Barbra Streisand once called Steve Jobs for tech support

In an interview for Good Morning Britain, global diva Barbra Streisand has revealed how she once called up Steve Jobs to ask him for computer advice.

“I couldn’t figure out something on my computer and nobody could figure it out, no IT guy, so I said, ‘Can you get Steve Jobs on the phone?’” she recalled. As it turns out, she could. But even Jobs was unable to offer a solution.

“Sure enough, I asked him about this problem and he couldn’t figure it out,” she continued. “He gave me his IT guy, who also couldn’t figure out. That was funny.”

This isn’t the first time Streisand has mentioned her apparent hotline through to whoever is running Apple. Earlier this month, the singer noted how she had taken umbrage with the way Siri pronounces her last name, and — rather than training Siri to get it right — dialed straight through to Tim Cook’s phone number, who agreed to take care of the problem.

Of course, when you’re famous problems like this can be sorted out in a way that usually isn’t available to us mere mortals. In fact, both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have taken advantage of their impressive Rolodexes at some time or other.

One of my favorite Steve stories is one I was told took place when Jobs had to open a business account shortly after he started NeXT. Despite this being a straightforward task Jobs could have handled at any local bank branch, he phoned up the Bank of America and asked for a meeting with its president. And got it.

Tim Cook, meanwhile, revealed in his recent Washington Post interview that he called Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and ex-President Bill Clinton to ask their opinion on speaking before the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations about Apple’s tax practices in 2013.

It turns out that it helps to be Apple CEO. Unless you don’t want to deal with celebrity tech support, that is.

Via: The Guardian

Luke Dormehl

Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.