Steve Jobs: The Confluence of Artistry and Technology
Story of a brutally honest artist who deeply cared about his creations.
Steve had humble beginnings as young chap. His parents did jobs like bookkeeper and repo-man and were just able to make the ends meet. He used to get bored at school lectures but loved to see his father carving beautiful cars out of junk as hobby. He would stay on frequent fasts, fruitarian diets for weeks, would go anywhere barefooted due to his inclination towards Zen spiritualism yet could be as bratty as tripping acid and LSD occasionally. Once he travelled all the way from US to India in search of a spiritual guru for 7 months and voluntarily stayed in poverty throughout his travel. He dropped out of college and used to attend calligraphy classes. The boy knew how to get his work done even as a young chap as he once called the owner of HP to get a spare part and ended up getting a summer internship in HP.
He was born to an unwed couple or as he called them his biological parents— Joanne Schieble and a young teaching assistant Abdulfattah John Jandali from Syrian origins. The couple could not get along because Joanne’s father was against their marriage. So much so that he had to be put up for adoption by his mother. Her mother placed a condition though, that adopting parents should be at least college graduates. But good stories become great because there is a twist and this one had one right in beginning.
He was adopted by a lawyer couple which satisfied Joanne’s condition, but they later backed out because they wanted a girl and then he got adopted by a high school dropout Paul jobs and his wife Clara with a settlement with Joanne only after they pledged that they would save funds for the child’s college education. Paul and Clara jobs named their son as Steve.
In his childhood days, Steve was fascinated by Paul’s craftsmanship. Paul loved to restore old cars as a hobby and he also used to sell them later. Paul and Clara always made him feel as he was special rather than adopted. Steve felt school lectures to be uninteresting not because he was weak but because he was indeed special. Once his parents were called and told that he seems uninterested at lectures to which Paul told his teachers “If you can’t keep him interested it’s your fault”. Then one of his teachers started bribing him to the homework and she used to give him questions from 2 grades above he was in and he would do that with ease. Later, the school administration told his parents to make him skip 2 grades, but his parents settled with skipping 1 grade.
In college, Steve met another Steve. Steve Wozniak who famous for his wizardry in the class. He was a geeky prankster. He created a device that emitted TV signals and made the screen fuzzy. He would use it in a place where lot of people were watching TV together. People would think there is signal issue and would try to fix the antenna once someone tries to adjust it, he would clear the fuzziness. Just as the person moves away from the antenna, he would again make the screen fuzzy, and this go on and on till one person stands permanently with the antenna in one position.
Known as Woz, Wozniak was a super talented at electronics. He built a device which connected a keyboard and TV. Everything you type on the keyboard gets visible on the TV screen. Not a big deal now but back then it was not less than a miracle to Jobs who saw it as a huge opportunity to build something of their own. He drove Woz and the device to Homebrew computer club where all technology enthusiasts came to watch new devices created by hobbyists. They displayed their device at a club and Steve Jobs with his great articulation got a hardware shop owner to order 50 such devices in $500 each paid at delivery. They had to buy parts worth $15000. They took a loan of $5000 from a friend’s father, further credit was arranged by jobs articulation and that’s how Apple was born, and that computer became Apple I.
After their first successful delivery they developed Apple II which was a sleek machine and a super successful one as well which served as the cash cow for apple for a very long time. But Steve jobs didn’t liked Apple II. Why? Because it had more ports to connect multiple devices for the hobbyists. He always wanted end-to-end control of his product and even on its experience and those ports would never have allowed that kind of control.
By this time, his on and off girlfriend Chrisann shifted with him in his 4-bedroom apartment. Steve was sharing this apartment with a friend named Dan Kottke. It was this time she got pregnant with Steve’s child. Interestingly Steve was 23 years old at the when Chrisann gave birth to a girl child. This was the same age when his biological father Jandali had him. His daughter was named Lisa and he never shared a very cordial relationship with her. Another commonalty between his biological parents and him was — Steve never married Chrisann.
Apple went public and Steve jobs became a rich man but his quest for end-to-end control just became bigger. He applied a real growth hack when he convinced XEROX leadership to let him visit their R&D facility in return of an opportunity of 1-million-dollar investment bargain into Apple. Yes, it was a bargain!!! Apple engineers got to know about bitmapping which was the basis of GUI. The world was only aware of DOS black screen till then. This helped Apple create their own operating system which had GUI and which we know as Mac operating system today.
Steve could be an absolute charmer and verbally seducing or he can be as ruthless as calling a full-blown effort of his team as complete shit. He would leave no stone unturned to maintain end-to-end control over the user experience and not let his device become a toy for the hobbyist. So much so that even the screws for the system that had Macintosh were designed in a way that it would not open with a standard screwdriver. He would hackle over curves or lines on computer design for days until the product feels perfect to him. He could go to any limit to make his point on design. Once he took a colleague on drive to show that rounded rectangles are everywhere, and the device should also be in that shape. It was in Steve’s nature to look the world in binary as either something is the world’s most beautiful thing or complete shit.
He charmed/articulated Jhon Sculley Pepsi CEO to join Apple and take it to next level. He soon realized that Sculley was not a product person but Sculley was always under the illusion that he and Steve were very similar people. Some internal coup politics, some of Jobs bratty behavior and some management decisions like removing Jobs from Macintosh division led to a showdown between him and Sculley ending up in Steve being shown the door from the company he created.
After being ousted from Apple, Jobs created another company called NeXT which showed a lot of promise courtesy, Steve’s amazing marketing skills, but it didn’t had much to showcase on the ground. Interestingly, Steve paid a hefty amount of $100,000 for getting the logo designed for NeXT.
By now everyone was aware of his love for the intersection of creativity and technology which made one of his friend’s meet the Pixar owners. Earlier, he wanted Apple to buy it but was denied by the management. Later he went on to invest his own money and got a 70% stake. Pixar made some path-breaking, animated movies like Toy story trilogy, Cars etc. in collaboration with Disney. When Toy story 1 released Disney was having a great say in the partnership and Jobs never liked playing secondary fiddle to anyone. So, he took Pixar public and got the funds to make a good bargain with Disney now. Later, when Disney realized that they didn’t great creative people like Pixar had. They were left with no choice to buy Pixar at a very heavy price making Jobs the biggest shareholder of Disney.
Jobs wanted to go back to Apple, but he wanted that Apple should call him back. Apple was going through pretty bad times and were only 90 days away from getting bankrupt. He willed himself into Apple by making apple buy NeXT. He became advisor to the board and worked for 2 years on $1 as salary per year. He dropped around 70% of the products Apple was producing and brought it down to just 3–4 products. He also changed the narrative of apple by “Think different” campaign. He managed to get the company out of troubled waters but that was just the beginning. It’s a notion that Steve saw himself as a rebel and he thought the rules doesn’t apply to him. He used to park his car in handicapped parking or sometimes parked it on the boundary lines which sucked space for 2 cars. Just for fun some Apple employees pasted boards at the same place which said “Park different”.
Apple came up with iMac. The idea for the monitor design came up when Steve was gazing at a sunflower in his garden with his design alter ego Jony Ive. They improved the design in the next version of iMac by adding a translucent Bondi blue body to the monitor. They also added a handle to the monitor which was so nicely melted in the body that it became quite pleasing to the eye. It was a really stylish monitor.
In 2003, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he was told to get his affairs right which was a subtle way of saying you don’t have much time left to live. He avoided the surgery to remove the cancer for 9 months treating it with his own fruitarian and herbal diet. Finally, he agreed to have the surgery 9 months later. He got healthy but seeing death with such close proximity made him more aggressive towards work.
Next, they came up with the iPod with the tag line “1000 songs in your pocket”. Jobs always insisted to have simplicity in designs, and he would personally play with the wax models to get the feel of the device. He would give task to the team of coming up with an interface where the user must be able to find whatever he wants on the iPod with maximum of 3 clicks which led them to invent the beautiful trackwheel to scroll through the list of songs.
They came up with iTunes store where you could buy any song for just 99cents. This helped the music industry get regain some of its market lost to piracy. Steve was very articulate and great at negotiations which helped him get many music labels on iTunes store. However, some labels wanted royalties from the iPod sales to get on iTunes, others some wanted to sell the complete album not fragmented songs. He never agreed to it but slowly and steadily most of the music was available on iTunes. This in turn propelled the sales of iPod even more. He became one of the most powerful persons in the music industry at that point.
Then at an iconic product launch Steve came up with 3 products. An iPod, a mobile phone and an internet communication device. Steve then repeated the same and said this is all bundled in one device known as the iPhone. iPhone also went through a lot of design iterations they finally came up with one which had no keys. They also made the screen to extend from end to end and even patented the design that’s why only Apple phones has bazel-less screens. It was the first mobile to have gorilla glass as well.
He was losing weight and was not in healthy state when his cancer resurfaced in 2008. This time he got a lever transplant, but the situation was such that his family was called in the hospital as if he will not make it any further. He again denied death to see his son go through graduation which was his longtime wish and kind of a deal with god to stay alive to see this day.
He came back to launch the iPad, but he was so thin that lot of rumors about his unhealthiness surfaced and it became really messy when a rumor of his death spread. He later resigned as Apple CEO.
Before his official departure Apple became the world’s most valuable company but the most fascinating characteristic was that he kept coming back with world class product throughout his life against all odds. He left behind a legacy on which Apple is still thriving, taking full responsibility of end-to-end user experience.
