Jobs has proven to be the one and only person in the world who can create technology products

that people love.

~Narrator

Behind the scenes, Jobs could be ruthless, deceitful and cruel. Yet he won our hearts by
convincing us that Apple represented a higher ideal. It was not like other companies. It was
different.
~Narrator

Jobs loved Dylan maybe because he wasn’t just one thing. He was a storyteller who could be
whatever we wanted him to be.
~Narrator

There's something going on here in life beyond just a job and a family and career. There's
another side of the coin. It's the same thing that causes people to want to be poets instead of
bankers. And I think that that same spirit can be put into products. And those products can be
manufactured and given to people, and they can sense that spirit.
~Steve Jobs

When I was growing up, computers weren't something to love. They were something to fear.
They were huge, impersonal, made by faceless corporations. But for Jobs, it was different.
~Narrator

I saw my second computer a few years later, the Hewlett-Packard 9100. It was very large. Had a
very small cathode ray tube on it for display. And I got a chance to play with one of those maybe
in 1968. I started going up to Hewlett-Packard's Palo Alto research lab every Tuesday night, and
I spent every spare moment I had trying to write programs for it. I was so fascinated by this.
~Steve Jobs

My whole adult life has been spent building personal computers. So, the history of my vocation
and my avocations and, you know, my growing up are all the same, and it's very hard to separate
one from the other.
~Steve Jobs
I met Woz when I was maybe 12 years old, 13 years old. He was the first person I met that knew
more electronics than I did. And one of the things that Woz and I did was we built blue boxes.
~Steve Jobs

You know, you rapidly run out of people you want to call, but it was the magic that two
teenagers could build this box for $100 worth of parts and control hundreds of billions of dollars
of infrastructure in the entire telephone network in the whole world. We could sort of influence
the world, you know? Control it, in the case of blue boxes, but something much more powerful
than controlling. Influencing, in the case of Apple. And they're very closely related. I really do,
to this day, feel that if we hadn't had had those blue box experiences, there never would have
been an Apple computer.
~Steve Jobs

I think Jobs was always a storyteller. There was always this sense that he was constructing a
persona. The first time I sat down with him to work on a story, he immediately asked me if I had
read Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I think he was assimilating into
this personality, this notion that he had found in Kuhn. The random result that eventually creates
a paradigm shift where everybody one morning wakes up, and they think the new way. And I
believe that he thought that he was a paradigm shifter. That was part of his story. He wanted to
have a foot in both worlds. He wanted to be the renegade, but he also wanted to be legit.
~Michael S. Malone (Tech Journalist)

Steve came in and said, in typical Steve Jobs fashion, "I'm not going to leave until you hire me."
And I really appreciated his intensity. He had one speed. Full on.
~Nolan Bushnell (Co-Founder-Atari)

So, yeah, he was paid $7,000, and he told me that we were paid $700, and he wrote me a check
for $350. You know, and that hurts because we were friends. And do you do that to a friend? If
he'd said, "I need the money," I would have said, "Take it all." I was happy to be on the project.
~Steve Wozniak

“I think that Steve...was very driven and would very often take shortcuts to achieve his goals.”
~Nolan Bushnell (Co-Founder-Atari)
I used to like Intel's advertising, so I called them up one day, and I said, "Who does your
advertising?" They said, "Well, Regis McKenna." "What's a Regis McKenna?" They said, "No,
it's a person."
~Steve Jobs

Steve called back, and he pretty much convinced me that he would be the person that we'd be
dealing with and that Wozniak would be designing and building things, which is the way it
happens in most businesses. The engineers are more back room and you work with either the
entrepreneur or the marketing people.
~ Regis McKenna

Oh, definitely. You just had to spend a few minutes with him and you knew it. He had the ability
to talk about the possibility of what this computer could be. And I think the key is not just talking
about the product, but giving you an idea of what is possible using this product and what the next
generation is going to be like. So he gives people this feeling of forward movement.
~ Regis McKenna

Transitioning from a hobby to a personal computer, that whole idea was driven by Steve. He was
trying to say we need to differentiate ourselves and really move out of this hobbyist realm. It
ended up coming out of the room saying, "We're going to call ourselves the personal computer."
~ Regis McKenna

This is a 21st-century bicycle that amplifies a certain intellectual ability that man has. The effects
that it's going to have on society are actually going too far outstrip even those that the
petrochemical revolution has had.
~Steve Jobs

Time magazine, I think, said single-handedly he created the industry because he was relentless.
~ Regis McKenna

He was going for a computer that really felt like an extension of the self. That's what people
wanted, and I think he sensed that. He knew that.
~Sherry Turkle
He called me just out of the blue. I was working at Xerox. And I picked up the phone, and it was
Steve Jobs. And he said, "I hear you're a good guy", but everything you've done so far is crap.
Come work for me."
~Bob Belleville

Because the people that worked on it consider themselves, and I certainly consider them, artists.
These are the people that under different circumstances would be painters and poets, but, because
of the time that we live in, this new medium has appeared in which to express oneself to one's
fellow species. And that's a medium of computing.
~Steve Jobs

He was a very much a person who was comfortable in silence. Steve ruled by a kind of a chaos.
And it's easy to make chaos, and if you're comfortable with it, you can use it as a tool. And he
used a vast number of really irritating tools to get other people involved in his schemes. He's
seducing you, he's vilifying you and he's ignoring you. You're in one of those three states.
~Bob Belleville

When you get a core group of, you know, ten great people, it becomes self-policing as to who
they let into that group. So, I consider the most important job of someone like myself is
recruiting.
~Steve Jobs

Most places in life are continuously telling you that your dreams aren't possible or practical. You
don't want to hear that when you're under 30. What you want to do is race after them.
~Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs brought us all together in a place that had no rules. He's a maniac. He's a maniacal
genius. His job is to stir up everything.

You ask yourself, why are you doing it? I'm certainly not doing it for Steve Jobs. I'm doing it for
what I think is a much greater good than that.
Everybody just wanted to work, not because it was work that had to be done, but it was because
it was something that we really believed in.

But even in 1984, when Apple cast itself as the counterculture company, working at Apple was a
lot tougher than IBM.
~Narrator

I think if you talk to a lot of people on the Mac team, they will tell you it was the hardest they've
ever worked in their life. Some of them will tell you it was, you know, the happiest they've ever
been in their life, but I think all of them will tell you that it is certainly one of the most intense
and cherished experiences they will ever have in their life.
~Steve Jobs

I'm sure that life evolved without death at first and found that without death, life didn't work very
well. Because it didn't make room for the young who didn't know how the world was, you know,
50 years ago, but who saw it as it is today without any preconceptions and dreamed how it could
be based on that.
~Steve Jobs

The minute that you understand that you can poke life, you can change it, you can mold it, you'll
want to change life and make it better cos it's kind of messed up in a lot of ways. Once you learn
that, you'll never be the same again.
~Steve Jobs

If you think about Hindu spirituality, you think of Mother Teresa feeding the poor. That's not
really the path that Steve took. Those weren't Steve's values.
~Danielle Kottke

A week later he came back with a little metal sheet in his hand. Many things were going, wires
going around... I didn't know what it was. It was a chip of a personal computer. He said, "I
designed it. My friend Woz helped me." "This is called Lisa." "I named it Lisa." Which is the
name of his daughter. That was the origin of Apple Computer.
~Kobun Chino Otagawa
He was confident and awkward. He was a study in contrasts. And he had jeans on that drooped
because they had so many holes in them. And he was very intentional, very intense. And then he
handed me a poem by Bob Dylan. "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." He would re-write Dylan's
songs to fit his life. And then he... he just scanned the quad and the darkness that went over his
face... The edge, the worry, the dissonance, was shocking to me. And I was young enough where
I thought, "Did I say something wrong?" But later I realized that wasn't what it was. That was
part of who he was. And I mean, that was one of the things that I was attracted to, is that he had a
lot going on inside him.
~Chrisann Brennan

Steve was a romantic, and he really loved Chrisann. I think she was a seductive force in his life,
and there was a part of Steve that didn't want to push that away. But the main thing in Steve's
life, number one, was getting Apple off the ground. And he just really could not focus on
anything else.
~Danielle Kottke

It says a lot about somebody that they would have the wit, the imagination, the audacity, to name
a computer in the fashion that Steve named this and believe that you're going to be able to get
away with it. That is the sort of very telling anecdote that helps illuminate somebody's
personality.

That was clearly a very defining image in his life, both that he was rejected and that he was
special.
~Danielle Kottke

The IPO was November 1980. By the summer of 1980, it was clear it was going to happen, and
so Steve's net worth was going to go from $10 million to around $200 million. And I think he
had the opportunity to completely reinvent himself. In his reinvention, some people who helped
him were left behind.
~Narrator

When Apple went public, he was worth nearly $200 million. Steve is so hugely successful, and
yet he treated so many people so badly. How much of an asshole do you have to be to be
successful?
~Danielle Kottke
The entrepreneur's a person who wants to shake things up, who wants to change things, who sees
a better way of doing that. But he or she tends to be a royal pain in the neck.

Oh, it was very painful. I'm not even sure I want to talk about it. Um... What can I say? I hired
the wrong guy. And... he destroyed everything I'd spent ten years working for.
~Steve Jobs

I don't think he felt he was in the wilderness at all. I think he felt he was on a path. He was on a
mission.
Michael Hawly (NeXT Engineer)

The article was about people who are maniacal about work. And Steve Jobs was the most
maniacal person I could think of, which is why I wanted to write about him.
A monomaniacal commitment to something is something that most people don't have. And that,
like the monk, requires you to kind of shed extraneous things, and Steve Jobs absolutely,
positively had that.

In meditation, Jobs loved inspecting his own mind and changing the way it worked. He focused
on the spirit of things and sought perfection in the machines he made. But Kobun thought Jobs
was missing the point. A search for perfection would never bring him peace or harmony with
those around him.
~Narrator

And then Fred even had an impact on the product strategy because when Steve came back, the
first major project we started was a network computer. That was kind of the rage at the time, but
it wasn't a consumer product at all. Fred kept going, "You know, wait a minute, we got to have a
consumer product." "You guys have to focus on a low-end Mac because that's what's going to
turn the company around." So, the executive team and Steve decided that we would switch from
doing the network computer and make that the iMac.
~Jon Rubinstien
He was the kind of person that could convince himself of things that weren't necessarily true. He
could go to people and ask them to do something that they thought was impossible. Steve did
create reality distortion around him. You know, if he told you the sky was green, for a while,
you'd kind of go, "Yeah, OK. Yeah, the sky's green."
~Avie Tevanian

To me... marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It's a very noisy world.
And we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is.
And so, we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us. Our customers want
to know who is Apple and what is it that we stand for. What we have is something that I am... I
am very moved by.
~Steve Jobs

More than a CEO, he positioned himself as an oracle, a man who could tell the future of
technology.
~Narrator

You know, a lot of times, great products are sort of convergence of the right set of technologies.
And Steve was brilliant at getting to a fork in the road and choosing the right fork. We got a
chance to play with a variety of music players, and they sucked. So, we decided, Steve said, you
know, "Go build a music player.” So, I assembled a small team to take a look at what it would
take to do it, and the conclusion was the technology really wasn't ready yet. Then in February of
2001, the Toshiba guys brought out the 1.8-inch hard drive. So, as soon as I saw that I go, "That's
what we need to build the iPod." So, I went to Steve, and I go, "OK, I know how to do it now."
"I need $10 million." And Steve goes, "OK, I'll write you a $10 million check."
~Avie Tevanian

People sometimes forget that they're very unique and that they have very unique feelings and
perspectives. You know, the whole computer industry wants to forget about the humanist side
and just focus on the technology, but we think there's a whole other side to the coin, which is
what do you do with these things? Can we do more than just spreadsheets and word processors?
Can we help you express yourself in richer ways?
~Steve Jobs
Apple at the core, its core value, is that we believe that people with passion can change the world
for the better. That's what we believe.
~Steve Jobs

I believe it was a heartfelt thing for Steve. I think that he did want to make the world a better
place. I think that he felt by delivering great products that were easy to use and beautiful, that it
would make people's lives better.
~Avie Tevanian

I remember the first set of people I interviewed about the iPhone. I've been interviewing people
about their computers for, you know, decades. I've never seen this kind of connection before
with an object. In the beginning, the impulse was to sit you down and to show you everything on
their iPhone. As time's gone on, there's been less of that and more of what I call the "alone
together phenomenon." It has turned out to be an isolating technology.
It's a dream machine, and you become fascinated by the world that you can find on these screens.
And the face of that technology was Steve Jobs.

He found a loophole where if you lease a car, you have a six-month grace period to put license
plates on. And so he leased the same car every six months, to avoid putting license plates at all. I
think he told people that it's because he didn't want people to identify him. Well, there's nothing
more identifiable than a silver Mercedes with no license plate. I mean, it screams "Steve Jobs" in
the Valley. And it does give you a glimpse of how he thought he was above the law.

He was a hero in the Valley because he made buckets of money, but unlike Bill Gates, Jobs told
people that giving away money was a waste of time. Under Jobs, Apple terminated its
philanthropic programs. Jobs kept acting as if Apple was a start-up, but by 2010, it was one of
the most valuable companies in the world.
~Narrator
I went to Palm. Then a bunch of people went to Palm. I gave my resignation. It went up the
chain, like you do. And just sure as hell, like 20 minutes later, I get a call from Steve's admin,
"Steve wants to see you."
He sits down. He just kind of sits there, and he looks at me. And I start to kind of launch into my
little spiel that I had planned, and he says, "You know you fucked up Bluetooth, right?"
I just stopped. I'm like...
And then we go through this half-hour mind fuck. It becomes very "Godfather" - esque. You
know, "You're part of my family, and Apple's my family, and you don't want to leave my
family." And at the end, he says, "If you choose to leave my family," should you decide to take
so much as one member of my family away from me, "I will personally take you down."
~Andy Grignon

To keep his family together, Jobs was willing to let Apple bend or even break the law.
~Narrator

In 2011, a class-action lawsuit filed by more than 64,000 Silicon Valley workers revealed that
Jobs, along with the CEOs of Google, Intel and Adobe had colluded not to recruit each other's
employees.
~Narrator

Less than a month after Google co-founder Sergey Brin received this threat from Jobs, Google
circulated a "do not cold call" list that included Apple. Two years later, Google tried again, and
Jobs e-mailed Google CEO Eric Schmidt to remind him of their gentlemen's agreement. Schmidt
placated Jobs by assuring him that the culprit would be fired within the hour. When Jobs learned
that the woman had been canned, he showed his pleasure in two efficient keystrokes. 
~Narrator

~Andy Serwer
Steve Jobs had a very talented group of key lieutenants around him. And he wanted give his
people stock option grants that were so big, that they wouldn't even think about going
somewhere else because the upside was so enormous.
~Peter Elkind

The key thing is if the stock goes up, which we always hope it does, then the golden handcuffs
are dramatically increased, which is what I was hoping would happen.
~Steve Jobs

To make those option deals even sweeter, companies would allow executives to buy stock on
dates in the past when the price was low so executives could make millions in the blink of an
eye. This was called "backdating." And it seemed like the perfect solution, except for one thing.
If not properly reported, backdating is illegal.
~Narrator

Four workers died and 77 were wounded in explosions at two Apple supplier factories caused by
careless safety procedures. The solvents used to sparkle Apple's touch screens were powerful but
dangerous, causing nerve damage that led to weakness and loss of touch in workers. They
complained about low wages and pressure to meet Apple's deadlines. In the Chinese factories of
many tech companies, copper, chromium and other heavy metals saturate the run-off that flows
into local waterways. Sometimes chemical levels are so high that sewage treatment plants can't
adequately clean the water for it ever to be used again. In 2010, Chinese activist Ma Jun
contacted all the tech manufacturers to discuss the issue and even wrote to Jobs personally. All
the companies ultimately responded except one. Apple.
~Narrator

Apple isn't the only company to manufacture in China, but it is different in one way. Its
enormous profit margin. The profit on every iPhone 4 was over $300. Yet Apple paid its Chinese
workforce less than $12 per phone. If Jobs had really "thought different," shouldn't he have cared
more about the people who touched the iPhones before they appeared in the hands of Apple's
customers?
~Narrator
When I was writing critical stories about Apple, the mail would be 80% hate mail. Even the most
reasoned, judicious criticism about labor practices in China, for crying out loud, it didn't matter.
People didn't want to hear it. They loved this company. They loved its products. They loved the
status symbol of having these things in their hand and looking at it all the time, and it just felt
cool, and they'd stood in line for two days to buy one, and they didn't want to hear it.

I was one of those people who had to have an iPhone. I didn't want to hear about other products,
and I believed against all reason that owning an iPhone made me part of something better. And
when it was in my pocket, for every idle moment, my hand was drawn to it, like Frodo's hand to
the ring.
~Narrator

Anyone who'd worked with Jobs before would know of other instances where he'd been a bully.
But this was probably the most public evidence of bullying.

He was very, very adamant and very passionate about his creation. And the only analogy I can
think of is if somebody stole your baby, you would be very upset about it. That's how Mr Jobs
felt. Somebody had taken his baby.
~Chris Feasel

When this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got a lot of advice from people that said, "You
shouldn't go after a journalist because they bought stolen property, and they tried to extort you.
You should let it slide." "Apple's a big company now. You don't want the PR." "You should let it
slide." And I thought deeply about this, and I ended up concluding that the worst thing that could
possibly happen as we get big and we get a little more influence in the world, is if we change our
core values and start letting it slide. I can't do that. I'd rather quit.
~Steve Jobs

Entrepreneurs have an almost pathological need to control their own fate. They'll take any
suffering if they can just be in charge of their destiny and not have it in somebody else's hands.