iDiaries

Craig Solomonson, Vintage Collector: “…back then he had a clear vision of what the iPad would look like.” • Excerpt from Jobs’ speech at MECC ‘82 Conference

I worked as a software designer for MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium) from 1982 till 1999. We did primarily Apple software and I accumulated lots of Apple micros we used in our development and even met Steve Jobs in the fall of 1982. He inspired me to find an Apple 1 computer for my collection and I got lucky and ended up with 3 of them! They are all gone now, but I do have some stories about them to share.

(Source: youtube.com)

David Gelphman, Former Software Engineer, Apple: “And that day he was willing to let my friend be touched by what we do, even though it didn’t follow the rules.”

During the 12+ years I worked at Apple I never met with Steve Jobs for work purposes. Of course like all Apple employees I saw Steve in Caffé Macs or walking with Jony Ive around the courtyard inside the Infinite Loop campus. And of course there were Comm meetings that he would run. But I didn’t have any direct contact. Until…

 

In March 2010, just a couple of weeks before the iPad was due to be released publicly, I had a reason to contact Steve. A friend of mine was dying of liver disease and I was going to San Francisco to hopefully see and communicate with her while it was still possible. She was a friend from my Adobe days and was very much into technology. I thought it would be a treat for her to see an iPad. And I had one. But until the product was officially released I could not show it to anyone without permission from Apple management.

 

There was no way I was going to take the iPad with me unless Steve personally approved it. I knew that asking anyone in my direct management chain was a non-starter. I knew that nobody would take the risk. Only in the higher levels of iOS development would they be able to approve such a request and it seemed like a waste of time to bother trying. The easy answer was “No” and that is what I would hear. Nobody would care. 

 

So I wrote Steve.

    .

    .

    .  

(Source: davidgelphman.wordpress.com)

David Gelphman, Former Software Engineer, Apple: “He asked me a bit about who I was and what ideas I found interesting.”

One weekend day sometime around 1987 my (now) wife and I were walking the Stanford “Dish”; a lovely path in the hills above Stanford with wonderful views of the bay and even San Francisco if the visibility allows.

We were walking along with very few people and when we saw Steve Jobs coming from the other direction there was no mistaking who it was. Along with him was a little girl. I’d read enough about Steve by then to be pretty sure that little girl was Lisa.

After our walk we went to (the now defunct) Caffe Verona in downtown Palo Alto. Shortly after we arrived, Steve walks in with the little girl and sits at the table right next to us. My wife and I just looked at each other with surprise. After a few minutes we just had to leave – we had to talk about how crazy it was to bump into Steve again that day.

In 1989 or so when I was working at Adobe I got to go to a NeXT developer training session in Redwood City. On one of the evenings was a dinner hosted by NeXT and when I heard Steve sometimes goes to them I had to go. I sat down at one of the tables that seats 4-5 and sure enough, soon thereafter Steve comes and sits down directly next to me! He asked me a bit about who I was and what ideas I found interesting. My ideas obviously weren’t particularly interesting to Steve since he soon turned to the guy he came with and spent the rest of the dinner talking with him. He wasn’t rude to me really, he just wasn’t interested.

I came to Apple in 2000 and of course you’d see Steve around quite a bit. Usually in the cafeteria, sometimes headed into the lockdown area where product design is located, and, in the later years, frequently sitting on one of the benches in the quad talking with Jony Ive.

After his death the “celebration” event on campus was really something special. I really lost it when Norah Jones sang “Forever Young”. With her beautiful voice and the huge banner photos of a young Steve surrounding the quad it was just too much.

(Source: quora.com)

Rick Lucas, Managing partner, Lucas Design: “Each word spoken by Steve furthered an objective.”

During the go-go days of the mid to late 1980s, the primary criteria for landing a job in the nascent high technology industry was the ability to hang on to the tiger’s tail. In my case, I was only six years removed from a rural Iowa high school when I had the experience of working with Steve and his inner circle on development of a third-party software product for NeXT.

For nearly anyone working on the frontlines of high-tech at the time (especially the self-taught, as so many of us were), Steve Jobs was the zeitgeist personified.

With several friends at Apple, I was well acquainted with the Apple milieu. Upon visiting the NeXT offices for the first time, it was clear that Steve was attempting to build something very different in both physical and cultural space. While modest in size, the NeXT offices were extraordinarily well appointed (including a remarkable free-standing spiral stairway, bespoke by Steve and which I recall as being one of the few of its kind in the world).

In vivid contrast to the physical space was a classic Silicon Valley bootstrap culture that screamed ‘laid back’ (with seemingly displaced hippies at every turn), while possessing the energy of a coiled spring just beneath the surface.

I met with the NeXT inner circle numerous times over a period of several months, with Steve in attendance at each meeting. Reputation aside, in my entire experience with Steve I found him to be soft-spoken and gracious to the point of being deferential. What others have characterized as bluntness struck me as simply an efficiency of words. Each word spoken by Steve furthered an objective.

In the end, I was offered a job at NeXT. I declined, afraid the energy of the place, and of Steve Jobs, would consume me.

(Source: Fast Company)

Ryan McGeehan, Director, Security at Facebook: “You kind of look like Steve Jo…”

I met Steve at Whole Foods and got 5 minutes of chat out of him.

I was checking out and was tapped on the shoulder. I was asked where I got the lemonade I was checking out with. I pointed to the back of the store and told him where I found it. As he turned around I said something bro’ish like “this stuff rules and you should go get some” and he laughed a bit.

About now I made eye contact with him. In hindsight he knew what was about to happen, because he started nodding as soon as I started saying “You kind of look like Steve Jo…”. Right about here he is grinning, almost implying that I should spit it out. “I guess you’re Steve Jobs. I’m Ryan, I work at Facebook.”

Then I shook his hand and let a chat flow, ready to leave him alone if it seemed I was getting on his nerves.

Not so interesting, but this is a pretty rough description of what happened next. He asked what I do for Facebook. I told him I deal with “Internet Bad Guys” and he mentioned that Apple’s got some good folks that “deal with that too”.

Ran out of trivial chats, and I said it was nice to meet him. He remembered my name and said bye, and I remember being impressed with him minutes later that he remembered my name considering how many people he must have to deal with. 

(Source: quora.com)

Tom Zimberoff, Photographer behind the incredible ‘Nose Jobs’ portrait: “Jobs used shock and awe to separate the meek from those with more mettle.”

I shot Steve Jobs on a magazine assignment, in 1989, at NeXT Computer in Palo Alto, California (before he reconnected with Apple). I arrived on location early to look around for props. I found a replica of theRosetta Stone hanging on his office wall. Perfect! Consider it the original tablet computer. I took it to the lobby, where I had more room to set up lights and cameras, and I wouldn’t have to drive Jobs out of his own workspace while making Polaroid test shots with a stand-in. (In the analog era we called them “Paranoids.”)

But there were several huge windows in the lobby. I sent my assistant out to bring back yards and yards of opaque, black velvet drapes to block the daylight, so I could control my lighting effects. It took a few hours to seal out the sun and turn the lobby into a makeshift studio. Everything was ready to make this photo shoot as convenient as possible for Jobs.

He arrived accompanied by an entourage that included musician Stephen Stills (of Crosby Stills Nash & Young), whom I already knew from an album cover shoot we did in 1977. Jobs brushed right past me, took a perfunctory look at my set and said, right In front of everyone, “Who’s stupid f%∞&@¢# idea was this?” I said it was my stupid f%∞&@¢# idea, and if he didn’t like it he could go f%∞& himself because I went to a lot of trouble just to make him look good—for me to look good for my client, too. 

I don’t remember the details, but while some huffing and puffing went on among Jobs’s acolytes, I went over to say hello to Stephen Stills. I was prepared to pack up and leave without a picture. But Jobs came over, all smiles, and apologized.

Only recently, after reading his posthumously-published biography, I discovered that such startling outbursts of invective were not reserved for visiting photographers, like me. Apparently, they were pretty common. Jobs used shock and awe to separate the meek from those with more mettle. Anyway, we got down to work. Several different setups and wardrobe changes later, we finished with The Nose.

(Source: kickstarter.com)

Hannah Zhang, Recipient of Steve’s “4000 lattes to go” prank call: “I would’ve asked him if he’d want to come down to our store so I can make him the perfect drink.”

Honestly, I was shocked. I have never heard somebody order 4,000 lattes to go. I didn’t say anything because I was shocked. But my first impression was that he was just being humorous. He sounded like a gentleman.

My friends were surprised and jealous, like, “Wow, you got a chance to talk to Steve Jobs?” They say to me, “You should’ve said more! You just say Good morning and How can I help you.”

Before him, we never received such an order. After he made the call, everyone copied him, prank calling our store and ordering thousands of lattes—to this day!

(Source: Fast Company)

Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney • SJ: “Hey, Bob, I saw the movie you just released last night, and it sucked.”

Steve and I spent more time negotiating the social issues than we did the economic issues. He thought maintaining the culture of Pixar was a major ingredient of their creative success. He was right. 

Periodically he would call and say, “Hey, Bob, I saw the movie you just released last night, and it sucked”.  Nevertheless, having Jobs as a friend and adviser was additive rather than the other way around.

(Source: businessweek.com)

Arthur Levinson, Chairman of Apple: “He was a one of a kind guy.”

Apple chairman Arthur D. Levinson spoke at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business on February 19th, 2013.

I’m still not to the point where I walk into that boardroom and don’t miss Steve, He was a one of a kind guy. The Steve Jobs that was in the public eye was not, for the most part, the Steve Jobs that I knew.

(Source: CNN)

Alastair Sweeny, Author & Publisher • SJ: “The Web, right?”

I had been a contributor to Apple’s eWorld online service, a paid site managed by AOL. One of the first things Steve did when he came back was ax eWorld, which had just been made obsolete by the emergence of the Web. A lot of people were heartbroken by the shutting down of this cute little virtual walled garden.  I attended the Boston Macworld that year, with a press pass, and at a “Meet Steve” party, I told him I had worked on eWorld, but congratulated him on axing it. “The Web, right?” he replied with a smirk. It’s ironic to see that Apple and other companies are inexorably moving toward creating their own walled gardens in the cloud, in part to provide protection to their customers.

(Source: quora.com)