by Mark Milian
In hindsight, Gil’s crowning achievement was to negotiate the return of Steve Jobs by acquiring NeXT. It almost didn’t happen. Gil was also bargaining with Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple executive who left to run a software company called Be Inc. Before developing operating system BeOS, Jean was a principal creator of the Newton, then with John Sculley’s blessing. Gil and Jean couldn’t come to an agreement in negotiations for Apple to buy Be, and so Jean continued independently until his company’s assets were purchased by Palm Inc. Gil bought NeXT because Apple’s computers were in desperate need of a modern operating system. At Apple, the NeXTSTEP software eventually became Mac OS X. To thank Gil for bringing the Apple co-founder back to his roots as a consultant, Steve organized a boardroom coup to overthrow Gil. Steve took over as interim CEO in 1997, and seemingly reluctantly, he was formally named chief in 2000.
All the while, the Newton languished. The products were not performing well in the marketplace or in customers’ hands. Most were PDAs, released before people understood the value of digital organizers, but one product, which also ran the Newton software, was a funky-looking laptop called the eMate 300. Before his ouster, Gil Amelio spun off the Newton into Apple’s wholly-owned entity called Newton Inc., perhaps to set it up for sale. Several months later, when Steve Jobs took over, he brought the unit back into Apple. It was an expensive project, which some considered central to Apple’s future. Was that still the case, or would Steve shutter it so that he could write a new future for Apple? That was the question Adam Tow posed to Jobs by e-mail in 1997. For the developer of Newton software, Steve’s response was encouraging.
Adam,
The Emate has a bright future - and it is for this reason that I am pulling it back into Apple -which has the resouces to market and sell it much more broadly. You can imagine that a small spin-off company would not have such a large sales force or marketing budget. With the appropriate investments in sales and marketing, we hope that the Emate can become a great success.
We are a little more confused about the MessagePad. Since it costs more ($1K or more vs $700-799 for the Emate) and has no keyboard, its market seems more limited than the Emate. However, sales of the current MessagePad are brisk, so who knows... What do you think?
Don’t worry - we are pulling this group back into Apple so that we can invest even more sales and marketing resources into these products, rather than dumping the products into a small spin-off which lacks such resources.
Best,
Steve
The arguments are logical. The MessagePad was expensive, which limited it to a niche market. And the whole Newton Inc. endeavor could have been stunted by its orphan from Apple. Steve apparently had a change of heart five months after writing this letter, which is when development and production of the Newton was cancelled. Apple, having grown into a powerful but flailing giant under Jobs-less business leadership, had a legion of development teams working independently on unrelated projects. The situation may have forced Steve’s hand to streamline the products and reduce expenditure.
In a way, the eMate did have “a bright future” in the form of the iBook, a notebook computer introduced in 1999 that runs the Mac operating system. Though they ran different software, the iBook and eMate look similar. That Steve dismissed the MessagePad because it “has no keyboard” is laughable now because the same criticisms were lobbed at him when he introduced the touchscreen iPad. Steve began conceptualizing the device just a few years after killing the MessagePad.
Yet, while Steve went about working on a tablet without a keyboard, he continued to publicly pan tablets and argue that computers need to have physical keys. “It turns out people want keyboards,” Steve said. Thanks to the Newton, Apple “has the best handwriting software in the world now,” but “it doesn’t matter. It’s really slow to write stuff. You know, you could never keep up with your e-mail if you had to write it all out.” The handwriting-recognition technology was incorporated into Mac OS X, but the feature has been largely ignored.
Perfecting the PDA became central to Steve’s mission. In 1997, he orchestrated an attempt at buying the PalmPilot unit from 3Com, and by the next year, he was talking about an Apple palm computer in Fortune magazine. Still no PDA from Apple on the market by 2002, a fan named Ben said he wrote Steve a letter asking about the project and mentioning websites that had published mockups of what an Apple hand-held might look like. Steve had an assistant call Ben to thank him for the letter and ask how to locate the prototype sites. During the call, the assistant handed the phone off to someone, who, according to Ben, said: “Hi Ben, this is Steve Jobs. Your talk of mockup sites was all news to me. What are some URLs so my people and I can look at these?” In addition to the rare opportunity to chat with Steve Jobs, Ben received a free Apple t-shirt.
By 2003, Steve had determined that cell phones would supplant the PDA. “You're going to have to have a phone in your pocket. So that’s going to have to be the device that carries this information,” he said at the All Things Digital conference then. It was also by this point that he privately decided to put the tablet project on hold and start working on a phone, which took another four years to come to fruition. However, at that conference, Steve said he did not want to get into the phone business. “We chose instead to do the iPod instead of the PDA. We put our resources behind that,” he said. The iPod’s operating system was developed by a team made up of some former Newton engineers who formed a startup called Pixo Inc. Soon after, Apple acquired Pixo OS, which became the iPod’s integrated software. Pixo, the company, was acquired by Sun Microsystems, Apple’s longtime suitor, in 2003.
Apple perhaps could have done quite well with a PDA if it had struck at the right time. The Newton was ahead of its time, but it had some of the right ideas. There was a period when Palm was very successful with its PDAs. But Apple’s never surfaced, and in 2007, Steve said he was proud not to have introduced “an Apple PDA” into the market. Steve’s desire to create the best PDA was replaced by his dismissal of the entire category. It was perhaps a personal battle. In 2010, BusinessWeek asked John Sculley about the old rumor that Steve “had killed the Newton — your pet project — out of revenge. Do you think he did it for revenge?” John responded: “Probably. He won’t talk to me, so I don’t know.”
Chapter 2
Read Receipt
Some people get hassled when they don’t respond to e-mail. Steve Jobs got hounded when he did. Truth is: Steve was practically larger than life. He was inarguably the biggest celebrity in business. Speaking rationally, of course an executive at a top technology company uses e-mail. But on the other hand, could these frequently disseminated messages really be from Steve himself? Does Steve have the time or the will to read and reply to individual inquiries?
Several skeptics have gone so far as to send e-mails specifically to inquire about whether Steve actually read his e-mails and whether he was the one typing responses. One such request went out on March 4, 2003. Christopher Utley composed a message to [email protected] with the subject line: “Help me, Steve.” Christopher first established that he and Steve had a brief history together (“Steve, you have replied to me a couple times over the years.”), and then appealed to his sympathies (“I've been an Apple customer since the Apple II+, AND I voted for you in the Forbes CEO survey.”). Finally, Christopher called in the favor: “Would you please reply in the affirmative that you do in fact read your email and sometimes respond directly? Let’s just say I have a pending wager on this matter, and should you reply I’ll use the proceeds to snatch up one of those 17” PowerBooks. It’s a win-win!” The next morning, he received a message.
Yep, I read 'em.
All the best,
Steve
Christopher eagerly shared his findings on a Web forum where Apple enthusiasts congregate. Two years later, Ricardo Perez composed a similar message to Steve Jobs.
From: Ricardo Perez
To: [email protected]
Subject: please make my d
ay
Is this Steve Jobs’ email address?
I heard that you actually read your own email and responded to it. I thought this was the greatest thing ever. If a man such as you (and a great one you are) sets the time aside from his busy schedule to read letters from his fans… well… that would be absurdly awesome. If you could see it in your heart to respond, and just let me know there is a living breathing person out there, you would truly make my YEAR!
One of your biggest fans
Ricky
When Ricardo described his experiment on an online message board, he said he composed the note “hoping that if I flattered him enough, he would respond.” Not one to reject praise, Steve did return Ricardo’s love letter.
Ricky,
Yep, I do.
All the best,
Steve
“There was never anything humble about Steve Jobs,” says a computer-store manager who sold the first Apple computers and later had a falling out with Steve over business disagreements. Steve liked to portray himself as an average dude who returns an e-mail if he can provide an answer and is befuddled by anyone’s expectation to the contrary. His biological sister, the author Mona Simpson who divulged her familial relationship to Steve when he was 27, published a novel in 1996 called A Regular Guy. It is about a jeans-wearing Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Tom Owens who founded a company in Alta called Genesis and was pushed out in a power struggle with an executive he recruited named Rooney. The protagonist, who shares a striking resemblance to the author’s brother, is a man of false humility.
Steve’s “regular guy” persona itself could be seen as a business tactic. The uniformed and charismatic Steve Jobs, says Sasha Strauss, the managing director of marketing firm Innovation Protocol, “is a character. That is a profile that has been created by him or his advisors.” However, people who knew him say Steve’s genius, as a businessman, inventor and friend, was not manufactured. They say he was a kind person who was faithful to his friends, loved his employees and loved his family even more. It may be difficult to comprehend that a person, for any reason, would wear that same outfit in every public appearance unless he were somehow in character. In fact, there were a lot of things about Steve that are hard to believe.
For someone who was known to be exceptionally guarded about his personal life, and especially about his family, the number of “I remember when Steve” stories are staggering, and even more emerged after his death. For example, one student recounted giving a presentation about the iPhone shortly after its 2007 debut to a small business class taught by Intel co-founder Andy Grove. In attendance was none other than iPhone inventor Steve Jobs, a longtime friend of Andy. Unsurprisingly, the student says Steve gave him a hard time during the iPhone talk and then took over the stage.
Another memorable Steve story came from Allen Paltrow, an ardent, young Apple follower known for shaving the company logo into the back of his head. Allen messaged Steve when he was a tween. “I sent a very enthusiastic and grammatically incorrect message including a picture of my shaved head,” Allen recalled in a blog post. Steve forwarded the message to Apple’s head of public relations, who then arranged to have Allen at the opening of New York’s 5th Avenue glass-cube store. “I can never thank them enough. This was probably the high point of my childhood,” Allen said. Another child who attended the opening, according to Allen, remarked to Steve, “I’m Apple’s biggest fan,” to which Steve motioned to Allen and said, “What about that guy?”
Steve was not a social butterfly during the third act who was attending conferences or cocktail parties, but he did not shy away from public encounters. He lived in a modest-sized house in Palo Alto, California (modest for a billionaire) that was neither gated, nor flanked by security guards. However, near the end of his life, black, unmarked sports-utility vehicles were seen parked across the street, but even around that time, he continued to take long walks around the neighborhood and to the park.
In better health, he could be seen around the San Francisco Bay Area shopping, having dinner with his family and yes, taking leisurely walks. When approached by fans, Steve was courteous. “Hello,” he’d say. He would thank people who were enthusiastic about his products or his contributions to technology and media. Often, to people expressing excitement about Apple products, Steve would add: “You have not seen anything yet,” as he told Nitin Gupta a month before Apple announced the iPod; or, “This is nothing. Wait till you see what’s next,” as he told Steven Levy, the author and reporter, who was admiring the iPhone then, unbeknownst that the unveiling of the iPad was close by.
But strangely, Steve sometimes presented himself in the least lovable way to the professionals who could most easily tarnish his reputation. He once opened a conversation with New York Times reporter Joe Nocera by saying, “I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” At least he got a comment. In reporting a story for the Los Angeles Times, I took a shot at the e-mail game. with a message about his messaging habits, and lost. Ignored. Reporters are not above the tactics of Christopher Utley or Ricardo Perez, though they tend to not overuse flattery. Rob Pegoraro, on behalf of the Washington Post, composed a message on July 2, 2010 with the subject, “How do we know it’s really you who sent those e-mails?” He asked, “Is there any way to know that you wrote the message somebody else has reproduced on another site short of asking about each case?” Steve’s reply was characteristically succinct: “Nope.”
Steve was asked several times to address the issue of whether or not he was a real person who checked his e-mail and wrote back. When Steve discussed the prospect for an Apple PDA at a conference in 2003, several years after he had shuttered the Newton division, he said it was among the most common requests from customers. He also provided a small window into his mailbox. “My e-mail address is out there, so I get an e-mail every time somebody, you know, goes to the bathroom in Iowa,” he quipped. Steve responded to a lot of e-mails, and so from firsthand experience, he determined that stylus-based input, like those commonly found on PDAs and Windows Mobile devices, was inefficient. “If you do email of any volume, you’ve got to have a keyboard,” he said.
The same topic, about him responding to e-mails, came up again seven years later at the same conference venue, called All Things Digital. When a reporter pointed out that his e-mails often got published, whether or not Steve viewed it as surprising or as a betrayal of trust. “I know,” he said without further explanation. When asked what motivated his famous e-mail phenomenon, he offered only, “I’ve actually always done a bit of that.”
Chapter 3
New Message
For a reporter, there are few greater triumphs than breaking a story. To be the first person to bring something new to the world is a landmark. Steve Jobs’ shared similar convictions, and in some instances, that made reporters his enemies. It was evident, through his arrogance and his willful attempts at manipulation, that Steve did not appreciate or generally respect the news media. Rather, he saw them as valuable but only when used as a tool to accomplish his goals.
The media may love getting their scoops, but Steve savored his ladlefuls. Many tried, and some succeeded at, revealing what Apple was doing before Steve was ready to. From then on, Steve and his enforcers made sure that the enemies of secrecy were not in comfortable positions when dealing with Apple. As the company continued to gain power, that stance became more prevalent and more concerning to those tasked with covering its business.
Though not a news organization, Flurry, an analytics research firm, became a target of Apple’s vengeance. The company tried to make a name for itself by cunningly injecting its software into other apps and then recording the fingerprints of devices that access them in order to uncover when Apple was testing a new iOS product. After reporting its findings to various blogs, Steve Jobs and co. had a fit and quickly retaliated. Malcolm Barclay, an independent app developer and consultant, wrote Steve an e-mail on June 18, 2010 lamenting recent changes to the developer
agreement that had effectively eliminated tools like Flurry. “Is this draconian measure simply in place just so we don’t see what Apple is working on next?” Malcolm asked.
Later that day, with a sleight of hand, Steve replied: “All the data Flurry is collecting is not anonymous, and the user is never asked their permission to give any data. Two cardinal privacy rules violated.” He expanded on this at a conference soon after, saying, “One day we read in the paper that a company called Flurry Analytics has detected that we have some new iPhone and other tablet devices that we’re using on our campus. We thought: what the hell? The way that they did this is they’re getting developers to put their software in their apps and their software is sending out information about the device and about its geolocation and other things back to Flurry. No customer is ever asked about this. It’s violating every rule in our privacy policy with our developers, and we went through the roof about this.” Steve concluded: “After we calm down from being pissed off, then we’re willing to talk to some of these analytics firms. But it’s not today.”