Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy Page #7

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The record labels were very unhappy

with that and felt that,

only because Napster was hard to use,

could the music survive,

and here was Apple coming out with

a digital music product

that was easy to use and was

going to make it much more popular.

Even so, some in the music industry

thought Apple might be able to help.

In 2002, a delegation

of music executives travelled

to Apple's headquarters

to present a vision

for how they might collaborate.

Steve Jobs did not exactly warm

to their ideas.

He listens,

but he isn't listening patiently.

At one point he waves his arms

and says, "Stop, stop,

that's not why I'm here.

"I didn't come here to listen to you.

"I have my own views

on what we need to do.

"You guys in the music business

have had your heads up your asses

all these years!"

Which made everybody on my side of

the table mute, silent.

And I said, "Steve, that's exactly

why we're here. We need your help."

Other technology companies

had tried and failed

to persuade the major labels

to license their music online,

but Jobs was different.

Jobs was the biggest share

owner in Disney.

Because he was in such a strong

position as a Hollywood player

that he was able to bang the heads

together of the music companies and

say this is how it's going to be.

To Jobs, it was obvious the record

labels didn't understand

the new internet-savvy consumers.

He insisted the way to beat

file-sharing was not to punish

people for doing it

but to offer a more convenient

reasonably-priced alternative.

In less than a year,

every major label had signed up to

the Apple iTunes store.

He just got the deal done and that

was an incredible achievement.

That in pure business terms

is deal-making,

which is a recognisable

feature of your great tycoon.

In its first week, the iTunes store

sold more than 1 million tracks.

It was so successful by the end

of the first year,

the leverage had shifted from the

owner of the content to Apple.

Some artists believe Apple

now wields too much power

through iTunes,

putting profits before musicians.

..whose works it bleeds

like a digital vampire

for its enormous commission,

that it decides, you know,

we'll take 30%.

It's a bit of a pity that

everyone's online these days.

But you can't blame them.

It's just the modern world, innit?

But what a business it is.

IPods give Apple power

over the music industry

through the connection to iTunes,

and, in turn, the appeal

of iTunes boosts sales of iPods.

If I can fulfil all your needs,

then I'll get all your money,

and that's Steve's approach.

He wanted to give people the devices

they would use to consume video

and audio,

then he wanted to

give them video and audio to consume.

He's created the future

of entertainment.

Jobs was usually very

guarded about his private life,

but in 2005 he chose a very public

stage, a speech to graduating

students,

to reveal he had been battling

serious illness.

About a year ago,

I was diagnosed with cancer.

I had a scan at 7.30 in the morning

and it clearly showed

a tumour on my pancreas.

My doctor advised me to go home

and get my affairs in order,

which is doctor's

code for "prepare to die".

It turned out to be a very rare

form of pancreatic cancer

that is curable with surgery.

I had the surgery

and thankfully I'm fine now.

In reality, Jobs would continue

his struggle with cancer

for the next six years.

His diagnosis had a profound impact.

Death is very likely the single

best invention of life.

It's life's change agent, it clears

out the old to make way for the new.

Your time is limited so don't waste

it living someone else's life.

It's a philosophy that Jobs

himself followed.

It's really amazing in hindsight what

he accomplished while he was sick.

Not only was he fighting this

debilitating disease,

he was leading a huge corporation

doing earth-shaking work

that affects hundreds of millions

of people.

Steve Jobs' next major project

would bring together

everything he stood for,

a bold raid into a market into which

the company had never been a player.

IPod. A phone.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Are you getting it?

It would revolutionise the way

a long-established industry worked,

and make Apple billions.

And we're calling it... iPhone.

He said, "I think that we'll

succeed in this marketplace

"because we're a software company,

"and everyone we're going to compete

with are hardware companies."

I didn't realise at the time

just how profound that was.

Apple's iPhone became the fastest

selling handset on the market.

People weren't buying them

just to make phone calls.

Steve, I love you!

What made the iPhone different

was apps.

The iPhone was the gateway to

a world of downloadable software

for anything from shopping

to finding love, or lust, nearby.

He came into the marketplace

and absolutely demonstrated to people

how you could package up bits of the

internet and present it to people

in a way that was really simple

and fast and digestible

in the form of apps.

With apps, Apple had worked out how

to open up its closed system

just enough to keep earning

money from its latest iPods,

iPhones and iPads,

even after you've bought them.

The money keeps rolling in.

For the first time ever,

Apple briefly topped Exxon Mobil

as the world's most valuable company.

All the more amazing as android

phones and Dell and HP computers

outsell Apple.

Oddly enough, the market share of

Apple is very low.

It's incredibly low in computers but

they make enormous profit out of it.

It's actually low in smartphones.

It's not the leader in the world

by any means, yet the money they make

make them the largest company

on Earth.

Apple is much stronger

than its competition,

and so they need to make sure

they don't get complacent

because the way they'll lose

some day is when someone

quietly comes up behind them

and does something

that is now better.

Over the course of more than

three decades,

some might argue that Apple has

travelled far from its origins,

as a bunch of Californians

railing against IBM to become,

itself, an all-powerful Big Brother.

But it is a more complicated

and interesting story.

If Steve Jobs had just been a rebel,

he wouldn't have got far,

but it's because he always had

that inner-hippy

that Apple became so much more than

just another computer company.

There was one aspect of Steve Jobs'

battle with cancer

he hadn't revealed.

He'd delayed having surgery for

nine months after he was diagnosed.

Instead he'd tried

alternative remedies

and a strict vegan diet, against

the advice of those closest to him.

And the cancer had spread.

He was the kind of person that could

convince himself of things

that weren't necessarily true,

and that always worked with him

for designing products,

where he could go to people

and ask them to do something

that they thought was impossible.

And I think he truly thought that,

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