computing, personal computing, but by 2000 i had transformed the music industry, itunes, ipod, the religious and two music, a phone industry, a publishing, a tablet computing so then i said okay. this is too good to pass up. >> do you have a theory going into this? >> i had a theory because it is very first from call-in restarted to talk about it, he told me something that was said to have them that was you always want to stand at the intersection of liberal arts and the science right there between humanities and technology and engineering. that is something we lost that you're either in the humanities or the sciences. and my theory, among

others, is that connecting creativity to wonderful feats of engineering is what made him so magical. >> you wrote something in the book is a quote his passion for perfection and led him to indulge his instinct in to control such talk about the editorial control how did you manage to do that? >> i was stunned because it never really came up. after a while is your book i will not even read it. he did say by the way people don't read books. [laughter] but is yours and i want it to be honest. interview people who did not like me as well as people who did. he was brutally honest he said he did not want to feel like the in house book like

an independent book and therefore he would exercise no editorial control. >> did that ever change? >> the one time he did visit to the three people who do not read books but simon & schuster plan to the catalog a the cover design it was the cover of steve and apple and i landed in stamford sysco airport coming to a product launch that he would do and i saw the city would least like to see on your iphone which is six or seven missed calls from steve jobs for crimes to be in it concourse and he starts yelling at me. you have no taste for called the title is gimmicky and it is ugly i don't want you to come to the demonstration and. [laughter] i'm holding the fund.

finally he says, i am not going to continue to cooperate unless you allow me to have input into the cover art. is it me somewhere between one second in second and have to say sure. is greatest design i or something like that and he spent a lot of time trying to make it a very simple and clean cover. that was the one time i felt his wrath and also the one time he had editorial input. >>host: you talk a lot and you quote his friends to claim to the term reality distortion field. did you find yourself getting sucked into that as you work with him? >> would be the last to know. reality distortion field from a talk about it in revolution of the

valley, but the engineers come from the "star trek" series that is simply by thinking something and being convinced of something even if it is impossible. you can convince other people. the secret of the reality distortion field is that sometimes it works. you convince people they can do the impossible and then steve would say you'd have to do this in four days. one of the atari games in there with say it cannot be done and he said you can do it. that was the reality distortion field and in four days it was done. the question if i got sucked into it, i found myself deeply, emotionally invested with him. i tried very hard to be honest in the book to put

all sides in the buck. that there will be people in this audience who would no more than most to re-read the book to say he got caught in a reality distortion field, i guess the answer is yes. >> one final question about the process. you have the luxury of along historic called the taxman from einstein and benjamin franklin but here you write a biography of a very compelling living per cent of close and personal over 40 interviews. have a day maintain that necessary detachment that you could not spend with einstein are franklin. >> when steve did his stanford speech he said let me tell you three stories. you become a storyteller and

you don't try to preach i try to let the stories tell themselves. one of the things i discovered by having so much time with them in 150 other people who worked with them is how much more we know that i could know about him than benjamin franklin or einstein. we think he wrote to a lot of letters come a 40 volumes of paper science guy they're still compiling, but like flying a kite in the rain. one little journal entry, a newspaper clip, but with steve, everything that happened i would hear about at great length then other people's versions and i probably end up knowing 100 o thousand times more about him and each story in the book the new wide doing it through letters or

journal's. >> talk about the story tiny we like to begin with was a at. the blue boxes. it starts at atari doing games and steve is on the night shift because they find easier to work with him if he is on the night shift. [laughter] he learned the notion of how to do chips to do amazing things and also knows simplicity. remembered games like pawn and breakout in "star trek" had to be so simple us donned freshmen could figure them out. how to avoid the cling funds that simplicity was embedded and him. then at one point you have one of the few copies of the computer history museum of the blue box which was started i think when

"esquire" magazine wrote about capt. and french and those who could replicate the bell system tone to make free phone calls so job said we have to do this they found the bell system manual in made the analog version that did not quite work. in the first semester berkeley they could make their first digital version and you can see the partnership and four jillian cannot see if he is shaking his head and not. [laughter] but he comes up with this amazing circuit board but loves to show it off and steve says we could package it and we could sell it and making many and they go door-to-door selling this thing. at one point by calling the

vatican pretending to call the vatican pretended to be kissinger trying to get the pope on the phone they eventually figured out it was signed henry kissinger. i can see him nodding negative zero and steve told me when he described as storey in so old blue box story that if i had not been for the blue box there would not have been apple. that is pretty profound. >>host: why did he feel that way? >> the very complementary they complemented each other well. he would say he was 50 times better than any engineer could have better meetings in his head and was taught by his father being an engineer is the highest calling so he never thought maybe we should put it in a

package where maybe we should get a good power supply and maybe we can sell it at twice or three times the cost of our materials. what steve did is take really great deal is to come up with a revision to pull a altogether to do something amazing in that was a perfect partnership for somebody who could design the circuit board of one 1/4 the number of chips in the bills would take to make it to work. >>host: talking earlier about the process of invention and is not a singular endeavor not the one person sitting in your room at. >> is about the collaboration in. when you think of einstein was there a relationship? have you found these relationships occur over and over? >> not always.

with einstein, it was the true solo act for the most of again dove theories of general relativity. he is paid seeing a loved and unlike most others, that even though he was tough on people, a true the created teams like the original macintosh team of which he was the part that bonded together as if they were pirates and stephen was able with his inspiring in a demanding way to create collaborative teams and he did that his whole life even now at two apple you have the intensely loyal collaborative team. >> apple is up and running.

to give a shout out to everyone. that apple i that is what you heard on the tape they go from person to person to get it up and running to create this circuit board then they put it all together. steve decides 1/2 to incorporate they sold today at sotheby's 1.6 million and then when they put together apple, the way steve tells the story, he had was on a commune farm he was there 10 deemed to the apples and he came back from the apple

farm saying we will create a company and he gets all excited not only will they make a product we will have from company. they could not figure out what to name it with matrix and he says what about apple? apple computer. counterintuitive. it makes your head snap the didier is friendly a with of counterculture but american and as by. and he says of the cannot think of the of better name within one day and by the way a gets in front of atari in the phone book. [laughter] >> important marketing angle [laughter] they work on the apple i. apple is growing putting together a team early in the history but if there is another ingredient that has to make it work.

first of all, you need money. what they're doing is going from apple xii the of bill ii. the difference is they create a beautiful case, the plastic molding, it will cost a lot of money to do with. you cannot sell your vw bus and your h-p calculator like they did before. the need investment capital then they sign a line of credit but it gives them a great piece of the device which is a marketing document that has three concepts. one is to focus. keep your focus. the other is in the the. that make the emotional connection that the people

will buy your product. the third is not great but if you to to being cast an aura around with there you do so that then it, as steve come even through his career had his own personal name on the patents, the boxes, the package jane so when you open up there is the ipod cradle it when something really cool two us to the way it was in that is what apple ii does it. >> even as primitive as it looks today he obsessed with the curve of the corners. >> the design element. he had been fascinated by the sony style right when they move out of the garages a year and a little office and next -- next door is the saudi showroom. then he went to the ass been

designed conference. . .

>> the 1984 ad is interesting knaus steve job's sowl you do have the heart or soul of a member of the counterculture,

rebel, misfit.

>> i'm fighting the that's the amazing ad, scott, who had just done blade runner films it, in london, and it's the woman being chased by the thought police, and all the droids and big brothers on the screen drone, and she throws the hammer in it. decimates big brother, and then says, in apple will introduc macintorn in 1984 won't be like 1984. so they show it at a board meeting and all the board members are like this at the end.

i think it was phil of macy's california says, who makes a motion we find a new ad agency? scully is so frightened of it he's going to order them to sell back the advertising time on the super bowl and not run the ad. steve is furious. and at one point shows the ad to woz, and woz says let's chip in and pay for the ad on the super bowl. they don't need to because lee and the wonderful people -- changes its name -- who made the ad, lee, a beach bum of a generous who helped do the ad, has been a guru of advertising at apple ever since, sort of says we can't sell the time back. they just defy and don't sell the time basketball. so the -- time back. the ad runs once nationally but it becomes by many estimates,

including tv guide, the best advertisements of all-time. >> it doesn't sell well -- [applause] >> we can't get the rights to show it. >> it's on youtube. >> it soon be on youtube. >> we can play it on youtube. >> wonderful commercial, great premiere, doesn't sell well. steve is removed from running the macintosh division. his relationship with scully, a massive loss at the end. in fact you go in the back day-by-day -- >> seven days in may. >> talking to everybody there, and steve twice during that week tries a counter coupe, brings people up to his house in woodside, they all sort of plot. they know that steve probably should not take over the company. and it's one of the great learning experiences, but he

feels abandoned, and he was going through a period of wrong-doing because he had been adopted. about abandonment and father figures. john scully, and they all go around the room and vote against him and abandon him, and he really takes it hard. >> how does he recover from that? when he talks to you about that period, pretty dark time, what did he say? >> well, he described vividly every single day of that week, including where the food came from when he was serving it on the patio, when they're trying to bring mike around. so it's still seared into his mind. >> almost 25 years later. >> yeah, memorial day weekend of 1985. he goes to europe for a while, bicycles around with -- he then talks to some people and comes

up with the concept of doing next computer, and by the end of 1985 has recruited a handful of people from apple, causing a lawsuit -- this is really bad at this point because the board and scully think, you're stealing our people. and he creates next. he says in his stanford speech and he said to me, being fired as apple is the best thing that happened know. liberated me. helped me change. i actually think it was the experience at next that liberated him and matured him more. >> why was that? >> at next there was no board of directors sitting on him, no ceo brought in. he could indulge every instinct. so, his instinct against paul rand, a designer of logos, $100,000 to do the next logo before they have anything. he gets a beautiful headquarters with a patented staircase.

you can see them now in apple stores. he wanted his own factory. he wanted the next to be a perfect cube, and those who have been involved in computer manufacturing know, usually they're sort of a draft angle that means it's 91 degrees or so so you can actually pull it out of the movement it was exactly 90 degrees it's harder to get -- no. exactly 90 degrees. and it meant they had to do a special manufacturing. had to be mac black. everything about it was him indulging this insane drive for perfection, including building the factory, having an impure wife and having it be robotic. so it is a glorious machine that is an absolute market failure, and at the very first macintosh offsite, he does a series of macombs on the white board, and the first one is,

don't compromise. that's a great inspiring max maxim, also not a great way to run a business. as ben frank frank said, compromises me a notice make great hero outside about they make grate democracy. at a point you have to learn how to make tradeoffs and that "don't compromise" mentality, he had it for a while until he realized, you don't have to compromise your principle but you have to have some sense of balance, and that's what he learned at next. and simultaneously, was was doing pixar. >> pixar is a wonderful example of what we said at the very beginning, the intersection of art and technology. a friend of his brought him up to george lucas, lucas was getting rid of the digital animation software and hardware division he had. steve thought that was really cool. he thought he could make

consumers the ability too do digital renderings. that never really took off. there was one guy working there in charge of making short to show off how cool the machines were, named john lassiter, and then he made a couple of shorts and the rest, as they say, is biography, if not history. makes -- eventually makes "toy story." so pixar is transformative. >> he says something very profound to you in the book about that period, which is, the strain that running pixar and next simultaneously put on him physically, and he even says i think that had something to my eventually getting cancer. >> i don't think that's the case. i don't think you get cancer from working hard or stress. >> right. it was -- >> he felt that way and felt it was great stress. he was driving up the pixar.

handling -- and then of course goes back to apple he is juggling quite a few things. i think that was a time of great stress in his life and also some unhappiness. next is not doing very well. those maps aren't selling. and pixar -- it was a hard hardware software company and nobody is buying pixar -- except disney bought a few pixar machines, and so for a while he hemorrhaging moneys at boast companies. >> and the most wildly creative period, producing these phenomenal -- >> by the time they produced "toy story" they're no longer hemorrhaging money. >> yeah. did he long for apple during this period? did he ever give up on the notion -- >> no.

apple was his baby, his child. i don't know he longed for it but he was deeply frustrate it was being screwed up. that after a whale they weren't inventing new products and the products sucked and they kept coming out with more macintoshs but not a new man. couldn't create a new operating system, a new mac os, so he is watching as people screw up the wonderful baby he helped create. >> and finally his return. >> can't create an operating system at a certain point, gill, then running apple, says, okay, i got to buy an operating system. and the bos; he looks at even microsoft. the question of adopting windows. that would have been weird. >> and then there's this amazing operating system that steve jobs had done at next with the

colonel to it, which it exactly what aim -- apple needed, and eventually apple buys flexion to get the operating system ask then you buy next to get steve jobs, and i'm not sure it was woz0 who said it, but i think it was, gill, meet steve jobs, game over. steve jobs is back in the saddle again. >> in fact you tell the whole story. emilio tried to resist that, but he just found himself -- >> game over. >> -- being drawn in. the reality distortion field kicks in and then begins argue my one of the greatest decade of a company. >> totally stunning. he creates with the new operating system -- he brings bill gates, his doppelganger,

and gates comes back and makes the new os for the mac and he focuses on design. you remember and probably have it here but not on stage, the first imac. he first goes back to apple in 1997, and they form this bonding, and they create the imac. johnny sketches it out. looks like a rabbit. hops up on your desk. steve says, that's not good, but they keep playing with the model until at it beautiful. they make it translucent beyond deep blue. go to jelly bean factories. you can see the circuitboard inside. and johnny ives comes up with the notion, even though it's a big desk top machine, putting a recessed handle, and the engineers say that coesites much movement you don't need a handle. and what steve and johnny intuitive understood is that

computers were still intimidating to people, but the handle gives you permission to touch it. it says, i'm at your service, and says, just by having that recessed handle, even if you didn't use it, you felt that the computer was being def rein shall to you. so that beautiful design, when they have flat screens, they tike the imac, and johnny designs something, and steve says, no, no, no, integrity of the flat screen, you screwedded up. and johnny comes back to steve's house in the back yard, they planted sun flowers. the walk around trying to fir out what to do, and finally you get that beautiful imac with the dome and the sunflower so it has integrity to it, and everything they do, whether they're playing with plastic or titanium or metal, it's distinguishing apple from those commodity machines that dell and h-p and compact were turning

out. >> once he rights the ship with that strategy, he makes a kind of incredibly bold decision, which is -- >> 2001. yeah. >> it's not going to be a computer company anymore. >> they used to take the top 100 and go off on retreats and say, here's what we want to do next. and everybody would fight to get on that list, and finally they get lists of ten, and then steve would cross off the bottom six or seven, and say, we can only do four. and it was stay focused. when we went back to arch that was it. focus on four things. desk top, laptop, home, professional. we're not going to make 20 lines of maks. we're going to make four. and so that focused. then when he nails it and gets that right, at the top of the list is maybe consumer devices. products. and what he does is he realizes that by having end-to-end control of the hardware and the software, you can create a digital hub where you can put your video camera by fire wire,

connected to your computer and manipulate your video, create dvds. the one thing he screwed up slightly was he didn't -- he wanted a trace in the new imac, and he was serious -- he waned one of those pure slots, and when they put a tray in, he was serious and made them eventually change it to just a slot, but it meant you couldn't burn music c.d.es, when panasonic and others came out with the burning of cds, and he was so fucused on video, doing idvd, and he calls up adobe and says, you've got to make your video editing software for the new mac os, and unlike bill gates, who said yes and came down and said microsoft, the people of adobe said, no, you have too small of a market share, and he never forgave

adobe, which is why flash doesn't work on your i. a but the mark of a true genius of a company is not just when you think of things first, burt when you actually fail to think of something first, can you leapfrog, catch up? and so he realizes he had gotten aced out of the music business. that others were making cd burner trays and people were -- all of us were making -- downloading music from napster and making play lists and burning cds and you couldn't do that well on the apple. so he had to leapfrog and says we're going to make a perfect end-to-end thing with a juke box software, which is itunes, the store itself, and when they start making the ipod, he makes it so simple because it's integrated.

you can put the complexity on the mac or the itune software so the device itself is not a complicated mp3 players. you could just look at it with the track wheel and it was intuitive, and he kept saying i want to be able to get wherever i want, whateverson want, in three clicks and i want it to be intuitive, and he drove them until the ipod becomes perfect and that is when he leapfrogs and does the music, but it takes apple from being apple computer -- they even changed the name to just apple -- into being in the digital hub business. first with dvds and video. then really big with the ipod and music, and the ipod is hugely successful so he starts to worry. what's going to kill it? and re realizes people putting music on their phones will kill it. so focuses and does the iphone, and does it at first -- they did two versions of the iphone, one with sort of an

ipod modified with a track wheel which wasn't very good for a phone. and then with johnny ives and many other people, and goaded on by microsoft and an engineer there that steve didn't like -- this notion of a touch screen technology, and when he finally sees how the touch screen can work, he says that's how we're going to do the iphone. so you have a series of consumer devices from the decade beginning beginning in 2001, most prominently the ipod, the iphone, and the ipad, the totally transform industries. >> and statement he is bending other industries in the direction of his -- >> the music industry. >> the music industry, disney. >> retail -- >> retailers. >> he can't abide he is making these products and comes up with the next to of apple store,

which is not just a store but a whole branding exercise. that notion of bending industries for the ipod and itune store to work you had to convince seven record companies to put all their music on and disaggregate albums and sell the songs for 99 cents initially. and the music companies had their own press play and they were doing their consortium. soapy had done the walkman, a great music division. none want to come aboard, and steve personally is like bringing the itune software to the time warner building, showing it to roger ames at warner music, getting him aboard, and then getting doug morris at universal, finally encircling sony. no other ceo would have been so

passionate about just going at people until they finally surrendered, and sony is the last holdout. there's a great story that andy lack tells me. he has to put sony music in but the one thing that steve wants is all of dylan. because he and woz found every bootleg tape, totally dylan fan natics. the sandarac of steve's life. dylan is a sony artist. so he wants to do all tracks of dylan as a virtual digital set you can buy for $199. andy at sonny says, no, i'm going to jab it to him. we need leverage. steve calls bob dylan, bob dylan, slightly spacey, doesn't deal with it, hismark, all trying to figure out -- steve jobs talked him into it.

andy lack finally says to bob dylan, i will write you a check for one million if you'll stay out of the itune store with that box set. and dylan -- i hate to say it because i love dylan -- takes the money, bought year lan diandy lack moved out of sony and dylan's box set not only goes on the itune store, dylan does an ipod ad with silhouettes and dylan wearing the cowboy hat, and it helped dylan. he debuted with an album at the top of the charts because the ad slow introduced him to a new generation. >> you look skeptical about the questions. >> i'm not skeptical. my expression meant to say where do i start. i want to ask you one more

question about the final chapter. you write, if reality did not comport with his will, he weigh nor it, as he had done with the birth of his daughter and would do a few years later when diagnosed with cancer. the question people wanted most to answer was why when he was firs diagnosed, kid he undertake all these natural nonmedical solutions. >> two sides to steve jobs at all times. whether it's his personal life, cancer, professional life, the products he makes. there's the counterculture alternative, romantic, sensibility of steve, and there's the hard core engineering scientific side of steve, and the cancer was no different. both sides kick in and he spends a lot of time wrestling with the two alternatives. wrestling with alternative treatment and diets and also, as

i say in the book, didn't get as much, having his dna sequenced, having targeted therapies done. unfinal takes some months before he does what he does in every other aspect of his life, is find the perfect sin sin synthesis of something that is scientific and comports with his alternative view of things. so it attacked longer -- i don't know. it was implied had he gotten operated on right away or something he might have stopped the cancer. we don't know that. cancer spreads in mysterious ways. so it's quite likely thea -- the cancer had already spread but it was somewhat typical of steve to say, the normal rules don't apply to me. i'm going to look at this from both an alternative viewpoint as well as a deeply rooted scientific viewpoint. everything in some ways he does

in his life ends up being a synthesis of that hippie rebel with the guy who in the hewlett-packard geek explorers club. >> i'm going too start with a couple questions now. what was the greatest misperception about steve jobs in your mind that was addressed or maybe that you could address in this book? >> i think the greatest misconception, right when the book first came out and people were reading it -- the pet lance and impatience of his character was a weird thing. his own personality was integrated, including with his profession and the products he made, just like apple products are integrated so that

perfectionism, or bratty temperment. that's not a disconnected thing that has nothing do with the passion for perfection or the product, you know, drive that he had. so i try -- that's what the last chapter is about -- to show how all of this was woven together so that the -- words like petulant and bratty are also maybe a little ufa mystic. >> i was at time inc., and at one time fortunate was doing a story involving his cancer because they reported the cancer treatment first, not my book. and i was like -- steve was furious and called up the editor and the editor in chief. and he says to the editor of

fortune, wait a minute. you have discovered i'm an ass --hole? why is that news. he was very self-aware he could be a strong cup of tea. >> yeah. >> this is an interesting question. did he have to be who he was in that way to do what he did? >> that's the question i'm most asked. kid he have to be that way? did you have to be that way to get done what you did? and i'm going to back off a little from giving you a great answer because i'm a story teller. i had to write about the person who was in front of me. that's who we has so i wrote the story of him. this is not a how-too book. this is not a manual for, you have to be this way to run a company. of yours you don't. very nice people run very successful companies and there are also total assholes who are total failures at running companies. that said, i am not trying to say here's the way to do it like

steve did. i am trying to write a book about a flesh and board human being who i didn't know all of aspects, but when i knew them, i tried to tell the story, and part of the story is being driven or -- and having not been that way, i doubt he would have been as successful. on the other hand, i suspect there were other ways to get things done at times, but when you say, did he have to be that way? my only job is to tell you the way he was because i'm just a biographyer, not a preacher or management consultant. >> do you think that question will be answered with the sort of the luxury of distance and time? >> yeah. i mean, i guess -- christianson is another great management guru could probably do a case study

of, you can take all the jack welchs and say -- "60 minutes" was saying, did he have to be so hard, so tough? i said, wait a minute. you work for don hewitt. don hewitt was a genius. he was also a real pain in the butt. we all know people like that. i guess you can do a study 0 nice bosses, tough bosses, jerks, and correlate it somehow with the regression analysis and say who is more successful. that's way above my pay grade. >> are you writing the screen play and would you choose george clooney? [applause] >> i am not -- the reports of the movie are premam -- premature. >> do you see george clooney -- >> i am not a movie person. steve went over every frame of pixar movies the way he went

over every curve over the first macintosh and he would say something about finding nemo, and i remember having to go back and quickly download the movies because i just don't know -- it's one of my blind spots. when i was editor of time i was famous for make really bad movie cover calls. so, asking me who should play what in a movie is -- >> all right. we'll give you a pass. i'm going to read you the preface. is says on behalf of historians, what were steve's stipulations about using the interviews you collected for the book and where will they ultimately be deposited. >> most or notes, some transcript of the four or final formal interviews he gave me. my notes will go somewhere. maybe we should talk. but not for another 20 or 30 years. and not -- i mean, partly because steve, and then the

people around steve, would say things that could be very hurtful, or they would say -- you know, say something just offhasn't, especially steve, about certain things, and there are things i didn't put in the book and things i would have to take out of my notes just because they were unnecessary to understanding steve and probably in the interests of kindness, you don't want to hurt people with certain comments. so, i will some day go through my notes and -- if it's the 20-year rule, maybe some of the things will have gone by the wayside. >> someone picked up on the quote about great artists steal, and said, he said that, yet he reseptember bill gated and google and many others for stealing from apple as he saw itful how did his zen self

recognize this. >> steve was not an expert at reconciling conflicting things. anderson and many others have great quotes about people having conflicting thoughts at the same time. steve was totally ballistic first at bill gates and microsoft for ripping off, as he put it, the mac -- macintosh, and then how he felt android and google had ripped off the apple mobile operating system. did he -- no. he didn't try to reconcile that. but i will say he didn't rip off xerox. there was a final deal. xerox invested a million dollars

in apple there was an exchange of technology. i think -- he has some right to feel that he came up -- or apple came up with the beautiful macintorn operating system and pretty much copied by windows, and likewise, the mobile operating system. you can argue, as for ten years in court -- they were in arming about whether you can copyright the look and feel, whether there's an intellectual property theft there. but i can understand why he was pissed off. >> in his mercurial -- a great story about his -- mercurial, i love the word. >> and dictatorial style. how was he able to engender such loyalty -- let's go to mercurial. he wasmer curlal. so he is showing off the next

computer at symphony hall here when it's been unveiled and he helped invent digital book outside but he put a thesaurus and shakespeare's book, and he is showing off the thesaurus and he says sometimes i am calmer curial and he says, let me look it up and it says changeable moods and then it described another word, somebody who doesn't have enough emotions. and he says, maybe it's not so bad to be mercurial. so i think he understand his mercurial nature and that was part of who he was. and having said that. i've now forgotten the second half of the question. >> how did he engender such creativity -- >> oh, look. when you're creating a machine as insanely great as that, even if you're in the middle of the night saying, this code is -- sucks, you got to make it better, by the time you've created as an engineer the

original macintosh, you're loyal to the genius and the vision there. and people who have strong personalities either can turn people off or they can say, hey, i got inspired here, and got to be on a team, and, look, the proof is -- i hate cliches like this, proof in the pudding -- but look at the team he even has at apple. if he is that bad 0 a boss, why do so many a players stay with him? because he like to be on a team with a players. if he ran off the b players that doesn't mean the team at apple filled with a players -- they're quite loyal to him. '. >> can you tell us about the relationship between larry el sis union and steve jobs? >> larry says best friends. it was a deep friendly

relationship. one of my favorite anecdotes is late '96 when the question of steve coming back to take over apple is first being kicked around. and larry ellison says why don't be buy apple? why don't a launch a hostile takeover. i'll buy apple. we'll put you back and set it into motion again and we'll all make a lot of money. and steve finally says, i think i might go back to apple. but i don't want you to invest. i don't want you to buy it. i don't want me to invest. i want to go back at a dollar a year and no openership. and larry ellison say, if you make it a great company again, how are we going to make money if we don't invest in it and buy it? they were walking along a beach, and steve grabbed him by both shoulders and says, larry, this is why it's important, i'm your

friend, you're don't need anymore money. [laughter] >> it i won't go there. a couple more questions. first, -- let me just ask you quickly about the current technology, this great conversational interface that siri represents. did he talk about that with you, what the vision for that is? >> yeah. i do think that the simplest, most natural interfaces have always been his passion, and there's no simpler one than just talking. i did not know the name siri but we talked and i was careful in the book, even though he told me a lot of things in detail what he wanted to do i decided, you know, i shouldn't put in things that he might not be able to do and that apple may be working on for the next couple of years. but at the last board meeting when he tenders his regs nice as

ceo, they have a lung and the engineers bring out the various things they're working on, and one of them which i knew was coming out, is this voice wreck recognition thing, and they know steve is not feeling well but he has been brought into the meeting so he is going to try to make it look bad. so he asks what is now called siri, do i need an umbrella, and says, the prediction is for sunny day tomorrow in palo alto. so, it really is doing the beautiful thing. so finally steve says, are you a man or are you a woman? and they all kind of hold their breath because he is trying to trick the machine, and siri is very good. the two layers, and it says, they have not yet assigned me a gender. [laughter] >> and they all breathe a sigh of relief and steve thinks its great. he loves that technology. bill gates and everybody has been trying to crack voice

recognition. >> yeah. what do you think of the apple that he leaves behind? you talked about the team and the great group he has built. there's rumored to be this product road map that goes on and on. but the history of technology companies with a founder like this, is someone driving it with a vision like this, leaving, is not great overall. what do you think about where apple goes from here without steve jobs? >> well, the last meeting i told you about when he goes the board and does that lunch, somebody at the lunch makes fun of h-p because that day or that week it hatt had gotten out of the tablet business, was getting in or out of the pc and was totally confused. steve said, wait a minute. he stopped the person making fun of the troubles at hewlett-packard. he said, when i was 13, bill

hugh hewlett give me my first job, and they crated a company that was designed not only to make a calculator and then make a computer and make other things, but too continue and last and continue to make new products and come up with any ideas even after they were gone. and those bozos screwed it up for hewlett and packard. i don't want that to happen at apple. and he tried deeply to fight off the bozo explosion because there was only a great team of eight players, and also to say there's a simple, simple thing, that apple stands for, which is, the intersection of great creativity and the humanities with great engineering and technology, and he says that's what disney did. that's what a lot of people have done. there are companies that last. ibm is almost 101 years old. i think apple has imbued in its

genetic code this desire to drive great design and artistic creativity with great engineering and technology, and it will be at that intersection and the people there now are capable of keeping it at that intersection. you know, ten years from now, 25 years from now, ups and downs and ups and downs at disney but they're doing fine right now of a few rough patches since walt disney died. if i had to wager, and up like rick perry, i am a betting man -- not $10,000 but i would wager that a generation from now, even a century from now, apple will still exist, at the intersection of the humanities and the technologies.

>> so that's apple. one final question about steve jobs. 100 years ago the great industrialists, carnegie, rockefeller, melon, built institutions and legacies, and that legacy survived, steve jobs might have done a similar thing but he chose not too do it and his legacy is apple, and it's built on shifting sands of tech -- technology. what do you think the legacy of steve jobs will be as people look back on him and this era. >> asked them the last five or civics -- six pages of the book is him talking about you're legacy, it's putting something back in the flow of history. i asked him, what was his greatest creation. he said, apple as a company because products come and go but

the hard part is making a company that will continue to make good products. so i do think apple will be his legacy. but also more specifically the legacy will be somebody who truly transformed industry after industry by pulling together great ideas and driving the technology to support them. i mean, look at the ipad. people made fun of it. i was there when he launched it. there were article, what is this, an iphone on steroids? nobody makes a tablet work. the ipad is now -- when i walk into a doctor's office or anywhere else, it is transforming industry after industry. $2 billion last year just in the industry of creating apps for it. the textbook industry. you know, carnegie was great with education fill philanthrop.

bill gate, in the end, the ipad may change education as much as any of the carnegie schools. so, i think he's got a pretty solid legacy if you look at each of those industries he transformed. >> so, we often ask our authors to do a short reading at the end and you graciously agreed to read the -- i wonder if you would do that for us now. >> yeah, thank you. as i said, i end -- i'll start earlier on. one more thing, his signature phrase, and i do say -- this is one of steve jobs, and even though he didn't impose his croyle suspect i would not be conveying the right feel for him and the way he asserted himself into any situation if ushuffled him on history reside statement without letting hill have he

laserworts, so i take a series of interviews i did with him about his legacy and let him talk without me getting in the way. but then the coda is about a one sunny afternoon when in the back garden of his house he wasn't feeling well and he reflected on death. and i say he talked about his experiences in india almost four decade earlier. his study of buddhism, his views on reincoronation and spiritual tran scenens, quote, i'm 50 5 on believing in god, he said. for most of my life i felt there must be more to our existence than meeted the eye. unquote. he admitted that, as he faced death, he might be overestimating the odd. out of a desire to believe in the afterlife are quote, i leak to think that something survives after you die. it's strange to think that you accumulate all this experience,

and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. so i really want to believe that something survives that maybe your consciousness endures. and then he fell silent for a long time, and then he said, but on the other hand, perhaps it's just like an on-off switch, he said. click, you die. you're gone. and then he paused again, long pause, and he smiled slightly, quote, and maybe that's why i never liked to put on-off switches on apple devices. [laughter] >> that's the end. [applause] ...