Steve Jobs: How a Dreamer Changed the World

we are delivering today the iPad the new iMac the iPod my photo MacBook Air iTunes the revolutionary he was one of the most creative and daring CEOs a global icon who shaped the worlds of technology and media for over 30 years computers music movies and mobile phones were transformed by Apple's Steve Jobs he was a brilliant visionary few executives in history suffered such painful setbacks it looked like Jobs was was washed-up it was a total has been or enjoyed as much success as Steve came back and began what I think is the greatest turnaround in the history of corporate America a very remarkable man extremely smart a spellbinding mesmerizing leader of people jobs went from having nearly blown this amazing fortune and bankrupted himself to a rising as a billionaire with a brilliant future Steve Jobs was a true son of Silicon Valley born in 1955 in San Francisco he was raised in its freewheeling culture of experimentation and innovation Alan Gorch Minh is an author who has written extensively about Jobs and Apple Steve Jobs from going back to when he was a teenager was very influenced by the 1960s 1970s counterculture you know he loved the Beatles he loved Bob Dylan he enrolled in Oregon's Reed College but dropped out to travel after just one semester Robert X cringe Lee was Apple Computer employee number 12 but I met him he was I think nineteen years old he had hair down to his waist and he only ate fruit and he would see how clearly hippy when Jobs returned to his childhood home in California he became interested in what was then an entirely new concept the personal computer he joined meetings of the homebrew Computer Club with a man who would become his partner in founding Apple Computer Steve Wozniak people getting up these computers are gonna revolutionize life and I felt like oh my god I'm a part of this huge revolution that we're talking about everybody's gonna have a computer in the home and nobody in the outside world believes us projects that I would design and build very frequently Steve would say he knew how to sell it Jobs and Wozniak took time off their day jobs to set up shop in the family garage in Los Altos we didn't have a telephone to phone the computer stores in the garage that was in Steve's bedroom the team's first computer the Apple one as the tech industry in Silicon Valley took off jobs saw opportunity the penalty for failure for going and trying to start a company in this valley is non-existent there really isn't the penalty for failure either psychologically or economically in the sense that if you have a good idea and you go go out to start your own company even if you fail you're generally considered worth more to the company you left because you've gained all this valuable experience in many disciplines to bring their ideas to life the Apple team needed capital jobs convinced angel investor Mike Markkula to invest around $90,000 and a line of credit in the fledgling company it was exactly what they needed to create their new computer the Apple to what was revolutionary about the Apple 2 was its use of color the fact it had a built-in keyboard and it was the first one to look like a consumer device and so it was a huge success you know it was astounding success right from the beginning Steve came to me one day and he said you realize our stock is worth more than our parents have been in their lifetime I was done what the heck how can you have so much and then six months later you have 10 times more they were the stars of Silicon Valley and the cover boys for a new industry Michael Moritz is a former Time magazine reporter and a legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist there's always that sense of anxiety and tension associated with the question how can we possibly follow this in 1979 in a stock deal reportedly worth 1 million dollars Steve Jobs was allowed access to Xerox PARC the company's famed research in development laboratory jobs and his team saw the future here the way computers would be used including the use of graphics and a small device that had not yet been revealed to the outside world a mouse you'd see two programs at once if I was stunned they see three programs at once and I oh my god once you have this machine you're never gonna want to go back it's a one-way door you computers are gonna be this way and you'll never go back Leander kini is the editor of the blog cult of Mack and the author of the book inside Steve's brain Xerox had invented the entire paradigm of modern computing but they had no idea what they were sitting on but jobs did he wanted to bring the graphical user interface to Apple computer but first he had to deal with a power shift going on inside Apple the Apple board of directors wanted an experienced executive to be president of the company Jobs interviewed dozens of candidates before he focused on someone from outside the tech world Pepsi CEO John Sculley Steve in those days he had long black hair and very piercing Palmetto berry eyes he looked down at his running shoes and then he looked up at me and he said 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 and it was like someone just knocked the wind out of my stomach the few weeks later I was working at Apple for Apple Computer to thrive they also needed another successful product Jobs thought he had it in a powerful business computer called the Lisa but the Apple Board of Directors refused to give him the project Jobs threw himself into another project the Macintosh he felt this would break open the market or rather to characterize Steve's brain properly or rather the market ought to break open you know if the market had any sense he set up shop in an outlying building in the Apple complex and his intense drive began to take its toll on the Mac team people would bring him work to look at it would be one o'clock in the morning sometime Steve said I'm not gonna look at it and it will Steve I've worked on this thing for 25 hours he said I know but it's not good enough you know go back and work on it some more some of them just wound up just quitting and discussed some of them wound up saying they'd never work for Steve again they just couldn't when the exhausted team finished they had a revolutionary new computer many of us have been working on Macintosh for over two years now and it has turned out insanely great Guy Kawasaki was the software evangelist on the original Mac in like 60 seconds after I saw the demo of Macintosh I was so cool angel started to sing I mean it was a beautiful experience this was supposed to be the computer that tamed the complexity of everything associated with world of computing to make it available as Steve would say for mere mortals with his intuitive marketing sense Jobs unveiled the Mac with a spellbinding commercial aimed at IBM the leader in aired nationally only once on Super Bowl Sunday in January of 1984 but the impact was explosive we estimated we got 45 million dollars of free publicity of it being run over and over again by television networks all over the world because no one had ever seen a commercial like this before but the excitement surrounding the Mac launch didn't translate into sales and jobs is standing at Apple became the big question he ran amok at Apple he cost the company a lot of money so Steve was considered to be wasteful he was considered to be self-indulgent he was the largest shareholder but also a kind of a brat the thinking was well Macintosh should not penetrate a business we need a more mature leadership some adult supervision to run the company by 1985 tension at Apple rose as an internal power struggle threatened to tear the company apart I said Steven we're a public company and I have to tell the board where we are in terms of inventory in terms of sales performance and we're in trouble when hit reached the point where he identified skully as a rival he decided had to take scollay out and much to Steve's surprise the board sided with Scully the knee-jerk reaction of conventional people is to elbow what they see as disruptive forces aside and Steve the co-founder of Apple was unchivalrous Lee rushing to the exit hey BAM fired almost destroyed him they threw him out of his own company and he thought it was unbelievable jobs quickly regrouped taking five top managers to start a computer company called next there were all kinds of ideas and it turned out that he wanted to go back and once again create the most insanely great computer something that would help change the world very modest ambitions the company struggled to find a market for its expensive new computer jobs faced a tough choice abandon the computer or face bankruptcy it was a big deal when they realized that very few people were buying their hardware but it turned out that their software was just breathtaking the decision ditched the highly designed computer and focus instead on selling what makes it run the company's elegant operating system I think that period during which he wandered in the wilderness was a period full of adversity and I think people come back from adversity if they can return from adversity they come back harder sharper and far more geared for battle in a 2005 commencement address at Stanford University Steve Jobs revealed for the first time some personal details about his early life my biological mother was a young unwed graduate student and she decided to put me up for adoption my biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school she refused to sign the final adoption papers she only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college this was the start in my life he was raised by parents who adopted him they were blue-collar salt-of-the-earth people they were good parents and but they weren't intellectuals later in life he discovered that his biological parents weren't intellectuals and his biological sister she turned out to be a brilliant novelist Mona Simpson in 1991 at age 36 Jobs started his own family when he married Laurene Powell they had three children in addition to his daughter from a previous relationship Jobs called these years after Apple his most creative and personally fulfilling his professional life was also changing dramatically right after his ouster from Apple Jobs bought a company from Lucas Films that would become a household name this little animation company called pixel he hired John Lasseter an animator from Disney their goal was to create fully computer animated feature films and Hollywood was interested Pixar made a deal with Disney to work together to make a toy story I actually had made the deal with him at the time he came into the movie businesses instincts were impeccable put his money up his own personal money he was on the line in 1995 jobs investment in Pixar was about to pay off in a big way I am Buzz Lightyear I come in peace oh I'm so glad you're not a dinosaur Toy Story Pixar's first feature film was a blockbuster and became 1995's highest-grossing u.s. movie Pixar really created probably the most successful genre in the movie business today which is CG animation when Pixar went public Steve Jobs became a billionaire it had been more than 10 years since Steve Jobs had been fired from Apple and the drama in turmoil at the company continued to get worse after Steve left the company it lost its compass lost its mission it lost its founding spirit its products got old and stale and during that whole period Microsoft had gotten stronger and strong computers running Windows accounted for nearly 80 percent of the market Apple's market share could not break 11% and their ousted co-founder was sitting on an operating system that could save them they wanted next operating system in an ironic and stunning turn of events Apple Computer bought next for over 400 million dollars we're gonna be building our next generation operating system on next technology selling next Davalos sheer genius you just have to say Wow Steve Jobs returned to the company he helped create and became interim CEO and so that began what I think is the greatest turnaround in the history of corporate America it was his finest hour really and he he hauled Assam and brought things back together again around a cohesive vision because he came in as the Rainmaker he called a big meeting in this big meeting room and he says you know what's wrong with this company and everyone's too scared to answer no one say anything because the products suck they've got no sex in him the comeback included a remarkable announcement Bill Gates who had long been considered job's main rival would invest in Apple Computer Microsoft invested $150 in Apple to help save the day that must have been the low point for Apple I happen to have a special guest with me today via satellite downlink and if we could get him up on the stage right now very excited about the new release we're building this is called Mac office 98 once back at Apple jobs characteristic Flair for marketing came back in full force Ken Siegel worked with jobs on a breakthrough advertising campaign that defined their new direction here's to the crazy ones The Misfits the rebels the troublemakers the round pegs in the square holes think different became the line that launched apples rebirth Steve was aware of every detail I mean literally every word every image one of the reasons why I thought the words were so perfect is I think you literally could have hung a sign that said think different in the garage when Wozniak and jobs created their company it would have been appropriate then you know as it is today but the company was still in trouble and needed a hit it found it in a redesign of the bulky beige box there was a kind of a gasp from around the room because keep in mind that no computer had ever looked anything like that it was transparent you can see the guts of it it looked like came out of the Jetsons or something the iMac was an astounding success the thing was the biggest selling computer of all time six million units sold and it really sort of set the stage for Apple's comeback if I hadn't been ahead Apple when Steve Jobs would be history it gave them enough money and enough momentum you know to start coming out with other products soon after he saw the future and it was not a personal computer this is the best thing I think we've ever done in October 2001 Jobs unveiled something that even for Apple was groundbreaking the iPod went from concept to market in about eight months but the iPod itself was only one part of a much bigger plan I think the genius of the iPod was iTunes not iPod Jobs was going after a music business under siege by piracy and file-sharing Larry Ken's will and other music executives were called up to Apple's Cupertino offices to negotiate terms that would define the future of the music industry the negotiation was classic Steve Jobs he simply said if I can't sell if a $0.99 on my store I am not selling it that's it no discussion in business you used to a lot of give-and-take that's not apples way apples ways they get what they want when iTunes became available on Windows as well as Macs the music industry realized just who had a gold record a complete monopoly retail online both Apple and the music business have come out ahead because of Apple's entry but Apple has made a whole lot more money because they're selling hardware for hundreds of dollars in the music business is selling ninety nights and products over 350 million iPods have been sold since its release in October of 2001 the company's product lodges became huge events anticipation and speculation grew to a fever pitch with every new product we went into the holiday quarter with the best lineup of music players on the planets we believe that the personal computer is undergoing a rapid evolution to be the center of our digital lives and we have never been more excited about this jobs signature approach is known as the reality distortion field the reality distortion field is where he says and it only costs eighteen hundred dollars and people applaud and when they get home they say yeah but the computer that I have now cost $900 why is it good that it only costs $1,800 and worse still why did I buy one on the way out you're not talking about numbers you're not talking about you know anything rational you're talking about emotional in the summer of 2004 Apple Computer was thriving but its leader was not Jobs revealed in an employee email that he had been diagnosed with what he said was a treatable form of pancreatic cancer he wrote that he underwent successful surgery for the deadly disease and expected a full recovery you in 2007 after a frightening health scare Steve Jobs was back on stage for one of the most important launches in Apple's history it was a product Apple had been secretly developing for years is a revolutionary there was so much buzz about that there was estimated to be worth 400 million dollars that's all you could read about from October 2 through to January but there wasn't a goat farmer in Afghanistan that hadn't heard about the iPhone it was far more than a phone this is handheld computing a year later at an iPhone event in June of 2008 Jobs was noticeably thinner and frail speculation spread that the cancer he was treated for four years earlier had returned jobs jokingly shrugged off the rumors but after missing his first Macworld since his return he finally disclosed that his health problems were more complex and announced a medical leave of absence day-to-day operations were turned over to Apple's chief operating officer Tim Cook after a liver transplant in September 2009 Jobs returned in his trademark outfit to his familiar mark on stage so I now have the liver of a mid-20s person who died in a car crash and was generous enough to donate their organs and I wouldn't be here without such generosity I'm vertical I'm back at Apple loving every day of it the next year he revealed yet another extraordinary device with his typically less than subtle script it's phenomenal fantastic the best device I've ever seen and why to show it to you today for the first time and we'll call it the iPad it was another giant success for jobs but the celebration was short-lived in January 2011 with Apple surging to all-time highs Steve Jobs announced his third and final medical leave he finally encountered a foe he could not outrun true to form Jobs had anticipated this moment at Stanford in 2005 and what some now consider one of the best commencement addresses of all time don't let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice and most important have the courage to follow your heart and intuition they somehow already know what you truly want to become everything else is secondary ever a child of the 60s he signed off with words from a favorite source the Whole Earth Catalog stay hungry stay foolish thank you all very much song for me I'm not sleepy and there's no place I'm going to Steve Jobs died on October 5th 2011 at his home in Palo Alto he was 56 at the time of his death Apple Inc was the most valuable company in crown of creation so you could say well what's the big deal anybody could have done the Macintosh anybody had done the iPhone anybody could have built-in CD ROMs into computers anybody could have put firewire anybody could have done any of this the reality is nobody else did it and so that's the genius of Steve Jobs today on til tomorrow I think visionary is one of those words that gets abused and particularly in Silicon Valley when anyone wearing spectacles can recall the visionary steve is one of the very few people I think they're probably only a handful of people in Silicon Valley since World War two maybe you can count them on the fingers of one hand who deserve that moniker steve is one of them you

Channel: Bloomberg

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Keywords: Bloomberg, Steve Jobs (Computer Designer), apple, Apple Inc. (Organization), technology, macintosh, NEXT, biography, Tim Cook, iPhone, iOs, iPod

Id: 5fI3zz2cp3k

Length: 25min 47sec (1547 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 03 2014