Steve Jobs was as difficult a photographic subject as he was an iconic one.
One of Jobs’ most famous photos ever graced the cover of the very first issue of Macworld. In it, Jobs stood in front of three newly unveiled Macintosh computers in a pinstriped suit. Is anyone surprised that the photograph was almost impossible to get?
Thirty years after the difficult photoshoot, Macworld has posted a great story about what it was like to actually get the shot. Not only did Steve not wants to do it, but he bossed everyone around and gave the photographer the finger when he showed up on set.
Then when it can time to shoot, Jobs shouted to photographer Will Mosgrove, “Look, take a picture of this!” and Jobs held out his middle finger. Jobs continued by saying to Mosgrove, “Are you one of those photographers that takes a whole bunch of pictures and hopes that one of them turns out okay?”
Eventually, Macworld got the shot, but then Steve Jobs started leaning on Macworld to not use the image for the cover. So Macworld publisher David Bunnell simply lied, telling Steve that the issue was already at the presses. Steve was a hard guy to handle, even when you were making history with him.
Jobs never posed for Macworld again.
Source: Macworld
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
