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Your TV is. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, the story of an American innovator and an American artist. We're talking about Steve Jobs. Here to tell the story is Walter Isaacson, the author of the biography of Steve Jobs, among so many others.
We'd like to thank the Library of Congress for allowing us to use this audio. Let's get into the story. It was about eight years ago that I got a phone call from Steve Jobs. I had known him for the past 20 years, since 1984 when he came to Time Magazine to show off that wonderful Macintosh computer. And even back then in 1984, I saw the passion for perfection and also that impatience that was bred into his personality and how those two things were connected. He showed off the Macintosh at Time Magazine and how beautiful each icon was, made us use a jeweler's loop to look at the beauty of the pixels, the design, that little off-kilter disk drive that made it look like a smile. But then he told us that our magazine stank.
Actually, he used a four-letter word and he said Newsweek was much better because we had not made him Man of the Year. And I realized then that that connection of that passion for perfection and that driving impatience were all part of a seamless system, the way a great Apple product, from the hardware to the software to the content, is part of a seamless system. So when he called me, I was just finishing up Albert Einstein and Steve said, I want to take a walk with you, and he said, why don't you do my biography next? Now, my first thought was, OK, Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, you. But the more I thought about it, here's somebody who was the American creation myth, the innovation myth, writ large and writ true, starting a company in his parents' garage with the kid down the street and turning it into the most valuable company in the history of the planet, and doing so by creating great products that transformed the personal computer industry, the music industry, the publishing industry, the retail store industry, the digital animated movie industry, phone industry.
Up and down the line, he was transformative. And so what I realized then, especially since he told me, was that he stood at the intersection of beauty and technology. Steve was somebody who really believed that beauty mattered, and that success came from making what he called in the 1980s an insanely great product. All of you who have been involved in business and creative things know that there's two ways of looking at a business. Steve said, you could focus on making a profit, or you could focus on making a great product. If you focus on making a profit, eventually you're going to cut a few corners. You're not going to make the greatest product you can make.
But if you really focus on making the greatest possible product, the most beautiful product, eventually the profits will follow. Plus, you'll make a dent in the universe. You'll be a real artist.
You'll have made something special. I remember walking around the neighborhood that he grew up, his childhood home, a tract house in Los Altos, and we were looking at a fence that he had built with his father when Steve was about eight years old. And Steve told me that I had to come around and look at the back of the fence to see how pretty it was. And he said, when we were building the fence, my father said to me, we have to make the back of this fence just as beautiful as the front of the fence.
And Steve said, why? Nobody will ever see it. Nobody will ever know. And his father said to him, yes, but you will know.
You will care. And the person who has a passion for even the parts unseen is the person who is always going to be a good craftsman and make something right. This I saw over and over again in Jobs' career. For example, when they're launching the Macintosh, that beautiful machine he showed me in 1984, with that wonderful sealed case like an appliance, beautifully designed like a piece of art. But before they shipped it, Steve looked at the circuit board. And he said to the engineers on the team, this circuit board stinks. And they said, what do you mean?
He said, well, is that beautiful? The chips aren't lined up. And the engineers said, well, Steve, this is a sealed appliance. You've made it so nobody can even open the Mac.
It's a perfect appliance. Nobody will ever see the circuit board. Nobody will ever know. And Steve said what his father had said to him, which is, yes, but you will know. So they hold up shipping the Macintosh until that circuit board has all the chips lined up beautifully and equally spaced. And when they got it ready, Steve had them all take a white board and sign their names with Stephen P. Jobs, all in lower case in the middle, to engrave next to the circuit board on the inside of that original Macintosh case. Where nobody would ever see it, nobody would ever know, but he said real artists sign their work. It was that passion for perfection that made him sometimes a strong cup of tea, somebody hard to deal with, somebody who could drive people crazy, drive them to distraction, but also drive them to do things they didn't know that they could do. Because when you have that passion for product, even though you might drive people crazy, they become loyal to you because they're inspired by your vision of making something of beauty. And you've been listening to Walter Isaacson, the author of Steve Jobs, tell a remarkable story, telling the story of Steve Jobs.
And it was his passion for perfection and his impatience that combination were a part of a seamless system, Isaacson described. The story of Steve Jobs continues here on Our American Story. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the show where America is the star in the American people, and we do it all from the heart of the South, Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't do this show without you.
Our shows will always be free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to OurAmericanStories.com.
Give a little, give a lot. That's OurAmericanStories.com. On Saturday, February 22nd at 1.30 p.m. Eastern, it's the Pro Volleyball Federation's first All-Star match. The league's biggest stars will clash in a can't-miss event hosted in the Indy metro area, home of the Indy Ignite. Catch every serve, spike and save live on CBS. Don't miss this historic showdown of volleyball's finest.
The Pro Volleyball Federation All-Star match on February 22nd at 1.30 p.m. Be there. Wasn't that delicious? So good. Your bill, ladies. I got it.
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A smart TV built by the streaming pros. And we return to our American stories and with the story of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. Telling the story is Walter Isaacson, the author of the official biography of Steve Jobs.
Let's return to the story. Steve could create amazing things by sheer force of will. It started even early on when he and Wozniak were working at Atari or Steve was working on the night shift at Atari.
And at one point they were supposed to create a game called Breakout which was a single player version of Pong. And Steve says to Woz you got to design the code in four days. Because we have to get back to the Apple Commune for the weekend.
They were working on an Apple Commune in Oregon where Steve was, hence the name of the company that they would eventually found. And Woz says to him I can't do this code in four days. It's going to take me a couple of weeks. Steve Jobs had taught himself even then to stare without blinking. And he stared at Woz and kept saying don't be afraid. You can do it. Don't be afraid.
You can do it. Woz said it was amazing. After a while Woz said I went back to my little cubicle. I stayed up four nights in a row and I was able to write the coding for Breakout.
That reality distortion field over and over again was able to help Steve push people to distraction, push them to anger, but push them to do what they thought impossible. Even with the original Macintosh. It took a long time to boot up. It took more than 70 seconds to boot up.
It was sort of almost as slow as a Microsoft machine. So Steve said to Larry Kenyon the engineer you got to take 10 seconds off the boot up time. Kenyon says well Steve it's you know elegant code.
I don't think I can do it. Steve said if you could save a human life would you do it? Kenyon goes well I guess so. So Steve goes to a white board and says there's going to be a million Macintoshes sold next year.
They'll be booted up maybe a couple times a week. If you shave 10 seconds off in the course of a year you're going to save the equivalent of 100, 130 lifetimes. Then he looked at Kenyon and said don't be afraid.
You can do it. Kenyon said I went back, went back to work and within two weeks I had shaved 28 seconds off the boot up time. Over and over again this happens. I'll just give you one more example. One that I love which is with the iPhone. That you know walking around Georgetown day before yesterday watching the lines on Wisconsin Avenue blocking traffic for the next iPhone.
Why? Because it's a beautiful magical piece of technology that you love because it's so insanely well designed and beautiful. And when Steve started off one of the things he didn't want was something like this.
Plastic on the front of the iPhone. He said he wanted a really great smooth piece of glass that was tough but silky. And the claves in China that were making the glass for the stores didn't meet his standards. He kept saying no it's got to be better. Finally somebody said why don't you call Corning. Corning Glass in New York.
Maybe they can do it. Steve being Steve picks up the phone, calls the switchboard at Corning and says let me speak to your CEO. Switchboard being a switchboard said we'll take your name and number and have somebody call. Steve slams down the phone, says typical east coast bull. And eventually the head of Corning hears the story, smart guy, he calls the switchboard at Cupertino at Apple and says let me speak to your CEO.
They say put your request in writing and fax it to us. Steve hears about it and says that guy's cool. And they finally have a meeting. So Steve meets with the head of Corning Glass and says here's what we need. This type of glass, really smooth. The head of Corning says well years ago we developed a process, an ion transfer process that would make a glass like that and we called it Gorilla Glass but we never manufactured it. And Steve went through the process with him and Steve said that's what I want. I need it.
I need this much by September. We're shipping the phone this October. And so the head of Corning said well I just told you we've actually never made that glass before. Now this is 30 years to the month almost that he did it to Wozniak. I remember sitting, I went up to Corning Glass, out with Wendell Weeks, a wonderful CEO there. And Wendell Weeks just told me this story. He said it was amazing. The guy sat right across from me and stared at me without blinking. And he said don't be afraid.
You can do it. Eventually, you know, after the meeting Weeks picked up the phone and called a plant manager of a Corning plant near Lexington, Kentucky. The plant manager he liked and said I want you to start right away shifting from making flat screen TV glass to Gorilla Glass. Of course the plant manager said well we don't have that. And basically Wendell Weeks said to him, he said I just said don't be afraid.
You can do it. The upshot is that's why every piece of glass on every iPhone that year and every piece of glass on every iPhone in your pocket and iPad is made by Corning Glass. Because Steve had a reality distortion field and got people to do things like that. He also had a passion for beauty and for him simplicity was the ultimate sophistication. Which was a phrase they used on the first Apple marketing brochure. That as Einstein would say, simplicity is the key to understanding the way the good Lord created the universe. He believed in simplicity as beauty. Just as Newton did, just as Kepler did, just as all great people who try to understand the universe. They understand that simplicity is a way of saying we have not just eliminated stuff, we have gotten to the essence and we understand it.
And we can really feel whether it's what a screw does in a particular computer or the way Maxwell's equations deal with the speed of light. There's a true simplicity that is integral at least in Steve's mind to beauty. For example, when he's creating the iPod and what he had done over and over again was not invent totally new things. I can remember having an MP3 music player before the iPod but they were brain dead, they were junky, they were horrible. You couldn't figure out how do I put songs in, how do I make a playlist, how do I get to the song, you know the interface, how do I get to the song I want. Steve said make it simple. He said just this simple, a thousand songs in your pocket, three clicks to get to any song.
And they said okay, okay. He said no manual, no instructions, three clicks. So they would show them the different interfaces they were coming up with and it would have the different way. He said well I can't get to it in three clicks and he'd say not good enough. They said well we need a screen for the title and we need a screen for the artist and for the album.
He said no, no, you don't need all that. Three clicks, any song. And finally they come up with this absolutely beautiful intuitive design which is that scroll wheel.
You get to any song you wanted, as you scrolled longer it went down faster. It was all simple and intuitive and he loves it but he looks at it and there's a big old button on top. And he says what the is this?
I'll leave out the middle word. They're a little bit scared to answer but at one point somebody finally says Steve that's the on off button. Steve nods and says what the does it do? Now they're a little scared because they know he knows what it does. They finally say Steve it turns it on and off.
And then he says why the we need it? And it slowly dawns on them you don't need that big old button. If you quit using your iPod it powers down. If you start using it again it knows to power itself back up. You know you don't need a big old button to junk it up to go on off.
So they take it off and it was that the sort of understanding of the beauty and the essence of simplicity. And you've been listening to Walter Isaacson telling the story of Steve Jobs. And he's also the author of the official biography of Jobs as well. He could create amazing things from sheer force of will Isaacson told us. And created a reality distortion field that drove his engineers to do hard and even unimaginable things. Don't be afraid he'd say to them after a Vulcan stare.
You can do it. And he did this to strangers. He did this to the CEO of Corning.
He did it to everybody. And then that passion for beauty. Simplicity was the ultimate sophistication to Jobs.
He believed in simplicity as beauty. The story of Steve Jobs here on Our American Stories. The All-Star match on February 22nd at 1.30 p.m. Be there. Deciding on what to listen to is hard. Using Zumo to stream music from iHeart90's radio is easy.
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