Steve Jobs: One Last Thing Page #5

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try not to have him come

into the building.

Standing up to Jobs

could be a painful experience,

as Alvy found out in one

memorable boardroom meeting.

He turned on me,

total street bully,

in my face, scream...

We wer... and I went crazy.

I'd never been there.

I don't ever want

to be there again.

That's the reason

I got away from him.

We were screaming

at each other in full bull rage

with our faces

about that far apart,

and during that...

So he was insulting

my southwestern accent.

It was just

street bully stuff.

I ill don't know

what happened.

Something broke.

And during this face-off...

Literally a face-off...

I marched past him

and wrote on the whiteboard.

Now it was

unspoken rule...

Which I hate,

unspoken rules...

That only he could sit

in front of the whiteboard

and only he could use it.

Nobody had ever tested it,

but at this point,

I tested it.

I marched past him

and I wrote on the whiteboard,

and he said,

"y-y-you can't do that.

And I said,

"what? Write on a whiteboard?"

And he stormed out

of the room,

and then I was in shock

for the next week or moths.

I just didn't know

what had happened.

Everyone in Steve Jobs' life

went through 3 phases...

They were either being

seduced, ignored, or scourged,

and it all depended upon

whether he needed you or not.

If he needed you,

he was your best friend,

and he would seduce you,

and then you would work

like a dog,

and if you weren't working hard

enough, he would scourge you,

and ultimately he would

throw you away.

On the personal level,

it was not fun,

it was not the way I want to be

treated by another human being.

Steve ultimately

betrayed everyone.

And some said

the new Steve Jobs wasn't afraid

of claiming

l the credit, too.

Disney took "toy story"

and another one

of their movies to new York

for the critics to see,

and the critics just...

They didn't even look at the other movie.

They just went nuts

when they saw "toy story,"

and they came back

and basically told Steve

that it was going to be

a huge success,

and that's when he... that's

the point his ability to see

something spectacular

is about to happen.

He just moved just in and

exploited that right to the hilt,

and I must say he did

a great job.

He became

a billionaire from it.

Awesome.

So Steve's genius is to move

when he has a good idea.

I don't think they're

necessarily his ideas,

but, boy, does he know

how to move

and market them like crazy.

He the world's

genius marketeer,

including of his own self-image.

But the best

was yet to come for Jobs.

Apple was in trouble.

They wanted him back.

They were begging

him to come back

because they knew

he could fix it,

and he did come back,

and he fixed it,

and the rest is history.

One man who witnessed

Jobs' return to Apple

was friend Walt Mossberg.

He came back to Apple,

and the company was almost dead.

Literally. It was 90 days

from going bankrupt.

He said to the people

at this very demoralized,

almost out of business company,

"we're not looking backward.

"I don't really care

that we once had

"the first successful

personal computer.

"I really don't care that we

were famous and successful.

"We're not anymore, and this

is where we're starting from,

and this is where

we're moving."

And so when you see the second

coming of Steve Jobs and Apple,

Apple went from being

a wide-open and wacky company

to be a very

disciplined company

that understood

its financials

at a level that

few companies do.

That's because Steve thought

of every dollar

as being his every dollar.

They have resolved these

differences in a very, very...

It was an investment

from Bill Gates

that ultimately helped

to save Apple,

but when Gates made

a a live appearance with Jobs

to explain the deal,

it didn't go down well

with the loyal

Apple audience.

Bill Gates was actually onstage

rescuing Apple, rescuing Apple.

He did two things.

He gave them $150 million

for which he got

nonvoting stock

that expired

after a certain

number of years,

and he promised to

keep producing Microsoft office,

the macintosh version,

for, I think, 5 years,

and so he was onstage

rescuing Apple,

and yet the acolytes

who were filling the room

had learned to hate him.

They treated him as,

you know the, devil,

the antichrist,

and they booed him.

But Jobs with his eye

ever on the bottom line,

had a different view.

There were too many

people at Apple

and in the Apple ecosystem

playing the game of

"for Apple to win,

Microsoft has to lose,"

and it was clear that you

didn't have to play that game

because Apple wasn't

going to beat Microsoft.

Apple didn't have

to beat Microsoft.

Apple had to remember

who Apple was.

It was just crazy what

was happening that time,

and Apple as very weak,

and so I called Bill up

and we tried

to patch things up.

I think he learned to be

a better businessman.

I think he learned

a little more humility.

Steve really changed

in a number of ways,

and he changed primarily

because of failure.

Failure affected him,

and he learned from.

Jobs created a brand-new

product at Apple, the iMac.

I think there was

a decision to look different.

Remember, their motto immediately after

his return was "think different,"

and he didn't say that

because he didn't believe it.

He really did want

to think different,

and they would have to

appear different

to show that they

were thinking different.

The pair joked about

the relationship

between "Mac Man" Jobs

and "PC Man" Bill Gates.

PC guy is great

but not a big heart.

His mother

loves him.

His mother

loves him.

PC guy is what makes it

all work actually.

All right.

It's worth

thinking about.

The truth about Bill Gates

is a brilliant man

who you could... and I did talk to

for long periods about the future.

He could think

quite intelligently

about the future,

but the way Microsoft worked

as a business was far more

incremental than Apple.

All the while, they were

working on some big leap,

and Microsoft tended

to do the incremental stuff

almost all the time.

What's Steve's done

is quite phenomenal.

His ability to

always come around

and figure out where

that next bet should be

has been phenomenal.

Apple literally

was failing

when Steve went back

and re-infused

the innovation

and risk-taking

that have been

phenomenal.

So the industry has benefited

immensely from his work.

We've both been lucky

to be part of it,

but I'd say he's contributed

as much as anyone.

I think he built the

first software company

before anybody

really in our industry

knew what

a software company was

except for these guys

and that was huge.

Bill Gates is a brilliant man.

He did a lot

for the world in technology.

And he is now doing a lot

for the world in philanthropy,

and I think highly

of Bill Gates,

but...Of the two of them,

the one that took

the bigger risks

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