Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine Page #3

that we'd be dealing with

and that Wozniak would be designing

and building things,

which is the way it happens

in most businesses.

The engineers are more back room

and you work with either the

entrepreneur or the marketing people.

Did you think early on

that Steve could be the guy?

Oh, definitely. You just had to spend

a few minutes with him and you knew it.

He had the ability

to talk about the possibility

of what this computer could be.

And I think the key is not just

talking about the product,

but giving you an idea

of what is possible using this product

and what the next generation

is going to be like.

So he gives people this feeling

of forward movement.

- How many calculators do you own?

- Two, maybe.

Right, and do you use

the automatic bank-telling machines?

- Sure.

- Life is already seducing you

into learning this stuff.

It's not going to happen at once,

and it's certainly not

a 1984-ish vision at all.

It's just going to be very gradual

and very human

and will seduce you

into learning how to use it.

Transitioning from a hobby

to a personal computer,

that whole idea was driven by Steve.

He was trying to say

we need to differentiate ourselves

and really move out

of this hobbyist realm.

It ended up

coming out of the room saying,

"We're going to call ourselves

the personal computer."

Industry experts say

we're no longer on the verge

of the personal computer revolution.

We're right in the midst of it,

thank you.

And it's gathering steam

with more and more people

jumping aboard every day.

I use my computer right now

for mostly word processing.

I use it for solar evaluation programs.

We put our entire accounting system

on it.

The wife can use it to store recipes.

To balance my checkbook for me.

We do the computer club's bulletin.

- Playing games.

- Shopping by mail.

- Budgeting.

- Bowling-league type scores.

- Electronic mail.

- A guy can be creative on it.

I mean, he can use it

for whatever he can dream up.

This is a 21st-century bicycle

that amplifies a certain intellectual

ability that man has.

The effects that it's going to

have on society

are actually going to far outstrip

even those that the petrochemical

revolution has had.

Time magazine, I think,

said single-handedly he created

the industry because he was relentless.

The powers that be

of "Time" magazine

decided that they would make

the Man of the Year that particular year

the Computer of the Year.

I was transferred to the bureau

in San Francisco.

And gradually I began to cotton on

to the fact

that there were a lot of stories

in this part of California

between San Jose

and San Francisco

about these odd, little companies

that people on the East Coast

at that point

hadn't heard about

and really didn't care about.

And then I got very interested in Apple

and Steve was,

of the early characters in the company,

the most articulate and the most

interesting and the oddest.

Steven Jobs helped build

the first Apple computer in his garage.

He is now 26 years old

and is chairman of the board.

There was some debate

over whether or not

they should use the name "Apple."

You know, the whole model

of the computer industry

and the computer business was IBM.

Another business service of

tomorrow made possible today by IBM.

IBM was an anonymous organization.

No one knew who the president was.

They probably had no idea.

The IBM logo looked like it was

carved out of Roman marble, you know?

It was just

this monolithic kind of thing.

And we took just the opposite,

which was,

"Let's make Steve very high profile.

Let's tell our story."

Working in this garage,

Jobs and a high-school classmate

quit their positions

at large electronic companies,

and using tiny silicon chips,

built this small computer board.

Funny, the garage story was

less of a feature in those early days.

It later on became more of a look back

when people started doing stories

on the background, and so forth.

You know, I told Steve this,

and most of my clients in fact,

there's a song in Fiddler on the Roof

that Tevye sings.

He says, "If I were a rich man."

And he said, "I'd sit in the temple,

and I'd lecture to the wise men

all day long,

and it wouldn't matter

if you're right or wrong."

"When you're rich,

they think you know."

So, in a technology business,

you have to show that you are successful

in order to have a platform.

It led to

a quarter-billion-dollar business

and the most popular typewriter-sized

computer on the market today.

Steve Jobs,

I realize this is your baby,

and you've made a career out of it,

but you're also

something of a philosopher.

Do you see the inherent possibility

of bad coming out of all of this?

Well, I think one of the things

you really have to look at

is you have to go watch

some kids using these things.

And what you find is far

from something quite harmful.

In effect, what you see

is an instantaneous reflection

of a part of themselves,

the creative part of themselves

being expressed.

He was going for a computer

that really felt like

an extension of the self.

That's what people wanted, and I think

he sensed that. He knew that.

My first book on the computer culture

was called "The Second Self."

The key quote

that gave me the title was,

"When you think of a computer,

you put a little piece of your mind

into the computer's mind,

and you come to think

of yourself differently."

Our whole company,

our whole philosophical base,

is founded on one principle.

And that one principle

is that there's something very special

and very historically different

that takes place when you have

one computer and one person.

Did you have an opportunity

to meet Jobs?

Yes,

I met him on several occasions.

And did you sense

from talking to him

that he really did understand

what he was doing?

I think he understood what he was doing.

He knew

he had created something intimate

and that could be sold

as something intimate.

And it would be you.

I mean, it would be for you.

It wasn't just for you. It was you.

Can you just show me

the front of it?

That's the part

that most people would recognize.

This is a piece that everybody

remembers from the ads,

from the Time magazine cover

with Steve holding it in his lap.

And this is the famous beige that

we're never going to have any more of.

He hated this even at this time,

but we were kind of stuck with it

by the time we got there.

It was a fun little machine.

He called me just out of the blue.

I was working at Xerox.

And I picked up the phone,

and it was Steve Jobs.

And he said, "I hear you're a good guy,

but everything you've done so far

is crap. Come work for me."

I told my wife at the time.

I said, "Well, what could happen?"

"How bad could this be?"

I didn't realize how bad it could be.

First trip Steve ever made to Japan

was to see what we could do about

getting a disc drive for the machine.

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