change at Microsoft as long as Ballmer is running it.
I hate it when people call themselves “entrepreneurs” when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business. That’s how you really make a contribution and add to the legacy of those who went before. You build a company that will still stand for something a generation or two from now. That’s what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett and Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That’s what I want Apple to be.
I don’t think I run roughshod over people, but if something sucks, I tell people to their face. It’s my job to be honest. I know what I’m talking about, and I usually turn out to be right. That’s the culture I tried to create. We are brutally honest with each other, and anyone can tell me they think I am full of shit and I can tell them the same. And we’ve had some rip-roaring arguments, where we are yelling at each other, and it’s some of the best times I’ve ever had. I feel totally comfortable saying “Ron, that store looks like shit” in front of everyone else. Or I might say “God, we really fucked up the engineering on this” in front of the person that’s responsible. That’s the ante for being in the room: You’ve got to be able to be super honest. Maybe there’s a better way, a gentlemen’s club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code-words, but I don’t know that way, because I am middle class from California.
I was hard on people sometimes, probably harder than I needed to be. I remember the time when Reed was six years old, coming home, and I had just fired somebody that day, and I imagined what it was like for that person to tell his family and his young son that he had lost his job. It was hard. But somebody’s got to do it. I figured that it was always my job to make sure that the team was excellent, and if I didn’t do it, nobody was going to do it.
You always have to keep pushing to innovate. Dylan could have sung protest songs forever and probably made a lot of money, but he didn’t. He had to move on, and when he did, by going electric in 1965, he alienated a lot of people. His 1966 Europe tour was his greatest. He would come on and do a set of acoustic guitar, and the audiences loved him. Then he brought out what became The Band, and they would all do an electric set, and the audience sometimes booed. There was one point where he was about to sing “Like a Rolling Stone” and someone from the audience yells “Judas!” And Dylan then says, “Play it fucking loud!” And they did. The Beatles were the same way. They kept evolving, moving, refining their art. That’s what I’ve always tried to do—keep moving. Otherwise, as Dylan says, if you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying.
What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s been done by others before us. I didn’t invent the language or mathematics I use. I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow. It’s about trying to express something in the only way that most of us know how—because we can’t write Bob Dylan songs or Tom Stoppard plays. We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That’s what has driven me.
One sunny afternoon, when he wasn’t feeling well, Jobs sat in the garden behind his house and reflected on death. He talked about his experiences in India almost four decades earlier, his study of Buddhism, and his views on reincarnation and spiritual transcendence. “I’m about fifty-fifty on believing in God,” he said. “For most of my life, I’ve felt that there must be more to our existence than meets the eye.”
He admitted that, as he faced death, he might be overestimating the odds out of a desire to believe in an afterlife. “I like to think that something survives after you die,” he said. “It’s strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures.”
He fell silent for a very long time. “But on the other hand, perhaps it’s like an on-off switch,” he said. “
Then he paused again and smiled slightly. “Maybe that’s why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m deeply grateful to John and Ann Doerr, Laurene Powell, Mona Simpson, and Ken Auletta, all of whom helped get this project launched and provided invaluable support along the way. Alice Mayhew, who has been my editor at Simon & Schuster for thirty years, and Jonathan Karp, the publisher, both were extraordinarily diligent and attentive in shepherding this book, as was Amanda Urban, my agent. Crary Pullen was dogged in tracking down photos, and my assistant, Pat Zindulka, calmly facilitated things. I also want to thank my father, Irwin, and my daughter, Betsy, for reading the book and offering advice. And as always, I am most deeply indebted to my wife, Cathy, for her editing, suggestions, wise counsel, and so very much more.
SOURCES
Interviews (conducted 2009–2011)
Al Alcorn, Roger Ames, Fred Anderson, Bill Atkinson, Joan Baez, Marjorie Powell Barden, Jeff Bewkes, Bono, Ann Bowers, Stewart Brand, Chrisann Brennan, Larry Brilliant, John Seeley Brown, Tim Brown, Nolan Bushnell, Greg Calhoun, Bill Campbell, Berry Cash, Ed Catmull, Ray Cave, Lee Clow, Debi Coleman, Tim Cook, Katie Cotton, Eddy Cue, Andrea Cunningham, John Doerr, Millard Drexler, Jennifer Egan, Al Eisenstat, Michael Eisner, Larry Ellison, Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Gerard Errera, Tony Fadell, Jean-Louis Gassee, Bill Gates, Adele Goldberg, Craig Good, Austan Goolsbee, Al Gore, Andy Grove, Bill Hambrecht, Michael Hawley, Andy Hertzfeld, Joanna Hoffman, Elizabeth Holmes, Bruce Horn, John Huey, Jimmy Iovine, Jony Ive, Oren Jacob, Erin Jobs, Reed Jobs, Steve Jobs, Ron Johnson, Mitch Kapor, Susan Kare (email), Jeffrey Katzenberg, Pam Kerwin, Kristina Kiehl, Joel Klein, Daniel Kottke, Andy Lack, John Lasseter, Art Levinson, Steven Levy, Dan’l Lewin, Maya Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Markkula, John Markoff, Wynton Marsalis, Regis McKenna, Mike Merin, Bob Metcalfe, Doug Morris, Walt Mossberg, Rupert Murdoch, Mike Murray, Nicholas Negroponte, Dean Ornish, Paul Otellini, Norman Pearlstine, Laurene Powell, Josh Quittner, Tina Redse, George Riley, Brian Roberts, Arthur Rock, Jeff Rosen, Alain Rossmann, Jon Rubinstein, Phil Schiller, Eric Schmidt, Barry Schuler, Mike Scott, John Sculley, Andy Serwer, Mona Simpson, Mike Slade, Alvy Ray Smith, Gina Smith, Kathryn Smith, Rick Stengel, Larry Tesler, Avie Tevanian, Guy “Bud” Tribble, Don Valentine, Paul Vidich, James Vincent, Alice Waters, Ron Wayne, Wendell Weeks, Ed Woolard, Stephen Wozniak, Del Yocam, Jerry York.
Bibliography
Amelio, Gil.
Berlin, Leslie.
Butcher, Lee.
