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The Man Behind Apple And Pixar
Ant writes "Steve Jobs is the chief executive of two of the most powerful technology brands in the world: Apple and Pixar. But what motivates him? And how does he choose a new washing machine? An article in the Independent explores this much loved and much hated man." From the article: "Alan Deutschmann, a journalist who researched Jobs's middle years for a biography called The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, believes he displays two personalities in his dealings with people: Good Steve and Bad Steve. The Good side is charming, and can make people believe almost anything; that's the side on public view at the rock-star product launches. He's been said to have a 'reality distortion field' - by a mixture of charm and exaggeration, he can make you believe pretty much anything."
One of the more interesting paragraphs in an article of otherwise rehashed details this:
Jobs is a fiendishly good negotiator, a skill honed in the 1970s, when he charmed every supplier in Silicon Valley into providing parts for the first Apple computers. It's this ability that makes him valuable to Pixar, where Jobs isn't so involved in the production side (that is handled by John Lasseter). Jobs's role was to write the cheques (which nearly bankrupted him, until the company was floated) and barter with film studios. Which he did with accomplishment: Disney gave in to Pixar, and is presently trying to woo it back to a new distribution deal - a deal that Jobs is making Disney give up all sorts of favours for, like providing content in the form of TV shows for his Apple iTunes store. The giant Disney, kowtowing to the tiny Apple? A bizarre reversal.
An interesting speculation, which would explain how Jobs was able to get Disney to be the first to put TV on ITMS - anyone remember how scared Disney was of DVD's for quite some time? Uses Pixar as leverage is diabolically clever. And it's even hinted at by the only other non-music video for sale being Pixar shorts.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Walk around the campus at Microsoft, or across to Cafe Macs in Cupertino, and you come across the same sort of casual arrogance - both sets of employees generally (there are exceptions
In Microsoft's case, it's because they're the most successful computer company in the world, bar none. That they're on pretty much every desktop (or at least 90% or so of them), and that what they do, matters. Microsoft is all to do with preserving and increasing that user-base, and delivering what (mainly business) requires to do so.
In Apple's case, it's more insidious (possibly that's being harsh, perhaps 'subtle') - Apple engineers think they make the best computers. Bar none. They don't think they're the most popular (there's an implied 'yet' in that statement), but they do think they're the best. Apple is all to do with ease-of-use, attention-to-detail, and a good experience. They invest thought.
Some of the Apple attitude comes from having the potential for Steve Jobs to "take an interest" in your project. You *really* want it to measure up, if he does, and Mr. Jobs (to you!) is a perfectionist. This does keep people on their toes, but I wonder how often it *really* happens.
There's more though - the 'ease-of-use' is a mantra to the Apple employees I've met. They really care how their software is perceived, and I think it shows in the product. Sure, there are business decisions that override engineering wishes, but it seems to be less the case at Apple than anywhere else. I think that comes from the top (SJ) as well.
For me, back then, Apple computers sucked big time before OS-X came out. The focus of the company was pointed in a different direction. Now they woo techies, artists, movie-people, graphics designers, and business (with the 'office' suite) alike. For me, now, an OS-X machine with 2 cinema-displays is the best damn unix workstation I've ever used, and I've been using Linux since it came on floppies, Irix (ok, that was a close second), SunOS, Solaris, HPUX, etc...
I personally think SJ has done well - long may he continue, especially as I have some stock in the company I bought a while back when it was a lot lower
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Everyone, including the author of this article, seems to forget the apple store in describing the second coming of Jobs. iPod and iTunes have been a boon for apple, but no one cares to speculate about how much a 'mall presence' had to do with any of it... IMO, the store isn't a footnote here, it's a keystone.
Here's a couple of examples of Bad Steve.
First story. Back in 1983, Steve was a frequent visitor to Apple's Bandley 3 building where the original Mac was under development. After all, he was the de facto project manager, as well as the company CEO. (Incidentally, that was the building with the grand piano in the foyer with guest pianists for the residents as well as weekly massages if they wished, as well as other minor benefits.)
Steve was driving a BMW 3 series at the time and although his office was only a few hundred yards from Bandley 3 he always drove over for progress reports, etc. Being a busy guy, he also had the habit of parking in the nearest empty parking spot to the entrance, which almost inevitably was one of a places reserved for handicapped drivers. One day, somebody became fed up with this and left a notice on his windshield to the effect that the these spots were intended for the physically, rather than the emotionally, handicapped.
Steve wasn't a happy camper. He raged into the building and instructed the Mac team management team to "find out who did this and fire their ass". Of course, they didn't find the guy....
Apparantly Steve didn't learn from this - I've been told there was a similar incident some years later at Mariani 1 building.
Second story. About six months before the release of the Mac, Ernie (forgotten his last name) completed the layout of the system PCB. Steve didn't like it (wasn't aethetically pleasing to him, I guess) and he described in some detail how he would like the board to be laid out. This included placement of the processor and (in particular) the placement and distance apart of the RAM chips. Remember, this was a PCB destined for a closed system that required non-standard tools to open the case, so it was never intended to be seen by customers. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the RAM became less stable when placed as Steve directed, and about six weeks was wasted trying to make the new board work on margins. Eventually one of the hardware engineers convinced him of the folly of visual aethetics in PCB design.
I guess Steve's reality distortion field didn't work on RAM chips.
It took me a while to find what he actually ended up buying. It was a Miele washer. Premium German engineering of course.
In another more detailed interview ,
Steve went on, "It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something.... Most people don't take the time to do that." He then proceeded to tell a story that both sheds light on his private life and gives some insight into the decision-making process that often turns life into a hell for people who work with him. Making the point that design isn't just an issue for "fancy new gadgets," he described how his whole family became involved in, of all things, the selection of a new washing machine and dryer. This is a little hard to picture: The billionaire Jobs family didn't have very good machines. Selecting new ones became a project for the whole family. The big decision came down to whether to purchase a European machine or an American-made one. The European machine, according to Steve, does a much better job, uses about one-quarter as much water, and treats the clothes more gently so that they last longer. But the American machines take about half as long to wash the clothes.
"We spent some time in our family talking about what's the trade-off we want to make. We spent about two weeks talking about this. Every night at the dinner table" -- imagine dinner-table conversation about washing machines every night! -- "we'd get around to that old washer-dryer discussion. And the talk was about design." In the end, they opted for European machines, which Steve described as "too expensive, but that's just because nobody buys them in this country."
Of course, this wasn't really about washing machines; it was about passing along the concern for design to his children and perhaps to (his wife) Laurene. The decision clearly gave him more pleasure than you would expect. He called the new machines "one of the few products we've bought over the last few years that we're all really happy about. These guys (had) really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers."
Steve's surprising tag line on the story says a great deal about how much design really means to him: "I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years."
Some people might think it a bit weird that there was so much thought going into buying a washing machine, but i think that if you get to see some of the lovely stuff Miele make you might not think it so weird. It's obvious the engineers at Miele are as obsessive over their machines as Jobs is over his. And it's clear he noticed and appreciated that.
Not to mention how nice it is to know that despite his billions he still does his own laundry.
People like Steve Jobs are driven by ambition. They don't give a damn if everyone likes them. Business is not a personal popularity contest. If this guy is able to inspire people to do their best work creating products people enjoy using, then he is newsworthy.
I guess you could compare Steve Jobs to Howard Hughes. Jobs seems to be obsessed with his ideal of perfection, taking risks and pushing the envelope of innovation. That sounds an awful lot like Mr. Hughes drive to make colossal movies and develop a transatlantic airline.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
If you want a very good book about Apple up to the time of Sculley and Jobs' early years try to get hold of The Journey is the Reward by Jeffery Young. West of Eden, the End of Innocence at Apple Computer by Frank Rose is also another good book at this time. Oh, and if you want a laff read Sculley's book Odyssey - a more talentless f*ck and bigger blowhard you could not wish to hire to ruin your business, the guy obviously only made it by marrying the boss's daughter. Sculley is all that is wrong with corporate America. The book must rank with "The Road Ahead" as the deranged ramblings of someone who just didn't get it. :-)
If apple went away who would do R&D for Microsoft?
evil is as evil does
Jobs could be milking Apple for a lot more than $1 per year, if he was really motivated by money....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
Jobs worked at Apple for several years with an annual salary of $1, and this earned him a listing in Guinness World Records as the "Lowest Paid Chief Executive Officer". At the 2001 keynote speech of Macworld Expo in San Francisco, the company dropped the "interim" from his title. His current salary at Apple officially remains $1 per year, although he has traditionally been the recipient of a number of lucrative "executive gifts" from the board, including a $90 million jet in 1999, and just under 30 million shares of restricted stock in 2000-2002. As such, Jobs is well compensated for his efforts at Apple despite the nominal one-dollar salary.
"These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others." --Groucho Marx
"Insistence" is really the wrong word. After Jobs' return, many of the NeXT developers tried to deprecate such traditional Mac-isms, but the established Mac developer base, as well as many users (especially in the publishing/graphic arts marketspace), balked.
The original point of the resource fork was to provide a system wide "poor man's database" so that any arbitrary application or data file could have arbitrary tagged data appended to it without breaking or confusing apps that originally read the file. For example, to add publishing keywords to a graphics file in its data fork, you have to worry if you are working with a EPS, JPEG, PSD, TIFF or whatever. Each file format has it's own way of storing metadata and added info that are mostly incompatible with each other. However, assuming you are in a mostly Mac-based shop, you can simply add a "IPTC" resource to the file's resource fork, and you have added keyword data without worrying about the contents or exact format of the file in question, even if it's a file format yet to be invented.
After the early virus problems with System 4-6 OSes, Apple tried to start migrating away from resources to trying to develop a form of "universal container" file format. QuickTime's MOV format and disk images are two such stabs. However, this doesn't solve the compatiblity problem with the "outside world" since that just moves the problem from trying to NOT ignore a secondary data stream (that is, the resource fork) to the problem of insuring all file I/O goes through a "standard container file access" library.
it meant you couldn't easily make tools (as in any Unix environment), because you had to be willing to do resource fork stuff. That sort of thing convinced me that the Mac was half-baked, and I should just stick to BSD-derived OSes.
OS X is more or less a BSD-variant. It has more in common with a BSD than the System V derived UNIXes like Linux is alleged to be. As for the tool making problem, under recent OS X releases, you can treat the resource fork of a file like a subdirectory named "/rsrc" in most contexts. This is similar to what Windows needs to access NTFS stream data.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
This Apple worshipping has gone a bit too far...
Here are listed most valuable brands in 2005. Apple is on 41. place. Following technology companies are before Apple in the list:
That list is largely based on profit and size. It's not a list of companies that are visionary.
Apple has consistently been a visionary company. They introduced the Apple II as a completely assembled computer when the majority of the market was for S100 bus systems assembled from a hodge-podge of boards -- for which the owner had to create his own BIOS. They introduced the GUI and mouse into mainstream computers back when Microsoft thought that MS-DOS was the right direction to go. Their products have been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Go into any store and look at a modern iPod. Compare it to the offerings from Creative Labs, Philips, Samsung, Toshiba, and the others and you'll be amazed. It's like you're looking at a product from the future when you first see the iPod. It's less than half the size of similar capacity competing models, more elegantly designed, and has an intuitive user interface.
Lest anyone label me an "Apple fanboy," I have owned exactly one Apple product in the 20+ years that I've been in the technology industry: An iPod with video. I hated the Apple II when it came out. To me, it signaled the end of computers as a hobby just for the intellectually gifted and, instead, was a pre-built toy for the unwashed masses. I hated the Macintosh. I hated the MacOS. But my personal dislike of them doesn't change the fact that they were visionary products.
Come now, these perks are not in order at the public's expense. They can walk a few feet, it would be good for their health, and it would prevent problems in case the building ACTUALLY DID catch on fire. This is besides the fact that it pisses everyone off that they believe themselves somehow superior to the rest of the public. They can get all the perks they want on Apple and Oracle private property. The city is not their property, sorry.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie