Becoming Steve Jobs

drank deeply of the insurgent lyrics of musicians like Dylan, the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, the Band, and Janis Joplin—even the radical, more abstract sonic musings of Miles Davis—and delved into the works of people he considered philosopher kings, spiritual thinkers like Suzuki Roshi, Ram Dass, and Paramahansa Yogananda. The messages of the time were clear: question everything, especially authority; experiment; hit the road; be fearless; and work to create a better world. (Location 652)

Gates was right. Accepting the fact that software was worth paying for led to the emergence of a dynamic new industry. One could argue that Gates’s greatest contribution to the world was not Microsoft, or the MS-DOS or Windows operating systems, or the Office productivity applications that hundreds of millions of people use. It was his role as the first champion of the concept that software itself had value. The mind that could envision all that was a mind suited for the organizational matrixes of the corporate world. In those early days, Microsoft never lacked for enlightened leadership, unlike Apple. (Location 1344)

effective when he returned to Apple in 1997. These are the years where his negotiating style gained new subtlety—without losing its ballsy brashness. This is when he first started understanding the meaning of teamwork as something that’s far more complicated than simply rallying small groups—without losing his capacity to lead and inspire. And this is where he started to develop patience—without losing any of his memorable, and motivating, edge. (Location 2899)

In retrospect, the fact that Toy Story was the beginning of Steve’s professional resurrection seems preposterously appropriate. Its plot established the Pixar formula: a likable character is the cause of his own downfall, often as a result of hubris; but he (or she, once Pixar finally made Brave) overcomes weakness through kindness, bravery, quick wits, invention, or some combination thereof, and thereby earns a redemption that makes him—or her—an even better and more complete toy (or bug, car, fish, princess, monster, robot, mouse, or superhero!). The hero’s downfall, incidentally, often involves some kind of exile, as in Toy Story, where Woody “accidentally” sends Buzz careening into Sid’s backyard, and then must join him to engineer a hair-raising escape from that evil child. The parallels to Steve’s own exile from Apple are obvious. (Location 3138)

“It was amazing,” remembers Gates. “NeXT the hardware company disappears. NeXT the software company is going absolutely nowhere. But then the Apple board of directors hands the keys over to Steve, even as they’re all thinking, ‘It’s too bad all the normal ways of saving a company didn’t work. Holy smokes, what are we doing here? This is our only chance, but whoa! Here we go!’ ” (Location 3664)

“Steve didn’t believe in reviews,” remembers Jon Rubinstein. “He disliked all that formality. His feeling was, ‘I give you feedback all the time, so what do you need a review for?’ At one point I hired an executive coach so I could do three-sixty reviews with my own team. He was a really good guy, and I tried to get Steve to talk to him, but he wouldn’t. In fact, he asked me, ‘What do you need that for? That’s a waste of time!” (Location 3871)

Steve’s team sincerely believed that a world defined by Microsoft’s “consumer-electronics-plus” vision would be as ugly as that godforsaken name. (Location 4294)

It is so hard to remember, given Apple’s string of hits, the resulting ubiquity of its later products, and the dominant role it eventually assumed in our culture, that this rise was entirely unexpected, and a surprise even to the people who engineered it. One little thing led to another. One success, one particular challenge, could spur thoughts about another product, or a different iteration of an existing product, or a whole new channel of revenue. As Steve liked to say, “You can only connect the dots of how things really happened in hindsight. (Location 4972)

Having five different projects sprout up around similar technological possibilities wasn’t unusual at Apple. Steve didn’t issue a “Let there be the iPad” command one day, and wake up the next to find the whole enterprise devoting itself to his single wish. Instead, the place was always bubbling with possibilities. His most important job was to sort through them and imagine how they could point the way to something entirely new. (Location 5121)

“So many of the people who want to be like Steve have the asshole side down. What they’re missing is the genius part. (Location 6424)