Apple Computer Inc - Steve Jobs: the man who thought different: a biography

THE MAN WHO THOUGHT DIFFERENT

A BIOGRAPHY BY KAREN BLUMENTHAL

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney

Published in 2012 in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP

First published in 2012 in the United States by Feiwel and Friends,
an imprint of Macmillan.

This electronic edition published in February 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright 2012 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright 2012 Karen Blumenthal
Design: Ashley Halsey
Cover design: Saffron Stocker and Katie Cline

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Disclaimer: This biography is not endorsed by Apple. This is an
unauthorised/unofficial biography.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN: 978 1 4088 3207 3

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To Brad

Introduction:
Three stories

On a warm June day in 2005, Steve Jobs went to his first college graduation as the commencement speaker. The billionaire founder and leader of Apple Computer wasnt just another stuffed-shirt businessman. Though only fifty years old, the college dropout was a technology rock star, a living legend to millions of people around the world.

In his early twenties, Jobs almost single-handedly introduced the world to the first computer that could sit on your desk and actually do something all by itself. He revolutionized music and the ears of a generation with a spiffy little music player called the iPod and a wide selection of songs at the iTunes store. He funded and nurtured a company called Pixar that made the most amazing computer-animated movies Toy Story, Cars, and Finding Nemo bringing to life imaginary characters like never before.

Though he was neither an engineer nor a computer geek, he helped create one gotta-have-it product after another by always designing it with you and me, the actual users, in mind. Unknown to those listening to him that day, more insanely awesome technology was in the works, including the iPhone, which would put much of the power of a computer neatly into the palm of your hand. The father of four would be repeatedly compared with the inventor Thomas Edison and auto magnate Henry Ford, who both introduced affordable, life-changing conveniences that transformed the way Americans lived.

Yet for all his successes, Jobs also endured some very public failures. When he was thirty years old, he was summarily stripped of his duties at Apple for being too disruptive and difficult. He set out to build another computer company and missed the mark, blowing through millions of dollars of investors money. He could be volatile, screaming at associates, competitors, and reporters. He sometimes cried when things didnt go his way and he regularly took credit for the ideas of others. He could be both charming and gratingly abrasive, sensitive and stunningly mean-spirited.

Some parts of his life sounded like a fairy tale right out of the movies: there was a promise made when he was a baby, romances, remarkable rebounds, and riches almost too big to be believed. Other parts were so messy and ugly, so very human, that they would never be considered family entertainment. He was both loved and hated, intensely admired and widely dismissed. People described him with the strongest words: visionary. Showman. Artist. Tyrant. Genius. Jerk.

Wearing blue jeans and sandals under his graduation-day robe, Jobs stepped up to the microphone to speak in the same way he did just about everything: with intensity and passion. In a short speech to the twenty-three thousand students, parents, and friends gathered, he very publicly shared very personal insights into his own life.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life, he said.

No more. Just three stories that defined an amazing life and provided a guide designed for people at the beginning of their adult lives. To understand who Steve Jobs was and what he became, it helps to start there, with the first of those three stories.

Steve Jobs (far left) with school friends in the seventh grade.

Steve Jobss first story involved connecting dots, and it began with a most unusual promise.

Joanne Schieble was just twenty-three and attending graduate school in Wisconsin when she learned she was pregnant. Her father didnt approve of her relationship with a Syrian-born graduate student, and social customs in the 1950s frowned on a woman having a child outside of marriage. To avoid the glare, Schieble moved to San Francisco and was taken in by a doctor who took care of unmarried mothers and helped arrange adoptions.

Originally, a lawyer and his wife agreed to adopt the new baby. But when the child was born on February 24, 1955, they changed their minds.

Clara and Paul Jobs, a modest San Francisco couple with some high school education, had been waiting for a baby. When the call came in the middle of the night, they jumped at the chance to adopt the newborn, and they named him Steven Paul.

Schieble wanted her child to be adopted by college-educated parents. Before the adoption could be finalized, however, she learned that neither parent had a college degree. She balked and only agreed to complete the adoption a few months later, when my parents promised that I would go to college, Jobs said.

Signing on to the hope of a bright future for their baby, the Jobs family settled in, adopting a daughter, Patty, a couple of years later. Little Steve proved to be a curious child, and a challenging one to rear. He put a hair pin into an electrical outlet, winning a trip to the emergency room for a burned hand. He got into ant poison, requiring yet another trip to the hospital to have his stomach pumped. To keep Steve busy when he got up before the rest of the household, his parents bought him a rocking horse, a record player, and some Little Richard records. He was so difficult as a toddler, his mother once confided, that she wondered if she had made a mistake adopting him.