Apple and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs had some advice for director Brad Bird when he was making decisions about merchandise on the 2004 movie The Incredibles: “fewer things, better things.”
Bird recalled the advice during a recent online chat with Training Day director Antoine Fuqua (who, incidentally, just had his last movie acquired by Apple). Bird also recalled speaking with Jobs about the Apple Store, around the time the company was busy opening the first ones.
Most Apple fans have heard Steve Jobs’ introduction of the original 1984 Macintosh. But far fewer are familiar with the initial public demonstrations of the NeXT Computer, the first of two NeXT machines Jobs launched during his years outside Apple.
However, 32 years down the line, an audio recording of one such speech, from the Boston Computer Society, has shown up online. Check it out.
The companies they helped found might have been sworn enemies at times, but Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn’t hate one another. In fact, as the former Microsoft boss admitted on a recent podcast, he was actually jealous of Steve Jobs.
Appearing on the Armchair Expert podcast, Gates told actor and podcast host Dax Shepard that Jobs was a “wizard” when it came to motivating people. “I was a minor wizard so I couldn’t fall under his spells,” Gates said. “But I could see him casting the spells, and then I would look at people and see them mesmerized … I was so jealous.”
Standing up to Steve Jobs wasn’t easy. Alternately a charmer and a tyrant, he was accustomed to winning arguments on just about everything.
But when photographer Doug Menuez found himself on the receiving end of a Jobs tirade, he stood his ground. And the result was not only the best-selling cover of Fortune magazine that year, but a newfound level of respect from Apple’s famous co-founder.
For long-time Apple fans like myself, Tuesday marked the end of an era. Phil Schiller stepped down from his role as VP of worldwide marketing.
Schiller was the last of the OG — a stalwart onstage companion to Steve Jobs, long before it was fashionable to watch Apple keynotes. Schiller was there at all the seminal moments in Apple history, including the launch of iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Back in the day, he and Jobs were a remarkable double act. Jobs would announce the products, and then Schiller would stride in to perform the demos.
Fortunately, Schiller’s not gone for good. In his new role as an Apple Fellow, he will still keep an eye on the App Store and Apple Events. But I wanted to take this opportunity to remember the man, the legend, that is Phil Schiller. Here are the top 10 reasons why I’ll miss him.
Like Steve Jobs? Have approximately $11,000 as a starting bid to pick up some memorabilia to prove as much? Then you could be in the market for a Jobs-autographed October 1989 copy of Fortune magazine autographed by the Apple co-founder.
The magazine, which was signed for one of Jobs’ former chauffeur drivers, is going up for auction this week. And it comes complete with a story of Jobs being, well, Jobs.
Update July 31, 2020: The copy of Fortune that Steve Jobs reluctantly signed for his chauffeur sold for $16,638 on Thursday, significantly above the minimum bid.
As a result of coronavirus-induced lockdowns, the way we work has changed dramatically in 2020. Plenty of employees and businesses are now talking seriously about remote working and whether it represents a viable path forward for reimagining employment.
It turns out that Steve Jobs was talking about this exact topic 30 years ago. No, Jobs didn’t foresee COVID-19. But an old interview clips unearthed by journalist Jon Erlichman shares Jobs’ thoughts on the way technology can transform the way that you and I work.
Check it out.
Michael Hawley, the man who helped Steve Jobs write his famous 2005 Stanford commencement address, has died as a result of cancer at the age of 58.
Hawley, who shared a house with Jobs at one time and worked with him at NeXT, was a polymath and pioneer in his own right. At NeXT, he created one of the world’s first digital libraries. He also helped conceive of the Internet of Things, worked at MIT’s world-famous Media Lab, was scientific director for one of the first major scientific expeditions on Everest in 1998, and was an accomplished piano player and organist.
Lately, all kinds of stories have circulated online about TV host Ellen DeGeneres not exactly being the nicest person in Hollywood. But one mentioned in a recent New York Post article had an Apple tie-in.
According to the article, Ellen once phoned up none other than Steve Jobs himself to complain that the font size was too small on the iPhone after she lost her glasses and was unable to read the screen.
Rapper 50 Cent claims that he personally pitched Steve Jobs on paying him $150,000 to promote the iPod in his 2003 music video for the hit song “P.I.M.P.”
“You think you could sell an iPod? I could sell an iPod,” 50 recalled telling Jobs in a recent interview. “Jimmy [Iovine] will tell you, in that 10 minutes that I sat there, I got [Jobs] to give me $150,000. [It was] the first time Apple did product placement in anything, any music video.”
Steve Jobs is coming to the radio. Through the medium of song, that is!
With theaters closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Seattle Opera plans to treat listeners to some much-needed opera by broadcasting some of its past performances on the radio (and streaming them online). Apple fans might want to tune in for Grammy-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, which tells the story of Apple’s iconic late co-founder and CEO.
Zoom calls have exploded during the current coronavirus lockdown. But if you’ve already exhausted the possibilities of different angles and backdrops for your video calls, why not try being a different person entirely? You know, like former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs.
At least, that’s the tech demo/experiment created by coders Ali Aliev and Karim Iskakov. They’ve developed an Animoji or Memoji-style tool called Avatarify that lets users superimpose a real-time mask onto themselves during video calls.
The San Francisco Opera company said Tuesday that it is scrapping its entire summer season — including its premiere of a critically acclaimed opera about the life of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The classical Grammy Award-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs had been scheduled to run June 20 through July 3. But like Apple’s canceled keynote last month, it will now no longer take place as planned.
Ed Catmull and Dr. Pat Hanrahan, who created the 3D computer graphic breakthroughs that led to Pixar, have been awarded this year’s Turing Award, it was announced Wednesday.
The award, which is often called the Nobel Prize of computing, carries a $1 million prize.
Jerry Manock is one of the great unsung heroes of Apple design. As the father of Apple’s Industrial Design Group, Manock made an indelible contribution to the company’s long line of hit products.
He may not be a household name like Jony Ive, but, starting with the Apple II, Manock played a massive role in making the company what it is today. In an exclusive interview with Cult of Mac, the 76-year-old industrial designer recounts many colorful stories about Cupertino’s past — including one that shows even Steve Jobs got nostalgic.
While the iPad was arguably the purest distillation of Steve Jobs’ computing philosophy, even dyed-in-the-wool Apple fans don’t know everything about the revolutionary tablet.
Whether you’re an Apple newbie who’s just learning the differences between the iPad Air and the iPad Pro or a longtime fan who calls Cupertino products by their code names, there’s always a bit more to find out.
Here are 10 things you (probably) don’t know about the iPad.
Laurene Powell Jobs, the wife of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, sat down for an interview with the New York Times this week giving rare glimpses into the mind of the world’s 35th-richest person.
In the interview, Powell Jobs discusses her childhood in New Jersey as well as how her 22-years of marriage to Steve Jobs influenced her views. Perhaps the most interesting bit of the interview comes though when Powell Jobs hates on massively rich people, saying it’s dangerous for society.
A treasure trove of Steve Jobs-related goods is going under the hammer in an upcoming March auction titled, well, the Steve Jobs auction.
Organized by RR Auctions, the lot consists of various Apple-related items. These include a PowerBook signed by Jobs, an original Apple-1 computer, and an incredibly rare Apple II document signed by Jobs, previously belonging to Apple’s first industrial designer Jerry Manock.
Steve Jobs’ autograph is rare because a) he was Steve Jobs and b) because he reportedly hated signing autographs. That makes any opportunity to get your hands on the John Hancock of Apple’s late CEO and co-founder pretty exciting.
An upcoming auction promises one of the more interesting Jobs autographs I’ve seen. RR Auctions is auctioning off a mid-1990s PowerBook 190cs, signed by Jobs in black felt tip. Its starting price? A mere $1,000 — although you can expect it to sell for many, many times that figure.
Larry Tesler, a pioneering computer scientist who worked at Apple from 1980 to 1997 and created computerized cut, copy and paste, died Monday at the age of 74.
Tesler served as VP of AppleNet and Apple’s Advanced Technology Group. During his time at Apple, he played a key role in the development of products ranging from the Lisa to the Newton MessagePad.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to his contribution to computing.
Steve Jobs was driven by money and the desire to be important. That’s according to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak on the latest episode of former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People podcast.
Woz just wanted to have fun, but Jobs was propelled by something else, Wozniak said on the podcast. “[He] was always looking for little ways to make a next step in money, [and] he wanted to be that important person in life,” Woz told Kawasaki.
Go to AppStore.com and it will connect you with, well, the App Store. And you’ve got Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff to thank for it.
In his recent book Trailblazer, Benioff tells the story of how Steve Jobs gave him the idea for what became the first enterprise app store. And how Benioff later thanked Jobs by signing over the AppStore.com domain.
If you missed Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs biopic, there’s some good news: The Oscar-nominated movie is coming to Netflix.
The movie, which came out in 2015, is an adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s bajillion copy-selling 2012 biography of Steve. It stars Michael Fassbender as the mercurial Apple co-founder and former CEO.
Even if you’re a die-hard Apple fan, there’s still plenty you most likely don’t know about the company’s most popular product. And, whether you want to wow your Apple-loving in-laws over the holidays or just feel the need to fill your brain with some iPhone facts, we’ve got you covered.
Here are 10 things you (probably) don’t know about the iPhone.
Steve Jobs’ on-stage iPad pitch to customers saw him relaxing in a luxury chair. His brief to Apple engineers actually building the iPad? “I want a single piece of glass I can use to read email on the toilet.”
That’s according to Imran Chaudhri, a 21-year Apple veteran, now chairman and president of Humane. Chaudhri was responding to a recent article about the iPad’s origins which appeared in the New York Times.