The five best Steve Jobs anecdotes

Steve Jobs was known for his hands-on managerial style, the ability to both completely humiliate and inspire employees at the same time, and for his incredible vision – but not much is known about the day-to-day working life of the man himself.

Bits and pieces of information have been available for years, but until yesterday many former colleagues and journalists were unable to reveal what they had seen or heard.

With so many of these stories now being told, here are five of the best Steve Jobs anecdotes that reveal a little more about how he ran the company.

The iPad Aquarium

There are plenty of entrepreneurs who are sceptical about just how much Jobs actually set the vision for certain products, and whether he was as involved with so many tiny details as people say he was.

This piece on The Atlantic by D.B. Grady recalls a situation where Jobs was presented with a prototype of the iPad, but complained that it was too big. After the engineers said they couldn’t make the device any smaller, Jobs took the iPad over to an aquarium, and promptly dropped it in.

“These are air bubbles,” he said. “That means there’s space in there. Make it smaller.”

Jobs had an extremely hands-on approach to everything he did, and Apple’s products were all the better for it.

The iPhone 4 controversy

Most Apple fans would recall the iPhone 4 fiasco in early 2010. At the time, speculation was building over the upcoming iPhone and bloggers were eager to get their hands on any information that came their way.

Tech blog Gizmodo created one of the biggest controversies in recent history when it got its hands on a prototype iPhone 4 that an Apple employee left in a bar. The publication posted a full write-up, complete with pictures and videos. The scandal broke world headlines.

But until now, editor Brian Lam has kept quiet on the controversy. Yesterday he revealed that Steve Jobs actually called him personally to figure out what they were going to do about the lost iPhone.

“Hi, this is Steve. I really want my phone back,” Jobs said, according to Lam.

“I appreciate you had your fun with our phone and I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at the sales guy who lost it. But we need the phone back because we can’t let it fall into the wrong hands.”

Lam had a back and forth with Jobs, with Jobs at one point warning, “If I have to serve you papers, and go through the trouble of it, I’m coming for something and it’s going to mean someone in your organisation will go to jail”.

However, he did give one piece of encouragement to Lam – “you’re just doing your job”.

Jobs was famous for his secrecy. This story demonstrates he was willing to do whatever it took to keep Apple’s culture intact.

The little things matter

Jobs obsessed over the little things. Google senior vice president of social business Vic Gundotra wrote recently on Google+ that once in 2008, he was sitting in a religious service on a Sunday when he received a call from an unmarked number. It was Jobs, leaving a message saying he had something urgent to discuss.

When he called him back, Jobs said the issue was urgent, and that he needed it addressed right away. In fact, he had already assigned someone on the task.

“I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I’m not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient. It’s just wrong and I’m going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?”

Jobs had incredible attention to detail – his fingerprints are all over the smallest parts of Apple’s products. Entrepreneurs should emulate his approach.

The Mobile Me debacle

Mobile Me, Apple’s first venture into the cloud, was a mess. It didn’t work properly and didn’t deliver as promised. Jobs was unimpressed.

According to a Fortune article published earlier this year, Jobs gathered all the people responsible for Mobile Me at the company’s Town Hall, and told them they were “tarnishing Apple’s reputation”. He even said they “should hate each other for having let each other down”.

“Can anyone tell me what Mobile Me is supposed to do?” he asked. When someone answered, he said, “So why the f&*% doesn’t it do that?”

“Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering,” he said.

Jobs understood that being a senior member of a team brings with it a significant amount of responsibility. Being accountable to that responsibility and ensuring quality at all times results in brilliant products.

The keyboard destroyer

According to the book The Second Coming of Jobs, which was published in 2001, Jobs was speaking to a number of students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business High Tech Club in 1996, shortly after he had returned to the company.

He answered questions, and afterwards the host asked Jobs to sign his Macintosh keyboard.

Jobs agreed, but said he wouldn’t do it unless he could remove all the unnecessary keys that had been added in order to make the Mac look more like a Microsoft PC. He then removed all of the function keys and navigational arrow keys. “I’m changing the world one keyboard at a time,” he said, and then signed the keyboard.

It’s an amusing story, but one that represents how serious Jobs was about his vision for the company. He recognised where Apple had gone wrong, and had a plan to fix it. As it turns out, he was right.

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