by Mark Milian
An Apple employee in 2001 who goes by the name Mike Evangelist had a good idea on November 30 of that year. Early that morning, Mike was still reeling from the news that George Harrison of the Beatles had died. He knew he wasn’t grieving alone at Apple; many people who worked there were Beatles fans and had been affected by the loss. Mike fired off a message to Steve Jobs suggesting that Apple do some sort of tribute to George on its homepage, but he did not hear back. Then, hours later, Mike learned that Apple’s Web team was assigned to work overtime as a result of his suggestion. Steve liked Mike’s idea and debated on his favorite pictures of George to be displayed on Apple’s website. For the first time, Apple would forgo its splash page of product promotions in favor of a tasteful tribute with a photo and only the words “George Harrison 1943-2001.” This wouldn’t be the last time Apple would do this. For one, the homepage was replaced a decade later with “Steve Jobs 1955-2011.”
Steve’s humbleness showed itself in a 1999 meeting with staff, as recounted in a story told after his death by Marc Hedlund, who was there. Then, Apple had had its first big hit in a long time with the candy-colored iMac computers. Clearly ebullient over the hard-earned victory, the crowd of Apple employees cheered for several minutes when their leader arrived to the meeting. Steve calmed them down, and then said, “That’s an awful lot of applause considering that you guys are the ones who do all the work.” Steve egged them on as they cheered even louder.
Chapter 9
Offline
The applause fell silent on August 24, 2011. That’s when Steve Jobs sent a message addressed to “the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community” that began: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”
Steve never felt obligated to clue the world into the details of his health issues over the years until the outcome had been determined and ample time had passed. His surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004 wasn’t disclosed until after his surgery and healthy return. Another health problem, which was innocuously described at first as a “hormone imbalance,” turned into a six-month leave during which Steve underwent a liver transplant. The disclosures about his health, an expected practice for such a highly visible public business leader, came well after the operations and past the proper window, according to business analysts. Yet, Steve would reemerge, even during medical leaves, to take the stage and proudly show off his creations regardless of how gaunt he looked at the time. The world watched with awe and melancholy as Steve Jobs slowly disappeared before our eyes.
The rare times when Steve publicly waxed philosophical were the most memorable. Perhaps the most widely quoted is his 2005 commencement address to Stanford University’s graduating class: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” He continued: “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.”
Having faced death several times, people looked to Steve for advice on dealing with the inevitable, and he was willing and eager to offer his guidance. One of the first calls Bob Longo, a former sales chief for NeXT Computer, made after getting diagnosed with cancer was to Steve. (They shared the same oncologist and radiologist.) The pair kept in touch, Bob recalled to the Pittsburgh Business Times, and he received an exuberant e-mail from Steve after Bob described his successful surgery. Bob said: “Messages from him were generally laconic. This one had 20 exclamation points. I have a cousin who’s a pretty well regarded cancer research doctor and told him the doctor Steve referred me to; he said, ‘Don’t even ask for a second opinion. Start your treatment.’”
Steve’s views on existence, as he increasingly faced his own mortality, became ever more poetic toward the end. He was intensely emotional at times. “I don’t think of my life as a career,” he told Time in 2010, “I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That’s not a career — it’s a life!” He shared his condolences and personal revelations with others facing similar pressures. A man named James e-mailed Steve on April 20, 2010 to thank him for supporting an organ donor program. James mentioned that his girlfriend had died of melanoma two years before. Steve replied: “Your most welcome, James. I’m sorry about your girlfriend. Life is fragile.”
We are all fruit hanging from branches. We ripen, rot and fall to the earth. Steve said in an interview with the Computerworld Honors Program in 1995: “We’re all going to be dead soon; that’s my point of view. Somebody once told me, they said, ‘Live each day as if it would be your last, and one day you’ll certainly be right.’ I do that. You never know when you’re going to go, but you are going to go pretty soon. If you’re going to leave anything behind, it’s going to be your kids, a few friends and your work. So that’s what I tend to worry about.”
Steve Jobs’ outlook on life did not change over the next 16 years. His authorized biographer, Walter Isaacson, wrote that Steve’s final days were spent mapping and tuning new projects for Apple, and meeting friends to reminisce for one last time. This was the real end, not the false alarm he disclosed in the Stanford speech, though the ultimate steps are the same: “My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.” In the biographer’s final interview with Steve shortly before his death, Walter asked why such a private man would grant such unprecedented access. “I wanted my kids to know me,” Steve said. “I wasn't always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”
Steve Jobs put a dent in the universe. He transformed industries, improved important tools and changed things for humankind. Earth raced to keep up with him. We needed Steve, and for the biggest fans, one short e-mail acknowledgement was a triumph. Steve apparently needed us, too. “You know, there’s nothing that makes my day more than getting an email from some random person in the universe who just bought an iPad over in the U.K. and tells me the story about how it’s the coolest product they’ve ever brought home, you know, in their lives. That’s what keeps me going. And it’s what kept me going five years ago. It’s what kept me going 10 years ago, when the doors were almost closed. And it’s what’ll keep me going five years from now, whatever happens,” Steve said in 2010. He died a year later.
The five stages of grief played out publicly around the world. Many of the people who knew him and were closest to him broke Steve’s culture of secrecy to tell their stories that unveiled the shreds of his genius. Those Silicon Valley luminaries convened a couple of weeks after Steve’s death at the Stanford Memorial Church for an exclusive memorial. Hundreds of friends, technology leaders, elected officials and celebrities — President Bill Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, U2‘s Bono, former vice president Al Gore, Google CEO Larry Page and singer Joan Baez — attended to pay their respects. California Governor Jerry Brown declared October 16, 2011 as Steve Jobs Day.
Three days later, thousands of Apple employees at its Cupertino, California headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop stepped away from their terminals to convene in the campus courtyard amphitheater for a large celebration of Steve Jobs’ life. Pictures of Steve were draped from the side
s of office buildings. Apple closed every one of its stores during the celebration so that clerks could tune into a live broadcast of the event and partake in the remembrance.
Apple Stores also provided a public memorial site immediately after his death, when crowds assembled to lay candles, flowers and partially-eaten apples near the entrances. They wrote messages on Post-It notes that were affixed to the stores’ show windows. Apple offered an e-mail address, [email protected], for fans to send their condolences and share the impact that Steve had had on their lives. The outpouring was overwhelming, and Apple culled the submissions for a page at apple.com/stevejobs, which presents a flow of stirring and fond letters.
As for Steve Jobs’ direct e-mail address, anyone who sent a message there in the weeks following his death did not get an auto-reply or a bounce-back message. They got what most people, except for a lucky flock, received when Steve was alive and his attention was in high demand: silence.
Signature
The world needs a great magician. He can come from anywhere, but in the high-tech landscape, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll come from the ranks of Apple. After all, the company holds the cards and the techniques that formed Steve Jobs’ magic tricks. Employees are taught those methods in a program called Apple University. Executives who worked with the inspirational founder teach recruits the values and mantras of Apple, which not coincidentally were those of Steve.
Tim Cook was Steve’s protege; the operations wizard studied the visionary sorcerer. Steve recruited Tim from Compaq, after Steve secretly ran operations at Apple by himself for nine months. They worked together for more than a decade. “I found someone I saw eye-to-eye with, and that was Tim Cook,” Steve told BusinessWeek in 2004. “After Tim came on board, we basically reinvented the logistics of the PC business.” Tim took Steve’s mantle during the periods when Steve took time off to fight his illness, and then indefinitely when Steve was on the verge of losing his ultimate battle with cancer. Tim, a soft-spoken Alabaman, does not have Steve’s charisma or his foresight or his eye for design. However, people who have worked with Tim say he is an astute leader, peacekeeper and shrewd negotiator.
In the first weeks since the official passing of the torch, Tim demonstrated that his is a different show, despite a promise in his e-mail announcing the change in leadership saying “that Apple is not going to change.” He promoted Eddy Cue to a senior vice president role, and he passed an initiative in which Apple would match employees’ charitable donations, which he also announced in an e-mail.
Steve was not much of a philanthropist. He incorporated the Steven P. Jobs Foundation in January 1987 after founding NeXT. The organization was concerned with health and food issues, (Steve was a pescatarian) but shifted its focus to “social entrepreneurship” upon the urging of Mark Vermilion, the man Steve recruited to run the foundation, according to Fortune. Steve hired famed graphic designer Paul Rand to design the organization’s logo but shuttered the foundation after less than 15 months. Within weeks of returning to Apple a decade after his short-lived philanthropic endeavor, Steve cut all of the company’s longstanding charitable programs citing the need to return to profitability.
A curious thing happened after Steve Jobs resigned and quieted his digital communications. E-mails from the new CEO, Tim Cook, began landing in the inboxes of enthusiastic Apple fans and on the same blogs that followed Steve’s every word.
Tim responded to several people who sent notes of congratulations. “Thanks Gary,” he told Gary Ng. “Thanks Zech,” he told Zech Yohannes. “Thanks Justin. War Eagle Forever!” he replied (with two spaces between sentences) to a graduate of his alma mater, Auburn University, whose sports teams he follows religiously. One person e-mailed Tim bemoaning the loss of file and preference synchronization in the transition from Internet services MobileMe to iCloud. The message was forwarded to executive relations, which called the sender and explained that Apple is open to bringing those features back if the company receives enough feedback requesting them.
Ben Gold offered Tim a line of unsolicited advice: “Don’t be Steve Jobs, be Tim Cook,” he wrote in an e-mail. Tim replied: “Don’t worry. It’s the only person I know how to be.” That’s precisely what Steve had preached. Don’t make things that are pretty good; make them “insanely great.” Don’t try to be Steve Jobs or anyone else; follow your own intuition. Don’t think like the people in charge; “think different.” That was the salient message Steve sent.
About the Author
Mark Milian covers consumer technology for CNN and was previously a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. This is his first book.
Notes
Preface
Interview with Brian X. Chen; Mario Bitensky, "WikiLeaks releases 140,000 emails from Steve Jobs," Scoopertino, December 12, 2010; Alex Riley, "Superbrands' success fuelled by sex, religion and gossip," BBC, May 16, 2011; Jay Yarow, "How To Get Steve Jobs To Respond To Your Email," Business Insider, January 5, 2011.
Chapter 1
Interview with John Casasanta; Tim Berners-Lee, "Steve Jobs and the actually usable computer," W3C Blog, http://www.w3.org/QA/2011/10/steve_jobs.html; Peter Burrows, "The Seed of Apple's Innovation," BusinessWeek, October 12, 2004; Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher interview with Steve Jobs, All Things Digital conference, May 28, 2003; Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement address, June 14, 2005; Leaner Kahney, "Being Steve Jobs' Boss," Bloomberg Businessweek, October 20, 2010; David Kirkpatrick, "The Second Coming of Apple," Fortune, November 9, 1998; Apple Computer news conference in San Jose, California, October 12, 2005; John Markoff, "An 'Unknown' Co-Founder Leaves After 20 Years of Glory and Turmoil," New York Times, September 1, 1997; Metzen and Usedmac, "Encounter's with famed Apple Employee's," MacNN Forums, http://forums.macnn.com/89/macnn-lounge/103392/encounters-with-famed-apple-employees/; Daniel S. Morrow, "Steve Jobs: Oral History," Computerworld Honors Program, April 20, 1995; Joe Nocera, "Apple’s Culture of Secrecy," New York Times, July 26, 2008; Adam Tow, "Steve Jobs Letter," Michigan State University student website, https://www.msu.edu/~luckie/jobslet.htm; Stan Veit, "Apple II," PC History, http://www.pc-history.org/apple.htm.
Chapter 2
Interview with Sasha Strauss; Steven Levy, “Steve Jobs, 1955-2011,” Wired, October 5, 2011; Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher interviews with Steve Jobs, All Things Digital conferences; Dan Murillo, “A fond memory of my presentation to Steve Jobs,” http://damurillo.tumblr.com/post/11125973251/a-fond-memory-of-my-presentation-to-steve-jobs; Joe Nocera, "Apple’s Culture of Secrecy," New York Times, July 26, 2008; Allen Paltrow, “My Experience with Jobs and Apple,” http://allenpaltrow.tumblr.com/post/9375814057/my-experience-with-jobs-and-apple; Rob Pegoraro, “Don’t read too much into Steve Jobs’ e-mails,” Washington Post, July 1, 2010; Ricardo Perez, “I Think I Found Steve Jobs (AIM),” MacRumors Forums, http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=124731&page=2; Mona Simpson, A Regular Guy. Random House, 1997; Christopher Utley, “An Open Letter to Steve Jobs,” MacNN Forums, http://forums.macnn.com/69/mac-notebooks/149219/an-open-letter-to-steve-jobs/.
Chapter 3
Evan Agee, “I got an email from Steve Jobs!!!!,” http://www.evanagee.com/blog/2010/10/20/email-steve-jobs/; Malcolm Barclay, “Steve doesn’t like Flurry et al,” http://mbarclay.net/2010/06/19/steve-doesnt-like-flurry-et-al/; Josh Cheney, “Macworld,” http://img.ly/images/613315/full; Chris B., “AirPrint Not Pulled !?! - Steve Told Me,” MacRumors Forums, http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=11397413; Mike Contaxis, “Steve Jobs: ‘Final Cut Pro is Alive and Well,’” Mac Soda, February 26, 2010; Mike Contaxis, “Steve Jobs: ‘Next Final Cut Studio Will Be Awesome,’” Mac Soda, April 13, 2010; Graham Hall, “Interesting Email I Got From The Office Of Steve Jobs,” MacRumors Forums, http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=363383; Eliot, “In Steve Jobs’ Own Words,” Meizu Me, http://www.meizume.com/general-meizu-m8/12293-steve-jobs-own-words.html; Nicolas Furno, “Xserve: ‘Pour ainsi dire, personne ne les achetait’ (Steve Jobs),” Mac
Generation, November 8, 2010; Mark Gurman, “Jobs: There won't be a 'mute-switch becomes an orientation lock' option for iPad,” 9to5Mac, October 23, 2010; Mark Gurman, “Steve Jobs: No USB 3 ‘at this time,’” 9to5Mac, October 29, 2010; Zee Kane, “Steve Jobs Personally Replies To Yet Another Email. Says Universal Inbox is Coming To The iPhone,” The Next Web, March 23, 2010; Arnold Kim, “Steve Jobs Says Printing ‘Will Come’ for iPad,” Mac Rumors, May 10, 2010; Jemima Kiss, “Steve Jobs replies to UK developer on iPhone 4.0 font size,” The Guardian, June 1, 2010; Brian Lam, “Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An Asshole),” The Wirecutter, October 5, 2011; Adam Lashinksy, “How Apple works: Inside the world's biggest startup,” Fortune, August 25, 2011; Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher interview with Steve Jobs, All Things Digital conference; Steven Sande, “Steve-mail says Keynote ‘11 to have AirPlay, Apple TV capabilities,” The Unofficial Apple Weblog, November 13, 2010; Eric Slivka, “A Look at Apple’s Handling of Customer Emails to Executives as Tim Cook Takes Charge,” Mac Rumors, August 30, 2011; Eric Slivka, “Steve Jobs: AirPlay Video Streaming Coming to Safari and Third-Party Apps in 2011,” Mac Rumors, November 30, 2010; Eric Slivka, “Steve Jobs Confirms Discontinuation of iWeb in iCloud Transition,” Mac Rumors, June 12, 2011; Eric Slivka, “Steve Jobs: MobileMe to 'Get A Lot Better' Next Year,” Mac Rumors, December 7, 2010; Eric Slivka, “Steve Jobs Reassured Customer Concerned for Mac OS X Server's Future,” Mac Rumors, January 18, 2011; Eric Slivka, “Steve Jobs: Support for iTunes Extras and iTunes LP 'Coming' to New Apple TV,” Mac Rumors, November 2, 2010; “Steve Jobs email: Over the air iPhone 4 HD video uploads coming ‘in the future,’” MacDailyNews, June 30, 2010; “Steve Jobs: HTML5 Geocoding will come to Safari ‘soon,’” Emails From Steve Jobs, May 6, 2010; “Steve Jobs ‘thinks’ that some day you will be able to transfer game saves from device to device,” Emails From Steve Jobs, December 14, 2010; Ven000m, https://twitter.com/ven000m/status/11988413732; Christina Warren, “Steve Jobs: Wi-Fi iPhone Syncing Coming ‘Someday,’” Mashable, June 23, 2010; Seth Weintraub, “Steve Jobs: Giant leap to driverless printing is huge,” 9to5Mac, November 22, 2010.