Steve Jobs was a man with all the qualities you have to have to get out of rat race.
These are the notes on the book "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson and some of the links which capture Steve Job's life.
The Beginning
Steve Jobs had always been lucky about meeting people. From the beginning he had a different life. Adopted by an American Family. He had always been interested in design and always had acute nature towards things. Probably he got all of that from his father. He used to make cars with all the details and same acuteness. From childhood he was interested in building things and making some money. He was interested in profit and always had some uncommon view towards the business.
There were some emotional challenges for him. The fact that he was adopted made him think that he was rejected by his biological parents. So probably that made him follow the hippie culture. Drugs and all the other ‘free thinking’ was part of his college life. And in the end he dropped out of college. He was more interested in Arts and Sciences or perhaps the intersection of it but never got a chance of making anything out of it. When started his ‘job’ in Atari, making games, he was famous for his temper & his brash talking.
So, they made his boss shift him to the night duty where he can work with very few workers and they won’t have to handle him. Once, he challenged his boss to make a better game than the game his co-workers had made. He himself had no knowledge about coding. So, (as Jobs life makes him meet good people) he ended up meeting a geek near his house, Steve Wozniak.
Steve was a kid. He was an introvert and he was kinda childish. Throughout his life he was taking something with his interest in circuits. He used to do pranks on people to get their attention. While Jobs was more mature for his age, Woz was less mature for his age. So they kinda get into the same age category. T hey started to visit the Xerox Parc which was the innovation hub. Woz showed his project to Jobs which he was working on. After millions of questions Jobs said “We can sell it !”. And there came Apple. Apple was the name they decided because it comes on top of ledgers alphabetically and it was different from others. It was rebellious.
Childhood
Zen
Before all of this, Steve Jobs was on his spiritual journey to India. A journey where he wanted to find his peace. He went to India with his friend to meet some Baba who was dead until Jobs arrived there. So he and his friend spend some more time in an Ashram to find what they wanted. He realised one thing living in India, eastern world knows power of wisdom and intuition while the western world is more practical and more rational. It was a paradoxical for him to realise and hence he found a Guru and got inspired by the Zen culture.
When Apple started they had some new innovation. Steve Jobs wanted it to be the personal computer not just hobbyist’s thing. So when he saw other computers while presenting Apple I he knew what he wanted next. Apple II will have a screen attached to it where user can see whats going on. It was like a tv connected to the typewriter. Apple II was a Woz’s magic thing. It was his genius circuit. But Jobs had different vision. He was following his intuition and his acuteness. He made his friends to solder the circuit in a symmetrical order with very delicate soldering. Woz wanted to have 8 port on the Apple II so the hobbyists can attach their own accessories and play with it. But Jobs just wanted 2.
He made everything so dramatic in a sense. He wanted Apple 2’s design must have rounded corners and they should be in specific round shape and told engineers to design a power supply without needing fan to cool it (which was never done before). It was AC power supply and it was patented later by the engineer. He wanted it to be a simple, quiet and integrated machine. It was inspired by the Zen culture. It was intact. Apple II was the most successful product in the computer industry and it blew away everything. Apple was now public and Jobs was millionaire while just turning 23.
Steve Jobs had bad temper he everything was binary to him. Either an employee/Idea was completely shit or it was revolutionary to him. He was mean to people. He was harsh and brutal and had no filter on his mouth they used to say. So everybody hated him at Apple except those who he would consider A players. Although he was CEO he was still a hippie inside. He was on strict vegan diet and would only eat vegetables and fruits. He used to consider that because of his ‘pure’ diet he didn’t have to bathe, so, would stink and would be unhygienic and used to wash his feet in a commode toilet.
Mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes in life. But Steve was Steve. He was not accepting his own mistake from his college days. He had a daughter and he was not accepting it and used to tell himself that she’s not his daughter and any other guy who had slept with her mother could be her father and was brutal about it. Her name was Lisa. A name that would stay for a while in his life. He refused to accept it but he was kinda responsible for her. When she showed some smartness and aggressiveness like her father, he kinda got interested in her. He would compensate this mistake in future though
LISA and Macintosh
With Macintosh
Although, he was not that good at saying he named his computer after his daughter LISA. It was Jobs’s creation. It was perfect. Because of this aggressive and over demanding nature he got kicked out from the team and went on another project, Macintosh. It was his genius. He was kinda competing with the team with LISA. He was demanding, harsh and rude to everyone and was a perfectionist. So he made his workers work really really hard. As he was binary thinker everything was either shit or revolutionary for him.
Brutally Honest
So he started his behaviour. And did what he wanted to do, perfect it! He even wanted to his factory to be painted in a certain way. The paint could reduce the factories efficiency. But it was fine for him cuz it defined purity for him. He went on details once again. With symmetrical circuits and with rounded corners. But design is not how it looks but also how it performs. They made a user interface with windows which you can drag anywhere which he saw at Xerox. He made it better at every way. Xerox could not do overlapping of windows but at apple they did have to face Jobs.
The most amazing example of his acuteness was when he said to his engineer that the windows must have rounded corners and they must be able to draw rectangles with rounded corners. To prove his point he went on walk with him and showed how each object like streets, sign boards and other things have rounded corners. And that engineer wrote down all the code again with overlap windows. And that impressed jobs.
Macintosh had same philosophy behind it as was other products. It was intact and it has very few ports to connect other devices. It had perfectly rounded corners and it had simple user interface and it was Jobs creation and not the creation of Woz like Apple I and Apple II. Macintosh was over hyped project so they didn’t do well on sales. Macintosh was not the super- selling product. They needed something else.
Getting Fired
Pixar Creators
Steve Jobs decided to hire Pepsi guy for being his mentor. He was too young to run the company by himself so he hired the guy. He said very famous quote "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” It ignited Sculley’s think different perspective and he ended up being CEO. Things were good for some months. Steve Jobs considered him as mentor and he had deep respect for Sculley. But soon enough jobs started his inner thing. He wanted his products so much dearly made that he wanted it to be rightly valued.
Macintosh was overpriced because Sculley wanted more profit out of it. He was more interested in the business than actual products. Jobs hated it. So he turned all the board members against him to fire him. But happened something different. Sculley demanded “either he or me” and they fired Jobs. It was heart breaking for him. Cuz he himself created the company. Sculley refused to become CEO and wanted to resign from company himself. But the board members insisted him to be CEO. They offered Jobs to be head of Think Tank team at Apple. Where he could work on new project and it was away from the main office so others won’t have to handle his tantrums.
But he refused. He sold all his shares except one so that he can join the board meeting(Although he never joined any board meeting, they used to put a picture of him in his chair). Steve Jobs went to Europe tour. He went with his GF and spent some months there. His GF wanted to settle down there but he refused and had another plans in life.
When he came back he started a company called ’Next’ which was computer company which will provide computers for the college students. The mere existence of the company is to provide computers to universities and it is not competing with Apple, he used to say. So he went to the Apple and said that he wanted to hire some ’non important’ engineers and he wanted Apple’s investment in his company. He chose very top engineers from his previous Macintosh team. He founded Next. The artist who designed logo for the Next said, You pay for me what I do and I do what you like. That attitude was Jobs’s favourite. He founded Next and soon started showing his inner Zen.
Perfect 90 degree
He wanted the box to be perfect cube with 90 degree angle and with 1 ft. each side. It was very expensive to do that, cuz the nobody would do 90 degree mould for a plastic (it's hard to remove stuff from the mould). But jobs wanted it. So it blew away the price. Not only that, Jobs wanted it to be painted matt black from the inside as well which will be seen just only by repair workers. He wanted the Next computer to be cohesive and didn’t want anyone to tear it apart. So he made custom tools and custom screws which will be only opened at Apple. Once again he painted his factory to his taste. He designed a very expensive office with minimal layout and beautiful design.
He was a billionaire and had lot of artistic affection. The plastic body would have this mould line each time. It was practically impossible to remove this mould line during moulding. So he bought a polishing company just to remove that line for 18 million dollars. That was his dedication and perfection. He wanted an OS for his computer so he contacted bill gates. Gates said it’s not a special product and then refused to do OS for next. Although jobs did copy the OS features from Apple. Next computer was announced but it was so damn expensive. It was a perfect cube with black colour but it was priced at 12k dollars which was very very expensive for any university. It was a failed product and it was not doing well.
Next
At that time Pixar a computer graphics company needed a CEO to handle things at their office. Jobs friend was working there and he know Jobs would be interested in this Art and technological intersection. So he contacted jobs and jobs said he was interested. Jobs wanted a small computer for the general purpose students who would create graphics like their flagship computer Pixar used to do. It had many applications like in medical industry, gas and oil industry and in the other industry where the data visualisation was needed. So they sold very well.
Pixar had a small division at that time where they used to create the short films to show their computers graphical capabilities. So when jobs went to Disney and saw what they do with computers he said he Pixar wants to do a film with them. So they started doing Toy story and other films. Pixar was jobs creation and he went aside from all the artistic work and just focused on other things about company. Steve Jobs was sure about his co workers and so he trusted them. And it was a big hit! And they broke all the records.
Rejoining
Apple was performing not well when Jobs was not around. Microsoft copied apples software and it had 95% market share. Scullery was no more CEO and entire company was going downhill. After 11 years they wanted Jobs to join the company back. They wanted him to handle things at Apple and be CEO. While that happened Apple bought Next for his software. They did all the stuff jobs would like to impress him. Although he joined the company he was not sure cuz he was CEO of Pixar too. So he made himself iCEO (just for sometime before getting a new one )
But all of them knew titles don’t matter. He wanted focus in company. He closed more than 80% of the project that were going at apple and did just focus On very few things. Focus is not saying No! He would say, saying no to things that aren’t really needed. So he closed all of unnecessary things. Apple stocks went up and company was surviving now. Tim Cook was handling things about all the expenses and he did a great job.
Jobs was very certain that hardware and software should be cohesive so he never sold copies of MacOS to any other company. But when he was not around Apple sold them and now they were fighting copycats like Microsoft. So he canceled all the licenses.
He was CEO of the 2 companies at the same time. It was hectic for him. He started to have kidney stones because of that and didn’t get much sleep or rest. But he pushed himself, always.
Family and Wife
Laurene Powell
Jobs was always searching for his true father he never met him. In that search, he met his sister Mona(who was well known author) and then his father. But he was angry at him cuz he left his daughter and wife and yes, his son. He never talked to him after that. He was a restaurant owner and was doing fine with his wife. Steve Jobs never disturbed him.
During his Stanford speech he met a girl. With the exact qualities he wanted,Smart yet unpretentious. She was hard enough to stand with personality like jobs and smart enough to get what she wanted. They were in love. They married and then had 3 kids with 2 daughters and one son ‘Reed’. In that time they bought a house. Which had no furniture because for Steve Jobs it was hard to buy furniture. Nothing was perfect for him and most importantly nothing was necessary for him. He and his wife would say “ do we really need sofa?”, So that minimalism was kick ass.
Think Different
think different!
Apple needed to improve its image so they launched a think different campaign which will attract the Artistic minds towards Apple. They started to collect the images of Picasso, Gandhi, Feynman and others. And they decided to publish that famous lines in Steve Jobs's voice.
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Think Different Campaign
Design And Other Products
Steve Jobs met another extraordinary man Jony Ive. He was a child prodigy and very dear to Jobs because of his design perspective. They both were on the same page when it comes to design. Jobs loved minimal designs and Ive was the same. Ive was the design head of the Apple and after Jobs returning he got highest power after Jobs at Apple. Now Jobs was total CEO and not just iCEO.
In other companies the engineers would make the all the components and all the things needed and then they would send it to that design team and designer had to make those things fit inside some kinda box. But at Apple it was different. It was opposite. Ive had engineering perception too. So they would design the outer shell first and then engineers would have to make their inside components. It was magical in a way to work on some of the products.
Apple needed some different industry to stand now. So they moved to create a music player called iPod. It was in pure white colour and it had a wheel button and was simple and small that could fit almost 1000 songs in pocket. When that launched, it changed the entire music industry and now it was the most successful product for apple. They shoot it out of the sky. 40% of the apples revenue was dependant on the iPod sales.
Entire music industry was suffering from pirated music and music being stolen. So Jobs saw this opportunity and Apple created iTunes Store which would sell any song for 99 cents. Jobs himself was passionate about music, Bob Dylan, Beatles and U2 were his favourite. He wanted a simple store where they could burn and store and purchase music. When one artist called to get feedback he said “at last, someone got it right!’. It was simple and beautiful interface. But not only that Jobs as CEO made a lot of efforts to convince all the music record companies to sell their music on iTunes and so that for 99 cents. It was Steve Jobs's persistence.
Jony Ive and Steve Job's creation
While launching Macintosh Steve Jobs wanted the CD player to be integrated inside the body(like in cars) and should not have a tray (like in PCs). So when he saw that final design just before 2 days of launch, he was so furious that he wanted to postpone the launch.
They made a desktop computer, iMac. Which was Jony Ive’s baby. It was made out of transparent plastic. It had few ports and it was concealed in a beautiful box. They wanted a friendly looking PC so that non technical users would actually want to use it. Ive was a master. He created this beautiful curvy design in a blue colour and it was so damn minimal and perfect as jobs wanted. Ive even attached a handle to the iMac. Even though nobody really walks around with the computer in hand he still wanted a handle. Cuz it will make it more friendly to user. User will consider it that he can handle it and will not treat computer like an alien machine.
Sell the Product
To sell all of these products they wanted a shop. Steve Jobs didn’t want to sell his products near the windows machine which were not friendly looking but still very cheap. So he wanted his own retail store. After arguing with board members they started few stores at such locations where customers can walk in. It was on the streets. Jobs wanted them to be all glass design they even patented the glass staircase which jobs created when he was designing office building of Next.
Jobs wanted certain type of floor to store. He wanted the same stone which he saw when he was in Europe. All said they can create artificial floor like that but jobs insisted to import it from Europe which made it really costly. There was ‘Genius Bar’ where customers can go and ask their queries. It was all glass, steel and solid things. Minimal and pure white.
Jobs created another revolutionary product and that was iPhone. It was metal and glass design and he wanted the touchscreen so that user need not have to type on small keyboard. There was only one button in the front and it was simple. It was glass and metal. First time they used gorilla glass for any product. It was impossible to open for any other than Apple repair wala. AND you know what happened after that, it changed everything!
Death
Real artists ship!
During his those kidney stones days when doctor made him to do bioscopy they detected tumour in his pancreas. Doctor said that it was urgent to remove it else it will spread. But Jobs being Jobs refused this. He didn’t want to cut his body to remove that tumour. As his products, he wanted that integrity in his own body too. He refused it for almost 9 months before his body started showing some symptoms. He started losing weight and started. Now, after insisting a lot, he finally agreed to do operation.
They removed that tumour. The consequence was that he now had to eat more protein cuz his pancreas was not in place and had removed some intestine too. More protein means he had to eat Non veg. But then again Jobs being Jobs, he started his same strict vegan diet and fast schedule. He threw himself to the work again. But after some years he started showing same symptoms again. As the doctors were afraid cancer had spread throughout his other body parts. He was still losing his weight and he was still on that strict diet. Steve Jobs took leave and stayed home. It was worst for other members of his family cuz of his pickiness in eating. His eating disorder made it worse. He was still losing weight and had still his tantrums.
Over the years condition became hard. He was on his final leave now. He was still the Steve Jobs. When he was semi-conscious and when doctors wanted to put on oxygen mask on him he refused and mumbled “this design of mask is shit, show me 5 more designs to choose from”.