Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine Page #12

If you were to make a movie

about it,

the first scene would be set in

a beer garden in Silicon Valley.

As he swilled a few steins of Pilsner,

Apple's Gray Powell was testing out

a new iPhone prototype.

But when Powell staggered

out of the bar, he forgot one thing.

The iPhone.

It was found on a bar stool

by a college student named Brian Hogan.

And this e-mail

comes into our tip box,

and there was this guy claiming

that he had this new iPhone prototype.

Getting inside Apple's security fort,

and look at something

that is under wrap.

But back then, when Steve Jobs was

at the helm and in his full power,

it was impossible

to get anything from them.

It was incredibly exciting.

At that point, Apple didn't have

a whole lot of leaks.

And then I go to Nick and I say,

"We think it's the real thing,

and they want their money."

And Nick said, "Anything you want."

For us, there's no question

as to whether we write the story or not.

That's what was so disturbing,

I think, to Steve Jobs,

was that he'd been used to having

a much more controlled

relationship with the press.

Our plan was to take pictures of it,

write about it,

and then return it back to Apple.

Hey, I'm Jason Chen.

This is the new iPhone.

Here are some of the new features.

In the beginning, it was OK.

Only nerds looking at it, I guess.

And then the story

started to pick up.

You know, it was the biggest

scoop in tech in history.

"Hi, this is Steve Jobs.

I want my phone back."

And it was

in a really charming voice.

And it's same way you'd ask for,

you know, a hat you'd lent a friend.

I'd met him a couple of times before.

It was his voice, unmistakably.

He said, "You know, I'm not mad at you."

"It's someone we worked with

who lost it."

"But you've had your fun,

and we need this phone back

before it gets into the wrong hands."

And at that point, I was thinking,

"Isn't it already in the wrong hands?"

Nick at that moment said,

"Ask for a letter."

"Ask for an official letter

asking for it."

"We need the actual confirmation

that this is the real thing."

The next call,

he said he didn't want to claim it.

He really changed his tone

at that point,

because it would affect

the sales of the current model,

which is kind of disappointing,

you know?

You hear all these stories about

this guy not caring about money.

And he goes,

"This is some serious sh*t."

"If I have to serve you papers,

I'm coming for something,

and it's going to mean someone in your

organization is going to go to jail."

For a reporter who's got a chip

on his shoulder against corporations,

that's like,

"Martyr me. Please, martyr me."

"I'll go to jail for an iPhone.

Like, really."

He called back later and he said,

"OK, we'll get you the letter,"

and he was just resigned and cold.

So, they sent us the letter,

and they sent a lawyer from Apple

to Jason's house to pick up the phone.

It was a very cold exchange.

He said, "I believe you have

something of mine," or something.

And I handed it to him, and he said,

"Thank you very much," and he left.

Was that the end of it,

as far as Apple was concerned?

No, of course not.

Then all the nightmares started.

The cops had to bash in the guy's door?

Don't they know there's an app for that?

Anyone who'd worked

with Jobs before

would know of other instances

where he'd been a bully.

But this was probably

the most public evidence of bullying.

My wife and I went out for dinner.

We came back home,

and we noticed the garage door

was slightly opened.

You know, and I was wondering,

"What's going on?"

And I opened it all the way,

and I noticed there were people inside.

And I thought, you know,

"Holy crap, I'm being robbed."

And then I looked closer

and realized it was cops.

The cops seized boxes

of Chen's personal property

including four computers,

two cellphones

and a box of his business cards.

For the Gizmodo movie, this raised

questions of plot and motivation.

Why break down Chen's door

after he returned the iPhone?

They showed me the warrant

to search the premises and said,

"We're part of the REACT team."

After they searched the house,

obviously I went and Googled it.

The officers

who raided Chen's apartment

were part of a little-known criminal

task force called REACT,

composed of local, state

and federal officials

on the lookout for corporate espionage

in Silicon Valley.

My initial response was,

"This is cool. It's Apple."

Chris Feasel was the deputy DA

advising REACT on the case.

After the raid on Chen's apartment,

Feasel was received at Apple

by Jobs himself.

He was very, very nice,

very high-energy.

We had a back-and-forth about

what he wanted to see happen

versus what some of the realities were

about doing a prosecution.

He was very supportive about whatever

choices that we made on the case.

Where do people

come down on this?

- Where do you come down on it?

- Well, I can just tell you what...

There is an ongoing investigation

by the DA, and I'm not current on it.

He was very involved in it

and very interested in it

and wanted to be kept abreast

about what was going on

in the investigation.

Jobs had every reason to

expect that he would be kept informed

because REACT wasn't

a purely government agency.

It had a steering committee

composed of many of the major

companies in the Valley.

In a town so completely dominated

by the tech industry,

had law enforcement become the muscle

for the largest corporations

in the world?

He was very, very adamant

and very passionate about his creation.

And the only analogy I can think of is

if somebody stole your baby,

you would be very upset about it.

That's how Mr Jobs felt.

Somebody had taken his baby.

In spite of pressure from Apple,

the DA decided

not to pursue the charges against Chen

because he hadn't received

stolen property.

He was a journalist doing a story.

When this whole thing

with Gizmodo happened,

I got a lot of advice

from people that said,

"You shouldn't go after a journalist

because they bought stolen property,

and they tried to extort you.

You should let it slide."

"Apple's a big company now.

You don't want the PR."

"You should let it slide."

And I thought deeply about this,

and I ended up concluding

that the worst thing

that could possibly happen

as we get big and we get

a little more influence in the world,

is if we change our core values

and start letting it slide.

I can't do that. I'd rather quit.

What values

was Jobs talking about?

When Apple was taking on IBM,

it was David versus Goliath.

But when Apple became Goliath,

to whom was Jobs giving the finger?

The sad thing is that how many

months did he have left after that?

This was a guy who knew,

who knew at the time,

he was dying, and he dedicated,

what, ten minutes of his life

to talk about these guys

who found a phone in a bar

and then published a story about it?

Isn't that a little bit strange?

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