Untold Stories About Steve Jobs: Friends and Colleagues Share Their Memories

This story appears in the October 22, 2012 issue of Forbes.

We know a lot about Steve Jobs, thanks to his willingness in the last years of his life to share stories with his biographer about what drove him to co-found Apple Inc. and reinvent the PC, music players, phones and tablets.

But there are plenty of “Steve” stories that you haven’t heard around, and a year after Jobs’ death on Oct. 5 at the age of 56, a few friends and colleagues shared their memories of the technology industry’s most notable  luminary.

Hide The Porsches

Software engineer Randy Adams initially turned down Steve Jobs’ offer to work at NeXT, the computer company started by Jobs after his ouster from Apple. It was 1985. Adams wasn’t ready to go back to work after selling his pioneering desktop software publishing company. Within a few days Jobs was on Adams’ answering machine. “You’re blowing it, Randy. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and you’re blowing it.” Adams reconsidered.
Adams, using some of the cash he’d earned from the sale of his company, bought a Porsche 911 at the same time Jobs did. To avoid car-door dings, they parked near each other–taking up three parking spaces between them. One day Jobs rushed over to Adams’ cubicle and told him they had to move the cars.
“I said, ‘Why?,’ and he said, ‘Randy, we have to hide the Porsches. Ross Perot is coming by and thinking of investing in the company, and we don’t want him to think we have a lot of money.’” They moved the cars around to the back of NeXT’s offices in Palo Alto, Calif. and Perot invested $20 million in the company in 1987 and took a seat on the board.
Adams also recalls the time Bill Gates showed up at NeXT for a meeting. It was the fall of 1986. The receptionist in the downstairs lobby called Jobs, whose cube was upstairs, to let him know that Gates was in the lobby. “I could see him sitting in his cube, not really busy. But he didn’t get up or call Gates up. In fact, he left him waiting in the lobby for an hour. That speaks to their rivalry.”
NeXT engineers, Adams said, took the opportunity to go downstairs and ply Gates with questions. “We enjoyed it and spent an hour talking to him until Steve finally called him in.”
Adams said he left NeXT after disagreeing with Jobs about the use of the optical drive in the NeXT workstation, which he felt would be too slow. Some time later Jobs convinced Adams to start a software business around NeXT, which he did with a $2 million investment from Sequoia Capital. But as the business was under way, Jobs called Adams again to let him know that NeXT was going to give up its workstation business and focus instead on software.
“He told me that the cost of hardware is coming down and we think it’s a commodity. I said, ‘Then why don’t you sell PCs?’ Jobs told me, ‘I’d rather sell dog s— than PCs.’”
Adams says he has many memories of Jobs from those days at NeXT – how Jobs, a vegan, would pass by engineers enjoying their Subway sandwiches and comment, “Oh, the smell of burnt animal flesh. How delightful.” In 1986, Jobs dressed up as Santa Claus and handed out $100 bills to employees. Adams also said Jobs was constantly telling employees who had screwed up or done something he didn’t like to “fire yourself.” Was Jobs serious? “Well, if you didn’t get a termination notice then you knew he was only kidding.”
A year after Jobs’ death, Adams, who went on after NeXT to help lead development of Adobe Acrobat and PDF and is a co-founder of the FunnyorDie.com site, says the tech industry is still feeling his loss. “His charisma, was like electricity – he was giving off this incredible force. It was inspirational. He lifted you. I used to believe when I was with Steve, you could do anything. You could change the world. When he died, a little bit of that feeling left me. There’s no one like him.”

Scuff Marks in the Mini-Store

In his first public appearance after revealing he had surgery to remove a tumor from his pancreas in 2004, Jobs met with a handful of reporters (including me) at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, Calif. to unveil a new 750-square-foot “mini” store design. Half the size of the typical Apple retail stores of the time, the mini design featured an all-white ceiling, lit from behind; Japanese-made stainless-steel walls, with holes around the top for ventilation that mimicked the design of the PowerMac G5; and a shiny, seamless white floor made with “material used in aircraft hangars,” Jobs said at the time.
Before the gigantic curtain draped across the storefront came down, though, Jobs was having a meltdown, refusing in the minutes before the unveiling to step outside and greet reporters. Why? Because the store design that looked so great on paper didn’t stand up to real-world use. The walls showed off every handprint and the floors were marred by black scuff marks from the handful of people readying the store for the big reveal.
Jobs was ultimately convinced to step outside, and the curtain was drawn before the small gathering of reporters. When I saw the floor, I immediately turned to Jobs, standing next to me, and asked if he had been involved in every aspect of the design. He said yes. “It was obvious that whoever designed the store had never cleaned a floor in their life,” I told him. He narrowed his eyes at me and stepped inside.
A few months later an Apple executive told me that Jobs had all of the designers return to the store after it opened on Saturday, and spend the night on their hands and knees cleaning the white surface. After that, Apple switched the floors to the stone tiles now prevalent in its designs. –C.G.

They’ll Get Used To It

Marc Andreessen, Internet browser pioneer turned venture capitalist,  recalls a double-date he had with Jobs a few months before the iPhone was unveiled. “In the fall of 2006, my wife, Laura, and I went out to dinner with Steve and his brilliant and lovely wife, Laurene. Sitting outside of the restaurant on California Avenue in Palo Alto waiting for a table to open up, on a balmy Silicon Valley evening, Steve pulled his personal prototype iPhone out of his jeans pocket and said, ‘Here, let me show you something.’  He took me on a tour through all of the features and capabilities of the new device.
“After an appropriate amount of oohing and aahing, I ventured a comment. BlackBerry aficionado as I was, I said, ‘Boy, Steve, don’t you think it’s going to be a problem not having a physical keyboard? Are people really going to be okay typing directly on the screen?’ He looked me right in the eye with that piercing gaze and said, ‘They’ll get used to it.’”
Apple has sold more than 250 million iPhones since 2007 and it’s one of the top-selling smartphones in the world.

Blunt, But With Taste

Guy Kawasaki, Apple’s chief evangelist and liaison to the Mac developer community, was working in his cubicle after the Mac was introduced in 1984 when Jobs showed up one day with another guy in tow. Jobs asked Kawasaki for his opinion about a program from a Mac developer called Knoware, which was short for the knowledge software the company made.
“I tell him what I think, which is extremely negative. When I’m done, he turns to the guy. Then he looks back at me. And then he says, ‘Guy, this is the CEO of Knoware.’”
At first, Kawasaki says  the story illustrates Jobs’ “lack of hesitancy to hang his employees out to dry.” Then he says it’s “indicative of Steve in general. If you’re a Steve fan, you say – ‘See, he knew how to cut through all the bullshit. If you’re not a Steve fan, he lacked social graces.’”
“Even though he treated people like this, the reason he got such great people to work there, unlike most bosses, is that he appreciated great work. There are two components to giving employees great feedback. It takes someone who has the taste to know when you did great or lousy, and it takes someone who’s blunt enough to tell you. There are plenty of people who don’t have taste but are blunt.
“If you wanted to do great work, you can do it at Apple. But there’s a cost–public humiliation. Something like this could never have happened at HP. It’s contrary to the HP way. On the other hand, you couldn’t do your best work at HP because there is no one there to appreciate it. Where would you rather work–Apple or HP?”
A Little Hand In the Screen
Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, who hired Jobs in 1974, says what he remembers most about Jobs was his intensity. “Steve was the first guy I found who would be regularly curled up under his desk in the morning after an all-nighter. A lot of people think that success is luck and being in the right place at the right time. But I think if you’re willing to work harder than anybody else, you can create an awful lot of your own luck.
“We tended to have this philosophical relationship. He liked to talk about big ideas and where did big ideas come from. He was always interested in talking about creating products and how do you know when a product is ready for market.”
In the early 1980s Bushnell bought a 15,000-square-foot house in Paris and invited all his Silicon Valley friends to a housewarming party. There was a band, lots of food and drink, lavishly attired guests–and Jobs, who had left Atari to start Apple in 1976. While everyone else was dressed up for the party, Jobs showed up in his Levi’s.
Bushnell remembers “sitting on the Left Bank [the day after the party], me sipping coffee and Steve always drinking tea, sort of watching Paris walk by. We had a delightful conversation about the importance of creativity. He was at a phase where he knew that the Apple II was nearing the end of its life. He was not happy with the Apple III. He was just starting to kick around the ideas for the Lisa and what was going to be the Macintosh. We were talking about trackballs and joysticks and mice, and the whole idea of having a little hand in the screen, which is essentially what the mouse was.
“I last saw him a year before his death. He was very, very thin, but he didn’t look frail. He had a strength about him. He said, ‘I think I’m going to beat this thing.’”

A Christmas Story

Regis McKenna, Apple’s original marketing guru, met the 22-year-old Jobs when he drove up to his house on a motorcycle and talked about how he wanted to build Apple into a global brand. McKenna sat in on Apple executive meetings from 1983 to 1987, and the two men remained close throughout the years.

“In 1998 my wife and I bought five iMacs as Christmas gifts for our grandchildren. We watched them open their presents, and when 5-year-old Molly opened her iMac, she said, ‘Life is good.’ Unfortunately, Molly’s iMac developed a problem. After using it a few hours, the disc drive door would not open. The dealer told me he was not authorized to exchange the computer for another one due to an Apple policy. Repair would take several weeks, he told me. I sent an e-mail to Steve and asked him about Apple’s return/exchange policy on a new product. Within five minutes my phone rang. It was Steve. He asked me what the problem was and the name of the dealer. ‘I’ll call you back,’ he said. A few minutes later the phone rang and it was a very apologetic dealer. ‘I have a new iMac here for your granddaughter,’ he said. I e-mailed Steve, thanking him and assuring him that he had made my granddaughter’s Christmas a happy one. Steve immediately replied with a simple ‘Ho, ho, ho.’”
McKenna also recalls another story. In 1985, after being fired by Apple by CEO John Sculley and the board, Jobs talked with McKenna about his next steps the week after his ouster. “Steve said that Apple might even benefit from his leaving,” McKenna says. “That he may be able to help Apple with his new venture.  He said that his new company might possibly develop technology that Apple could use and that he could in that way benefit the company. ‘Maybe we can develop a new successful product line that would enhance the Apple product line and they will buy us,’ he told me. At the time, Steve did not foresee how prescient that statement would be.”
In 1996, Apple bought Jobs’ NeXT Inc. for $429 million, a move that facilitated Jobs’ return to the company – and the launch of the most successful turnaround in U.S. corporate history.

A Friend In Need

Heidi Roizen, now a venture capitalist, was the head of software company T/Maker, which distributed  software for the Mac in the 1980s. She had many experiences with Jobs she would call “character-building,” but one was more personal.
“On Mar. 1, 1989 Steve called to talk to me about a negotiation, and as it was Steve I took the call, even though I had just learned the night before that my father had died suddenly while on a business trip in Paris. When I told Steve what had happened, he said, ‘Then why are you working? You need to go home. I’ll be right over.’
Jobs came to her house and sat on the floor beside her while she sobbed for two hours. “Yes, I had sofas, but Steve didn’t like to sit on sofas. He asked me to talk about my father, what was important about him, what I loved best about him. Steve’s mother had passed away a few months earlier, so I think he was particularly attuned to how I felt and what I needed to talk about. I will always remember and appreciate what an incredible thing he did for me in helping me grieve.”

He Notices Everything

Emily Brower Auchard, who worked on the P.R. team for Steve Jobs at NeXT, says that Jobs was a “noticer” who picked up on the smallest detail. “One of my tasks was to sit in press interviews with Steve and take notes. Once before an interview, I realized that I was wearing two different shoes. I had dressed quickly that morning and had grabbed what I thought were a pair of black pumps. They weren’t. I called my boss for advice. She said I absolutely needed to fix the situation because Steve would definitely notice. So I drove like a maniac to the Stanford Mall and bought myself a pair of replacement shoes at Nordstrom and then sped back to NeXT’s offices. It was the fastest shopping decision I ever made.”
Disarm, Rather Than Charm
In 1989, NeXT, struggling to win over buyers, got a meeting with IBM to discuss licensing the NeXTStep software for use on IBM’s OS/2 computers, recalls a former NeXT executive, who asked not to be named. NeXT really wanted the deal (IBM did end up licensing the software for $65 million at the end of that year).
Executives from both companies gathered in a conference room at NeXT’s headquarters on Deer Creek Road in Palo Alto, Calif., waiting for Jobs to arrive. He finally came in, turned to the senior IBM executive and said “Your user interface sucks.” There were gasps from executives at both companies.
“This is kind of how he got to be a good negotiator. He would totally disarm people by dropping F-bombs,” the NeXT executive recalls. “He would say, ‘We’re doing this deal but your products are s—. He was outrageous. But he always ended up getting exactly what he wanted.”
Okay to Lie
“Steve was really, really, really good one-on-one to interact with. You could have a conversation with him, he wasn’t putting on a show. If there were more than two people in the room, the marketing in Steve came out. He then put on the show,” says a  CEO who worked with Jobs after his return to Apple in the late 1990s. “He was always polite and had to be nice because he needed something from me. There was a period of time when he came back to Apple, where he needed people to work with him, Apple was a mess, Next was a failure. So he was somebody you could work with. As he became more and more successful with the iPod and then the iPhone, he became more and more arrogant. The old Steve.
“There were times where what he said he was going to do something and what he did were not necessarily consistent, and when I challenged him on that. He was, ‘Yeah, yeah, I know, but I needed to change my mind.’ It was okay in his mind to lie.’”
Brilliant  
Apple announced OS X, a new version of the Mac operating system that would no longer work with the previous iterations and require Apple’s developers to rewrite their applications. So Jobs asked Adobe to port its top-selling graphics applications to OS X but Adobe was reluctant, because customers weren’t willing to pay for something that wasn’t a feature enhancement,” said a former Adobe executive. “System compatibility was a given.”
Adobe did finally agree to do the update to OS X, but Jobs wasn’t happy with the timing.
“On OS X, he wanted OS X compatibility in a nanosecond and he was angry that Adobe didn’t move fast enough for him.” When Adobe did finally release OS X versions, Jobs made sure to introduce them at a Macworld event. “He did it because it helped Adobe with the product, but he really did it because it was unique to his platform. He was brilliant in terms of what he knew what he needed to do to be successful.”