Steve Jobs: One Last Thing Page #3

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traveling to India

and studying Buddhism,

this also had an impact

on his work at Apple.

I first met Steve in 1975.

He had recently returned

from India.

He's way ahead of his time.

He wasn't

the typical teenager.

He asked questions that t re

a lot more serious

than the normal 20-year-old.

He was looking to understand

the true nature of things,

and I think he came

to the zen center

Toto continue his search.

Steve was very much taken

with Zen, Zen Buddhism.

Zen represents

the relationship between things,

things of the world.

In zen, it's expressed

in the art.

You see it in flower

arranging, Ikebana,

you see it calligraphy,

you see it in in artworks.

Steve was very much taken

with that

and especially calligraphy.

He noticed the way the lines and

the spaces had a relationship.

I think his genius was being

able to take the principles

of zen and incorporate it

into the products

that came out of Apple.

Jobs freely acknowledged how

these outside influences

had affected him.

He was always trying

to look for external references

and external influences,

and he'd talk about, you know, his

Mercedes was beautifully designed

because those German guys were

thinking beautiful thoughts, I guess.

He loved aphorisms.

You know, Picasso said,

"good artists copy,

great artists steal,"

and he loved to say that.

He was the guy

who came with

"something would be

insanely great."

What does that mean?

Much of what Apple did was built

on the efforts of others.

A 1979 deal gave him access

to Xerox technology,

one thing blew him away,

a prototype mouse.

He gave his own team orders

to make one, only better.

"You got to build it

for less than 15 bucks,

"it's got to last two years,

"I want it to work

on the desktop,

"a normal formica desktop,

and I also want to be able

to use it on my jeans."

As I left the meeting

headed out to my car,

I was thinking,

"does this really make sense?

Is Steve crazy

or is there something here?"

If Steve

wanted something,

his team just had to innovate,

so for dean n at meant a trip

to the drug store.

As I entered Walgreens,

I had in my mind

most importantly was,

"where do I find

these spheres,

these balls to be a part

of the mouse?"

And I had thought

about the underarm deodorant

as the right solution.

And I emerged with some

roll-on deodorant

and a butter dish.

And as you can see here,

there are of course

different sized balls,

depending upon how

it is applied.

Not only that,

but then, once I had the balls,

I said, that's a quick

way to have a structure

to put around the ball so that I

can start interacting with it?"

I remember going to

the house wares area,

and I found a butter dish

which was about this big,

and that became

the beginning part

for the mouse, as I felt it.

So I used the butter dish,

the roll-on ball

and was able to create

a prototype.

It's hard to believe

that in a design so small

as something that fits

in your hand

there could be much

controversy around it,

but it turns out there

was one major controversy,

which was how

many buttons should there be?

The original Xerox PARC

had 3 buttons,

and there was a great debate about

how many buttons were right,

and Steve always had

the notion of simplicity.

The magic of Apple products

is simple.

There was one button,

and it's magic.

From the early days,

one man influenced Steve Jobs

more than any other,

his friend and rival Bill Gates.

Apple's history interweaves

with Microsoft's.

Their CEOs gave

a unique interview

to journalist

Walter Mossberg.

It was

to my knowledge the only time

they ever got onstage

together to submit themselves

to an extended interview

with journalists.

Their interview gave

Walt unparalleled insights

into the dynamics

of their relationship.

But then there was

a floating...

From the start,

Gates was overshadowed

by the more polished,

confident Jobs.

I made... I...

Let me tell the story.

So Woz...

I'm not

fake Steve Jobs.

If you saw them together, Steve

always dominated the conversation.

In part that's because I think Bill

was always fascinated by Steve.

He was a real observer, and he would

just look at this guy and say,

"what the heck

is going on here?"

We've kept our marriage

secret for over a decade now.

He admired Steve for his ability

to interface with people,

connect with them,

you know, affect them.

They were partners,

you know, for a long time.

The very first Apple II computers

had Microsoft software in them.

But while

the banter was good-natured,

the rivalry between the two

was deep-rooted.

I personally can

attest to having heard

each of them say very nasty

things about the other

off the record in private

over the years.

I think the antipathy partly

grew out of two things.

On Jobs' side,

he believed that Microsoft

had stolen

the basic ideas in the Mac.

From the point of view

of Gates, I think,

he found Jobs difficult

to deal with.

Steve is so know

for his restraint.

I think Gates felt

that Jobs got more credit

than he might have deserved

as being the great technologist.

Neither person is

hugely likable.

Certainly Steve Jobs is

an acquired taste,

and so is Bill Gates

for that matter.

Um, they both have

their moments.

Bill Gates is a a better friend

than Steve Jobs,

but Steve Jobs is more

fun than Bill Gates.

Jobs had

glamour and dynamism.

By the mid 1980s,

he was one of the richest

self-made men in America.

He was just 29.

People are going to bring

them home over the weekend

to work on something

Sunday morning.

They're not going to be able to

get their kids away from them,

and maybe someday

they'll even buy a second one

to leave at home.

Which made him

a natural subject for "playboy."

Interviewing Jobs was

a unique experience

for writer David Sheff.

The phone rung one day,

and it was not

a PR person who called,

but it was Jobs himself,

and it really was

an indication of the way

that he did business

and really continued

to do business.

Apple was very different.

The second you walked in the door,

you felt like you were

in a completely new environment.

The conference rooms

instead of, you know,

of number 103c were called

Da Vinci and Michelangelo

and Picasso,

and indeed it was Picasso

that I was escorted to

to see Jobs for the first time.

As the two got

Toto know each other,

Sheff realized he had

a front row seat

on what was then an unimaginable

technological future.

Steve started

drawing on a place mat.

We went back and forth,

and basically by the end

of that constructed what looks

exactly like an iPad.

Steve said this machine,

this small device

as big as a book,

would allow us to keep

in touch with one another,

it will replace the telephone

and would replace bookstores.

He saw it as a reader

on this very small device

and read it with editing

capacity, note-taking capacity.

I mean, he really envisioned

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