Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different: A Biography

by Karen Blumenthal

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creep into the valley. Jobs, always testing boundaries, began to experiment. He grew his hair long. He began smoking marijuana. His father was angry and upset to discover the drugs in his son’s car and tried to get his son to promise he wouldn’t do it again. The younger Jobs refused. “That was the only real fight I ever got in with my dad,” he said. At the same time, his interests began to broaden beyond science, math, and electronics. “I discovered Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, and all that classic stuff. I read Moby-Dick and went back as a junior, taking creative-writing classes,” he said. Homestead High relaxed its dress code and allowed blue jeans. With a friend, Jobs formed the Buck Fry club, an inappropriate

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and Wozniak would soon be too busy to think about the setback. Trying to drum up sales for the one hundred circuit boards he had ordered, Jobs strolled barefoot into a new computer store called the Byte Shop

his business, that it would be just as meaningful as a monastery. And after some hesitation, Jobs agreed. While Jobs was weighing his

turn it on, and actually write programs for it right away. As he finished up his design, he and Jobs tangled over one detail: Woz wanted

with forgettable names like IMSAI,

Jobs and Wozniak began to call the Apple II, they would need a substantial amount of money—more than $100,000. Through Jobs’s former boss Al Alcorn, Jobs got an audience with Atari’s president. But Jobs’s youth and inexperience showed. While trying to charm the executive and win his support,

executive showed up in a suit and a cowboy hat and said he was interested in buying the company. Jobs wanted a nice payday, and he told the Commodore folks that he believed the company was worth at least $100,000 (about $400,000 today). Further, he and Wozniak should both be hired at annual salaries of $36,000, far more

the courting led to new tension between Jobs and his longtime partner. The Wozniak family had been skeptical of Jobs and his true intentions for some time. They were put off by his sloppy appearance and feared that he might be taking advantage of their son, who was brilliant with technology but socially immature. In the midst of Commodore’s interest, the discussion about who deserved what credit—and money—turned ugly. Jerry Wozniak, Woz’s dad, reduced Jobs to tears one day, telling him, “You haven’t produced

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then Wozniak could have the whole thing. But his old friend and collaborator knew better. Wozniak could design a circuit

They also still needed funding. Jobs went to the Atari founder, Nolan Bushnell, who had sold the game maker to Warner Communications that year, clearing $14 million. Bushnell didn’t want to invest, but he put Jobs in touch with a venture capitalist, an investor who put money in young companies in exchange for ownership.

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wasn’t thinking big enough, Mike Markkula definitely was. A former marketing manager for Intel, Markkula had never run a company himself. But the one-time high school gymnast was a true engineer who appreciated the potential of desktop computers as much as anybody. He realized right away that the Apple II could be much more than a toy for hobbyists or game players. It could be a truly useful tool, especially for regular folks who wanted to keep track of recipes or a bank account. “This is the start of an industry,” he told Jobs and Wozniak, predicting the company would make the Fortune 500, the prestigious list of America’s biggest companies, in a matter of years. “It happens once a decade.” To make it happen, he needed the right team—and that included Steve Wozniak, as well as Steve Jobs. Wozniak, however, was plenty happy working for Hewlett-Packard, and his young wife liked the security of the regular paycheck. Plus, he had decided long before that he never wanted to tell people what to do. He would rather design computers and write software. “I’m not a management person,” he said. He mulled over the choice for a few days and told Markkula that he would stay where he was. Steve Jobs didn’t like to take no for an answer, and he didn’t plan to start now. He went on a one-man crusade to change his friend’s mind. Jobs lobbied Wozniak’s friends to call him. He called Woz’s brother, and even went to Wozniak’s parents to tearfully beg them for help. Within a couple of days, Wo...

Because no one else was available to talk with people who dropped by to learn more, Chris Espinosa came to the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school to demonstrate the computer to whoever wanted to see it. A brochure for the Apple II features one of Apple’s first slogans: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” This belief can still be seen in Apple’s products, designs, and advertising campaigns today. Sales continued to grow, especially as people outside of Apple began to write and sell games and other programs on cassette tapes that allowed the computer to be more useful. Markkula had written a program to balance a bank account and he urged Wozniak to find a way to hook up a small disk drive that would allow the program to load

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Though Jobs’s slice of Apple was worth millions of dollars by then, he only occasionally provided any financial help and continued to deny that he was the father. At one point, he even signed a court document saying he wasn’t physically able to have children. Meanwhile, Brennan worked at odd jobs and lived on county welfare payments. In 1979, when DNA tests were new, Jobs surprised Brennan by agreeing to settle the matter once and for all. The paternity test concluded there was a 94.41 percent chance that he was the father. Still, he insisted to friends, people at Apple, and even reporters that, statistically, someone else could be the father. Finally, the county of San Mateo sued Jobs and he was ordered to pay $385 a month in child support and to repay the county $5,856 for welfare payments it had made. “I could not see myself as a father then, so I didn’t face up to it,” he said. He later regretted his behavior, saying, “I wish I had handled it differently.” Over time, he bought Chrisann a house, paid for Lisa’s schools, and supported her financially. But it would be a long time before he would actually be anything like a father to Lisa. In a strange twist of fate, Jobs was twenty-three when Lisa was born, the same age as his own biological parents when

What was also clear to Jobs was that Apple could make it

but it had not developed them to the point where they could

wonderful fonts. Until then, computers had only one typeface, a boxy, jagged version that was easy to display on inexpensive monitors. Jobs pushed for the Macintosh to adopt the ability to let users choose from a menu of typefaces in different sizes, in bold and italic, all proportionately spaced. To make the typefaces even more special, he insisted that they be named after world-class cities—New York, London, Geneva, and Chicago. The decision drew on his experience at Reed College. There, because he wasn’t taking required classes, he had dropped into a class on calligraphy and the elements of beautiful typestyles. At the time, the studies seemed completely random. But now, in the early 1980s, they were useful again. Thanks in large part to that class at Reed, the Mac would be the first personal computer to give users the chance to write attractive business letters or make signs or flyers. It was an odd and unexpected chain of events: Jobs’s decision to quit college and drop in on a calligraphy class led to a new use for the personal computer that would be copied by others. He couldn’t have envisioned all that when he was just seventeen. That revelation, that experience, taught him a valuable lesson, he told the Stanford graduates. Because we can’t see what’s ahead, “you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” In the same way, the company reorganization and the ejection from the Lisa project—similar connecting dots—led Jobs to the Macintosh. This,...

stacked the monitor on top of the computer and told Hertzfeld, “Come with me. I’m going to take you to your new desk.” The new desk turned out to be Raskin’s old one. Over the next three years, the small group in the project witnessed the best and worst of Jobs—his charm and his cutting criticisms, his exuberance and arrogance, and his vision, his ability to look at something very ordinary and intuitively see the potential for it to become something truly extraordinary. He didn’t want a good product, or even a great one. The Macintosh, he would say over and over, had to be “insanely great.” While driven to do better and better work, as defined by Jobs, the members of the team tried to adjust to their boss’s erratic ways. Jobs would take a look at someone’s work and declare it a pile of garbage, often using stronger language. Or he might say, “‘This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,’” Hertzfeld said. “The scary thing was that he’d say it about the same thing.” Bud Tribble, another member of the team, defined a unique Jobs trait that the Mac team—or any other team that Jobs worked with—could never figure out how to turn off. Tribble dubbed it Jobs’s “reality distortion field,” a term he took from the Star Trek television series. “In his presence, reality is malleable,” he explained. “He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he’s not around.” At various points, Jobs’s reality distortion field would lead him to act as if the rules of life didn’t ap...

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1980s, I wrote about technology and the new personal computer business for the Dallas Morning News. I also wrote and edited stories about Apple competitors Compaq and Dell for the Wall Street Journal. I never had the chance to see Steve Jobs in action, but certainly followed his career and Apple’s ups and downs over nearly three decades. In early 2011, I had the opportunity to work on a project with Harvard Business School Professor Cynthia Montgomery that included a detailed look at Steve Jobs’s management strategy over his career. It was an eye-opening experience, and when this book came along, Professor Montgomery generously granted me permission to use her research notes, which became my launching point. I am grateful to Terry Anzur and Carlton Ho for filling me in on the Homestead High class of 1972, to Rob Cook, a Pixar retiree, and Dave Culyba of Carnegie Mellon for explaining the math of computer animation, and to WSJ colleagues Walt Mossberg, Jim Carlton, and Steve Yoder for taking the time to share their

despite deep and endless budget cuts. “Real artists ship,” Steve Jobs said, and I was incredibly fortunate to work with a number of real artists. The insightful and amazing Jean Feiwel conceived this project and trusted me with it, and she and Lauren Burniac were the best of editors, behind me from beginning to end. Jane Liddle backed me up with the world’s most efficient copyedit; Katie Cline, Rich Deas, and Ashley Halsey brought their creativity to the design, Anna Roberto, Holly West, and Debbie Cobb pulled the photos together, and Nicole Moulaison and Dave Barrett brought it all together into a real book. Special thanks go to my agent, Ken Wright, who is the best partner one could ask for in this business. Diana Fenves and the aptly named Ellen McIntosh jumped in to help with research and Ellen compiled a draft of the glossary. Becky Bull made a special trip to the Stanford University archives to read the original Apple prospectus. Finally, I especially appreciate my family, Scott, Abby, and Jenny, who read drafts, listened, and provided incredible support even when I disappeared for days on

Because Steve Jobs burst into the public limelight in his early twenties, at the beginning of the computer revolution, and stayed there through his whole life, he has been the subject of an enormous number of books and newspaper and magazine stories. At least ten books chronicle some part of the Apple company story and a handful profile him alone. In addition, Jobs is a player in books written about Pixar and Atari, and in memoirs by John Sculley and Steve Wozniak, among others. With his good looks, silver tongue, and genuine passion, he was the ultimate cover boy, appearing eight times on the cover of Time magazine and at least a dozen times on the cover of Fortune. He also appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, Inc., Wired, Newswseek, and what is now called Bloomberg Businessweek. In writing this book, I consulted most of the books available on Apple, Jobs, and his related companies and former colleagues; a large number of cover stories; and many, many other news and feature articles. In addition, I interviewed some former classmates to better understand his school years,

few sources are worth an extra mention: In the early 1980s, journalist Michael Moritz had access to Jobs, Jobs’s family, and friends in reporting a book on Apple’s founding—until Moritz contributed some reporting to Time magazine. After the story was juiced up by a New York editor and became “The Updated Book of Jobs,” Jobs cut Moritz off, but the story and his book, The Little Kingdom, are rich with detailed reporting about Jobs’s early life. Virtually every book or article about Jobs’s early years builds on Moritz’s original reporting. A lengthy interview with Playboy and a Smithsonian oral history, both available online, fill in many of the remaining pieces of what we know about Jobs’s childhood, teen, and college years. In 2009, Walter Isaacson, a noted biographer and former editor of Time, began an authorized biography of Jobs. The two met some forty times over two years, and Isaacson also interviewed dozens of Jobs’s friends, family members, and coworkers, giving him extraordinary insight into his subject. His five-hundred-plus-page biography, Steve Jobs, is worth reading for ambitious readers who want the most detailed account of this unusual and remarkable life. Beyond the books, a few journalists covered Jobs for many years. Brent Schlender, a former Wall Street Journal colleague

ground in their coverage, as did several Wall Street Journal writers, including columnist Walt Mossberg, and reporters Jim Carlton, Pui-Wing Tam, and Nick Wingfield, and New York Times writers Steve Lohr and John Markoff. For those who want a better insight into the early days, an early speech and a lot of early Apple materials are available through the Computer History Museum Web site. And if you want to see how a master made presentations, do what many companies recommend: Watch his product launches

Chrisann. “Jobs at 17: Nerd, Poet, Romantic.” Rolling Stone, Oct. 27, 2011: 42. Butcher, Lee. Accidental Millionaire: The Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs at Apple Computer. New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1988. Carlton, Jim. Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders. New York: HarperBusiness, 1998. Cocks, Jay. “The Updated Book of Jobs.” Time, Jan. 3, 1983. Cohen, Scott. ZAP! The Rise and Fall of Atari. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1984. Cringely, Robert X., presenter. Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview. Film directed by Paul Sen, produced by John Gau and Paul Sen, 2011. Deutschman, Alan. The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. New York: Broadway Books, 2000. Elkind, Peter. “The Trouble with Steve Jobs.” Fortune, March 5, 2008.

Making of the Personal Computer, 2nd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. Goodell, Jeff. “The Steve Jobs Nobody Knew.” Rolling Stone, Oct. 27, 2011: 36–45. Hertzfeld, Andy. Revolution in the Valley. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly Media, Inc., 2005. Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Jobs, Steve. Excerpt of oral history interview with Daniel Morrow. Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories, April 20, 1995, accessed online. Jobs, Steve. Stanford commencement speech, June 12, 2005. Accessed at http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html. Kahney, Leander. Inside

Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. _____. The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. Linzmayer, Owen W. Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company. San Francisco: No Starch Press, 2008. Lohr, Steve. “Creating Jobs.” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 12, 1997. Markoff, John. What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped

Studios. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2005. Price, David A. The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. New York: Vintage Books, 2009. Rose, Frank. West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer. New York: Viking, 1989. Rosenbaum, Ron. “Steve Jobs and Me.” Slate.com, Oct. 7, 2011. Schlender, Brent. “How Big Can Apple Get?” Fortune, Feb. 21, 2005. _____. “Something’s Rotten in Cupertino.” Fortune, March 3, 1997. _____. “The Three Faces of Steve.” Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998. Sculley, John, with John A. Byrne. Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple … A Journey of Adventure, Ideas and the Future. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1987. Sheff, David. “Playboy Interview: Steven Jobs.” Playboy magazine, Feb. 1,

Randall E. Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing. New York: Atheneum, 1993. Wozniak, Steve, with Gina Smith. iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. Young, Jeffrey S. Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward. Kindle edition, 1988. Web Resources 1983 annual meeting, via YouTube.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSiQA6KKyJo 1983 Bill Gates on the Macintosh Software Dating Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVtxEA7AEHg&feature=fvwrel Computer History Museum, computerhistory.org Jobs memorial service at Apple: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/25/apple-s-steve-jobs-memorial-service-watch-video-of-5-moving-moments.html

moments.html Jobs patents, interactive chart, New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/steve-jobs-patents.html LifeSavers ad from Pixar, via YouTube.com: 1990, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe6FfROGwqk Listerine ads from Pixar, via YouTube.com: 1991, http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=mFjvu3rFysA; 1992, http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1

Notes Introduction Commencement speech, Stanford University, June 12, 2005, accessed at http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html. Chapter 1: Seeds Jobs, Commencement speech; Isaacson, Steve Jobs, pp. 3–20; Moritz, The Little

p. 166; Cocks, “The Updated Book of Jobs.” Chapter 2: Woz Moritz, The Little Kingdom, pp. 54–56; U.S. Census data; Morrow, Smithsonian; Sheff, Playboy; Hewlett-Packard interactive time line, www.hp.com; Isaacson, Steve Jobs, pp. 14–19, 31; Frieberger and Swaine, Fire in the Valley, pp. 11–13. Don Hoeffler, a reporter for the trade publication Electronic News, is credited with first using the term “Silicon Valley” in 1971. Young, Steve Jobs, Kindle location 1285–1307; “The Hippies,” Time, July 7, 1967; interviews with Terry Anzur and Carlton Ho; Cringely, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview; Bill Fernandez, on The Last Thing, PBS, aired Nov. 2011; Wozniak, iWoz, pp. 54–55, 60–71,

years and was then taking a year off when they met. If that was the case, Jobs would have been fifteen years old and a junior, because the two were four years apart in school. Chapter 3: Phreaks Wozniak, iWoz, pp. 88–118; Moritz, The Little Kingdom, pp. 66–79; Isaacson, Steve Jobs, pp. 18–19; Sheff, Playboy; Carlton Ho interview; the principal’s last name was Bryld, if you want to know. “The Vietnam Lotteries,” U.S. Selective Service System History and Records, www.sss.gov/lotter1.htm; Ron Rosenbaum, “Steve Jobs and Me,” Slate.com, Oct. 7, 2011; Markoff, What the Dormouse Said, p. xvii; Chrisann Brennan, “Jobs at 17: Nerd, Poet, Romantic,” Rolling Stone, Oct. 27, 2011; Jeff Goodell,

The Little Kingdom, pp. 86–101; Isaacson, Steve Jobs, pp. 33–55; e-mail from Gay Walker, Special Collections Librarian, Reed College, Oct. 31, 2011; Young, Steve Jobs, Kindle location 1647–1900; Markoff, What the Dormouse Said, pp. xviii-xvix; Stanford Commencement speech. In his 2005 speech, Jobs says that he dropped out after six months and stayed another eighteen months. However, news articles and books published in the 1980s report that he lasted one semester at Reed and then hung around another year after dropping out. Jay Cocks, “Updated Book of Jobs,” Time, Jan. 3, 1983; Sheff, Playboy; Young, Steve Jobs, Kindle location 1947–1953. A College Reading List Moritz, The Little Kingdom, pp. 89–92. Chapter 5: Searching Young, Steve Jobs, Kindle location 1947–2200; Moritz, The Little Kingdom,

but that seems unlikely. He started at Atari around February 1974 and was in India by summer. Accounts from the 1980s say that he returned in the fall, indicating a trip of a few months. Sheff, Playboy; Cohen, Zap, pp. 36, 54–57; Wozniak, iWoz, pp. 144–148. Chapter 6: Apple Wozniak, iWoz, pp. 155–177; Freiberger and Swaine, Fire in the Valley, pp. 51–53; Frederic Golden, “Big Dimwits and Little Geniuses,” Time, Jan. 3, 1983; Wozniak, “Homebrew and How the Apple Came to Be,” www.atariarchives.org; Moritz, The Little Kingdom, pp. 123–142; Isaacson, Steve Jobs, pp. 63–67. Apple vs. Apple Alex Salkever, “John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Steve,” BusinessWeek, Sept. 30, 2004; Richard B. Schmitt, “Sour Apples: Beatles Sue

Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd. Enter Into New Agreement,” Apple Inc. press release, Feb. 5, 2007. Chapter 7: Garage Moritz, The Little Kingdom, pp. 142–179; Wozniak, iWoz, pp. 176–186; Isaacson, Steve Jobs, pp. 67–77; Interface, July 1976, accessed via www.applefritter.com; Wozniak, iWoz, pp. 177–199; Young, Steve Jobs, Kindle location 3535–4046. Not Yet Ripe Apple-1 Operation Manual, accessed from the Computer History Museum, www.computerhistory.org. Chapter 8: Apple II Moritz, The Little

Michael Scott,” Business Insider, May 24, 2011; Isaacson, Steve Jobs, pp. 82–91; Apple II brochure, accessed from the Computer History Museum, www.computerhistory.org; Chris Espinosa, “Ox22,” blog post, March 17, 2011, at http://cdespinosa.posterous.com/0x22; Alex Pang, ed., interview with Chris Espinosa, June 13, 2000, accessed at http://www-sul.stanford.edu/mac/primary/interviews/espinosa/index.html; Ben Rosen, “Memories of Steve,” Oct. 24, 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com; Peter Elkind, “The Trouble with Steve Jobs,” Fortune, March 5, 2008. Computer Talk Wozniak, iWoz, pp. 168–172,

Pang, interview with Dean Hovey, June 22,2000, accessed at http://www.sul.stanford.edu/mac/primary/interviews/hovey/trans.html; Grady Booch, Oral History of Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson, June 8, 2004, Computer History Museum; Young, Steve Jobs, Kindle location 4865–5942; Linzmayer, Apple Confidential, pp. 41–43, 59–61; Wozniak, iWoz, pp. 222–233, 148–49; Prospectus, Apple Computer, Inc., Dec. 16, 1980; Tom Zito, “The Bang Behind the Bucks,” Newsweek Access, Fall 1984. Chapter 10: Pirates Jobs, Stanford commencement speech; Young, Steve Jobs, Kindle location 5647–5653, 6880–6885; Levy, Insanely Great, pp. 158–59; Isaacson, Steve Jobs, p. 112, 131–132, 142–145, 177–79; Hertzfeld, Revolution in the Valley, pp. 19, 24–25, 29–30, 46, 166–67; Linzmayer, Apple Confidential, p. 92, 112; Steven Levy, “The Revolution According to Steve Jobs,” Wired.com, Nov. 29, 2011; Moritz; Little

Teacher Young, Steve Jobs, Kindle location 4652–4657, Sheff, Playboy. Chapter 11: Sculley Sculley, Odyssey, pp. 61, 90, 107–108, 130, 155; Isaacson, Steve Jobs, pp. 162–210; Isaacson says the agency never tried to sell the advertising time; it just told Apple that it had. Levy, Insanely Great, pp. 180–182, 192; Bro Uttal, “Behind the Fall of Steve Jobs,” Fortune, Aug. 5, 1985, pp. 20–24; Rose, West of Eden, pp. 178, 201, 248–253; Sheff, Playboy; Patricia A. Bellow, “Apple Computer Co-Founder Wozniak Will Leave Firm, Citing Disagreements,” Wall