Steve Jobs

In the early 2000s, as people were burning music from their computers onto blank CDs, Jobs was convinced that music was going to be a huge part of a computer’s functionality. This led him to develop iTunes, followed by the iPod, which became a revolutionary portable music player, and which marked the beginning of Apple’s hegemony in the tech space. Moreover, since the iPod was connected to the iMac, he believed that the more people bought iPods, the more they would end up buying iMacs. The combination of design and functionality caused the iPod to stand out in the marketplace. As Isaacson writes, “when you took an iPod out of the box, it was so beautiful that it seemed to glow” (393).

As the iPod became a massive commercial success, Jobs saw the need for the iTunes store, which would circumvent the purchasing process for music, thereby adding both legitimacy and convenience to the customer experience. Executives at major record companies struggled to combat piracy and illegal downloads, so they had come to Apple—to Jobs—for help. Jobs’s proposal was a more seamless, integrated platform for purchasing music, which included 99-cent downloads for individual songs. iTunes became a game-changer for the music industry, and in many ways helped save it from piracy. In its first year of existence, the iTunes store sold 70 million songs.

Isaacson elaborates on Jobs’s own love of music, which most notably included two all-time favorites: Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Obsessed with Dylan’s music catalog, Jobs came up with the idea of offering every song Dylan had ever recorded for $199. Dylan even appeared in an iPod commercial, in conjunction with his release of his latest album, Modern Times. Jobs’s next goal was to get the Beatles on iTunes, which eventually happened. Isaacson also details how U2 partnered with Apple to promote their album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, while Apple released a special iPod in conjunction with the album release. Finally, Isaacson mentions Jobs’s admiration for Yo-Yo Ma, who would later play at Jobs’s funeral.

This chapter is about Jobs’s renegotiation of the deal Pixar had with Disney. In the new deal, Disney would purchase Pixar, while Pixar would also remain its own independent identity. After the deal was concluded, Jobs said, “my goal has always been not only to make great products, but to build great companies […] we kept Pixar as a great company and helped Disney remain one as well” (443). In essence, Pixar’s success gave Disney a better chance to remain relevant.

Isaacson again emphasizes the idea that Apple’s designs were beautifully minimalistic, including a clamshell consumer laptop and the Power Mac G4 Cube, which ended up on display in the Museum of Modern Art. The G4 Cube, however, was not a hit, selling only half of what Jobs projected. However, as Isaacson writes, “none of this deterred Jobs from continuing to push for distinctive, even distracting, new design” (445). While other computers were completely devoid of design innovation, Apple remained committed to its aesthetic creativity, which was an extension of Jobs himself.

Jobs first learned that he had pancreatic cancer during a routine urological exam in October 2003. After refusing surgery for nine months, resorting to organic foods and juices, bowel cleansings, and even a psychic, he eventually had to face the reality that without surgery, he would die. In July 2004, he finally got the surgery, only to find out that the cancer had spread, which meant he would have to start chemotherapy treatments. Almost a year later, he accepted an invitation to give the commencement speech at Stanford in June 2005. He enlisted Aaron Sorkin’s help to write the address. Following his first round of cancer, and facing his own mortality, Jobs also grew softer in his view and treatment of Bill Gates, who for so long had been a rival of his.