STEVE JOBS - NEARING THE END OF THE TRAIL
From the book "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson
"Living with a disease like this, and all the pain, constantly
reminds you of your own mortality, and that can do strange things
to your brain if you're not careful," he said. "You don't make
plans more than a year out, and that's bad. You need to force
yourself to plan as if you will live for many years."
An example of this magical thinking was his plan to build a
luxurious yacht. Before his liver transplant, he and his family
used to rent a boat for vacations, traveling to Mexico, the South
Pacific, or the Mediterranean. On many of these cruises, Jobs got
bored or began to hate the design of the boat, so they would cut
the trip short and fly to Kona Village. But sometimes the cruise
worked well. "The best vacation I've ever been on was when we
went down the coast of Italy, then to Athens - which is a pit,
but the Parthenon is mind-blowing and then to Ephesus in Turkey,
where they have these ancient public lavatories in marble with a
place in the middle for musicians to serenade." When they got to
Istanbul, he hired a history professor to give his family a tour.
At the end they went to a Turkish bath, where the professor's
lecture gave Jobs an insight about the globalization of youth:
I had a real revelation. We were all in robes, and they made some
Turkish coffee for us. The professor explained how the coffee was
made very different from anywhere else, and I realized, "So f..
what?" Which kids even in Turkey give a s.. about Turkish coffee?
All day I had looked at young people in Istanbul. They were all
drinking what every other kid in the world drinks, and they were
wearing clothes that look like they were bought at the Gap, and
they are all using cell phones. They were like kids everywhere
else. It hit me that, for young people, this whole world is the
same now. When we're making products, there is no such thing as a
Turkish phone, or a music player that young people in Turkey
would want that's different from one young people elsewhere would
want. We're just one world now.
After the joy of that cruise, Jobs had amused himself by
beginning to design, and then repeatedly redesigning, a boat he
said he wanted to build someday. When he got sick again in 2009,
he almost canceled the project. "I didn't think I would be alive
when it got done," he recalled. "But that made me so sad, and I
decided that working on the design was fun to do, and maybe I
have a shot at being alive when it's done. If I stop work on the
boat and then I make it alive for another two years, I would be
really pissed. So I've kept going."
After our omelets at the cafe, we went back to his house and he
showed me all of the models and architectural drawings. As
expected, the planned yacht was sleek and minimalist. The teak
decks were perfectly flat and unblemished by any accoutrements.
As at an Apple store, the cabin windows were large panes, almost
floor to ceiling, and the main living area was designed to have
walls of glass that were forty feet long and ten feet high. He
had gotten the chief engineer of the Apple stores to design a
special glass that was able to provide structural support.
By then the boat was under construction by the Dutch custom yacht
builders Feadship, but Jobs was still fiddling with the design.
"I know that it's possible I will die and leave Laurene with a
halfbuilt boat," he said. "But I have to keep going on it. If I
don't, it's an admission that I'm about to die."
He and Powell would be celebrating their twentieth wedding
anniversary a few days later, and he admitted that at times he
had not been as appreciative of her as she deserved. "I'm very
lucky, because you just don't know what you're getting into when
you get married," he said. "You have an intuitive feeling about
things. I couldn't have done better, because not only is Laurene
smart and beautiful, she's turned out to be a really good
person." For a moment he teared up. He talked about his other
girlfriends, particularly Tina Redse, but said he ended up in the
right place. He also reflected on how selfish and demanding he
could be. "Laurene had to deal with that, and also with me being
sick," he said. "I know that living with me is not a bowl of
cherries."
Among his selfish traits was that he tended not to remember
anniversaries or birthdays. But in this case, he decided to plan
a surprise. They had gotten married at the Ahwahnee Hotel in
Yosemite, and he decided to take Powell back there on their
anniversary. But when Jobs called, the place was fully booked. So
he had the hotel approach the people who had reserved the suite
where he and Powell had stayed and ask if they would relinquish
it. "I offered to pay for another weekend," Jobs recalled, "and
the man was very nice and said, 'Twenty years, please take it,
it's yours.'"
He found the photographs of the wedding, taken by a friend, and
had large prints made on thick paper boards and placed in an
elegant box. Scrolling through his iPhone, he found the note that
he had composed to be included in the box and read it aloud:
We didn't know much about each other twenty years ago. We
were guided by our intuition; you swept me off my feet. It
was snowing when we got married at the Ahwahnee. Years
passed, kids came, good times, hard times, but never bad
times. Our love and respect has endured and grown. We've
been through so much together and here we are right back
where we started 20 years ago - older, wiser - with wrinkles
on our faces and hearts. We now know many of life's joys,
sufferings, secrets and wonders and we're still here
together. My feet have never returned to the ground.
By the end of the recitation he was crying uncontrollably. When
he composed himself, he noted that he had also made a set of the
pictures for each of his kids. "I thought they might like to see
that I was young once." ......
The following Friday, Jobs sent an email to a colleague from the
distant past, Ann Bowers, the widow of Intel's cofounder Bob
Noyce. She had been Apple's human resources director and den
mother in the early 1980s, in charge of reprimanding Jobs after
his tantrums and tending to the wounds of his coworkers. Jobs
asked if she would come see him the next day. Bowers happened to
be in New York, but she came by his house that Sunday when she
returned. By then he was sick again, in pain and without much
energy, but he was eager to show her the renderings of the new
headquarters. "You should be proud of Apple," he said. "You
should be proud of what we built."
Then he looked at her and asked, intently, a question that almost
floored her: "Tell me, what was I like when I was young?"
Bowers tried to give him an honest answer. "You were very
impetuous and very difficult," she replied. "But your vision was
compelling. You told us, 'The journey is the reward.' That turned
out to be true."
"Yes," Jobs answered. "I did learn some things along the way."
Then, a few minutes later, he repeated it, as if to reassure
Bowers and himself. "I did learn some things. I really did."
..........
IT WAS SO TRUE AS THE BOOK "STEVE JOBS" LAYS IT ALL OUT IN BARE
FACTS - HE WAS TO PUT IT KINDLY "IMPETUOUS AND VERY DIFFICULT" -
IT IS A WONDER THAT ANY PERSON WANTED TO WORK WITH HIM, OR EVEN
BE HIS FRIEND, HE COULD BE SO DIFFICULT AND JUST PLAIN MEAN AND
BAD-TEMPERED, BUT SOME, THOSE THAT DID STAY WITH HIM FOR SHORT
PERIODS OR LONG PERIODS OF TIME, THEY KNEW HE WAS A BRILLIANT
VISIONARY, THAT PUSHED AND PUSHED OTHER SKILLED PEOPLE TO PRODUCE
EVEN MORE THAN THEY WOULD HAVE DONE, IF THEY HAD NOT HAD SOMEONE
LIKE STEVE JOBS TO PUSH THEM.
Keith Hunt
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