPSON. Biological full sister of Jobs; they discovered their relationship in 1986 and became close. She wrote novels loosely based on her mother Joanne (Anywhere but Here), Jobs and his daughter Lisa (A Regular Guy), and her father Abdulfattah Jandali (The Lost Father).

  ALVY RAY SMITH. A cofounder of Pixar who clashed with Jobs.

  BURRELL SMITH. Brilliant, troubled programmer on the original Mac team, afflicted with schizophrenia in the 1990s.

  AVADIS “AVIE” TEVANIAN. Worked with Jobs and Rubinstein at NeXT, became chief software engineer at Apple in 1997.

  JAMES VINCENT. A music-loving Brit, the younger partner with Lee Clow and Duncan Milner at the ad agency Apple hired.

  RON WAYNE. Met Jobs at Atari, became first partner with Jobs and Wozniak at fledgling Apple, but unwisely decided to forgo his equity stake.

  STEPHEN WOZNIAK. The star electronics geek at Homestead High; Jobs figured out how to package and market his amazing circuit boards and became his partner in founding Apple.

  INTRODUCTION

  How This Book Came to Be

  In the early summer of 2004, I got a phone call from Steve Jobs. He had been scattershot friendly to me over the years, with occasional bursts of intensity, especially when he was launching a new product that he wanted on the cover of Time or featured on CNN, places where I’d worked. But now that I was no longer at either of those places, I hadn’t heard from him much. We talked a bit about the Aspen Institute, which I had recently joined, and I invited him to speak at our summer campus in Colorado. He’d be happy to come, he said, but not to be onstage. He wanted instead to take a walk so that we could talk.

  That seemed a bit odd. I didn’t yet know that taking a long walk was his preferred way to have a serious conversation. It turned out that he wanted me to write a biography of him. I had recently published one on Benjamin Franklin and was writing one about Albert Einstein, and my initial reaction was to wonder, half jokingly, whether he saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence. Because I assumed that he was still in the middle of an oscillating career that had many more ups and downs left, I demurred. Not now, I said. Maybe in a decade or two, when you retire.

  I had known him since 1984, when he came to Manhattan to have lunch with Time’s editors and extol his new Macintosh. He was petulant even then, attacking a Time correspondent for having wounded him with a story that was too revealing. But talking to him afterward, I found myself rather captivated, as so many others have been over the years, by his engaging intensity. We stayed in touch, even after he was ousted from Apple. Whe
n he had something to pitch, such as a NeXT computer or Pixar movie, the beam of his charm would suddenly refocus on me, and he would take me to a sushi restaurant in Lower Manhattan to tell me that whatever he was touting was the best thing he had ever produced. I liked him.

  When he was restored to the throne at Apple, we put him on the cover of Time, and soon thereafter he began offering me his ideas for a series we were doing on the most influential people of the century. He had launched his “Think Different” campaign, featuring iconic photos of some of the same people we were considering, and he found the endeavor of assessing historic influence fascinating.

  After I had deflected his suggestion that I write a biography of him, I heard from him every now and then. At one point I emailed to ask if it was true, as my daughter had told me, that the Apple logo was an homage to Alan Turing, the British computer pioneer who broke the German wartime codes and then committed suicide by biting into a cyanide-laced apple. He replied that he wished he had thought of that, but hadn’t. That started an exchange about the early history of Apple, and I found myself gathering string on the subject, just in case I ever decided to do such a book. When my Einstein biography came out, he came to a book event in Palo Alto and pulled me aside to suggest, again, that he would make a good subject.