The Four Lives of Steve Jobs

The mirror broken by innocence

"I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night,

In the violence of a summer’s dream, in the chill of a wintry light,

In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space

In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face."

Steve Jobs undoubtedly could see himself in these lyrics written by a poet he revered : Bob Dylan.

Something indescribable brought these two figures together. Dylan could walk into a recording studio in the morning after waking up on the wrong side of the bed, somewhat miserable, sit at the microphone, deliver in one take, a single one, and leave the sound technicians to figure out the rest; telling his naked truth, uncompromisingly, so forcefully that nothing was left unsaid.

This is a character trait shared by these two celebrities. Just like Dylan, Jobs did not care whether you liked him or not. Authentic to the core, he did not answer to anyone. He spoke as he breathed, saying what he had to say as he understood it.

Indeed, at times he paid the price, a high price.

On that chilly January morning in 1997, Steve Jobs was making his way to Apple with a heavy heart. For more than a decade he had not entered this kingdom which once belonged to him and from which he was banished. So many romantic memories were linked to this personal saga. In his bitterness, he had forgotten how much he loved Apple. He had once created that bastion of knowledge, as you would build a cathedral, brick by brick, driven by an uncompromising sense of perfection.

At the wheel of his Porsche, Steve Jobs tried to contain his emotions. It was in September 1985 that he had said his goodbyes to Apple, explaining a bit that a piece of his soul would live there forever.

Apple, he said, had been like a first love, and you never forget the one who first stirred up those emotions. He would have never imagined that the one who had forsaken him could one day return and make eyes at him. From the time of his farewell on the lawn at the start of autumn 1995, it is likely that his fiancée had changed quite a bit...

His story with Apple had had a fictional fragrance, drenched in challenges, victories and plot twists.

Steve Jobs’ first life was rocky. Both idealistic and troubled, he groped around for the right path. Steve felt out of touch, but during those vibrant sixties, were there not millions of others who felt the same way?

By the grace of a blessed era, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Doors wrote a fabulous soundtrack for the film of his youth. He saw the emergence of counterculture, the hippies, all kinds of experiments...he randomly subscribed to some trends of his time, all while sticking to expectations.

A fool’s paradise, what he got there was only a taste. His opium was electronics, for which he nurtured a passion worthy of the creators of Pinocchio or Frankenstein: the patient crafting of a machine, an object which takes on a life of its own.

As luck would have it, a disciple of da Vinci lived near to his childhood home: that bearded beatnik, Steve Wozniak, whose genius would turn out to be decisive later on.

Then, at college, his soul underwent the attacks of another seductress, one just as sensual and exclusive: the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. Steve found himself roaming the streets of India in the company of another student, Dan Kottke. In this movie from the past, a mesmerized Steve attended the procession of thousands of naked men coming down from high mountains to the Ganges, as though the river’s waters would cleanse their souls.

From 1977, Jobs underwent a stunning transformation. Once he found his voice, an unexpected energy was released. He worked feverishly to create Apple, launch the Apple II then Macintosh.

The Apple adventure was the highlight of his second life, one of a chaotic rise towards the sky.

It all happened so quickly. With his childhood friend, Wozniak, a true champion of technology, they cobbled together their first computer. They then began to create their first masterpiece, the Apple II.

Flashback. Oblivious to the hippie look which he shamelessly adopted, Jobs wooed his backers in costume and brought them on board, the lure of dollar signs exceeding their initial dislike for these grungy young men. Apple II would make Jobs and Wozniak rich and famous.

Having become the youngest American millionaire at twenty-five years old, Jobs enjoyed glory, praise, reporters fighting to hear his words. It grew on him. Meanwhile, another quest began to grip his soul.

While visiting the Xerox research labs, he became a believer. In a split second, a magnificent future flashed before his eyes: the marriage of art and computing. The computer revamped by Beauty. He then began a conquest of a different scale. With the Macintosh, he was going to change the world, period.

Jobs was not content to just aim for high quality: he fostered an excellence worthy of Michelangelo. His desire for perfectionism was not skin-deep. The inclination was rooted in his soul and almost did not cut it. More than one engineer pulled their hair out over his demands. Already in 1977, he wanted the tracks of the Apple II mother board to be in a straight line, regardless of whether that made designing it incredibly more challenging.

To create Macintosh, Jobs surrounded himself with a team of rare minds, selected using a cutthroat process. A year and a half ago, while at a conference at the Smithsonian Institute, he explained it again... It’s painful when you have some people who are not the best people in the world and you have to get rid of them; but I found my job has sometimes exactly been that – to get rid of some people who didn’t measure up.

Steve found himself planting a pirate flag in the Macintosh artist lounge, a group of exceptional outcasts trying to artificially prolong the Flower Power fiesta of the sixties. They hid out in a separate building from the rest of Apple to better prepare a revolution on the inside.

The sage of Macintosh unfolded under Homerian conditions, in ignorance popular opinion and despite the obstacles that others considered insurmountable. It was reminiscent of the twists and turns Francis Ford Coppola went through on Apocalypse Now. Individuals who were rather rebellious by nature such as Andy Hertzfeld or Randy Wigginton gave their all, although it is hard to imagine them doing the same under different circumstances. Like his colleagues from the Macintosh team, Hertzfeld designed the Macintosh interface with finesse, without compromising his time or his creativity, wholeheartedly accepting the constant dogging by the captain on that long voyage...

Brash and proud, Steve did it his way, weighing in on the smallest details of his Mona Lisa. He found himself entering Andy Hertzfeld’s office, that maverick whose raft had run aground, who knows how, on Apple’s shores. He had popped in, out of nowhere, to announce:

Andy, just telling you you’re working on the Mac now!

― Great, Hertzfeld fired back. Just give me a few days to finish up a program for Apple II.

― Nothing is more important than Macintosh!  Jobs declared.  Putting his money where his mouth was, he unplugged Hertzfeld’s Apple II, grabbed the screen and keyboard and headed straight for the parking lot. Andy ran after him, struggling to keep up, trying his best to protest the heavy-handedness of his new boss.

That was Jobs: giving his all to whatever he was working on. The word compromise was not part of his vocabulary.

The Mac was launched in January 1984, to a shower of accolades. Jobs had Mr. Blade Runner himself, Ridley Scott create a fantastic and incredibly bold video clip, despite the objection of those cowards on the board of the directors, and that hard-hitting film stormed onto the screens of millions of American households. The world was now in the age of Macintosh.

Yet, while Jobs had just hit the jackpot, and reached the heights of glory, the floor caved in. A traitor yanked the rug out from under his feet.  He would never, ever forgive him. John Sculley, a man he himself hired to take over the reins of Apple, masterminded his removal.

Since then, Sculley has written his memoirs and tried to explain, with supporting arguments, why he had no other choice: according to him, Jobs was bringing Apple down. What exactly did he know?

He remained bitter towards the man who had him booted out of Apple like scum.

The fact remains that this second life was an unforgettable saga. The most wonderful time, as Robert Redford would say. And then, the sun that he had flown to close to burned his wings.

His third life then began.

He did not know it yet, but he had started a crusade akin to Don Quixote’s battle with the windmills, trying to save an already freed Jerusalem. He built the company NeXT, a more imposing pyramid than his last but had to leave it to its sad fate under the desert sun. No one came to see it. He had tried, somehow, to get back in the saddle, driven in retrospect, if we are to be honest, by a desire for revenge that clouded his view of reality.

In hindsight, Jobs was able to recognize it:  his own unwillingness to give up had sometimes not done him any favors. In 1988 he had a meeting with representatives of several colleges in order to unveil his NeXT machine. Thousands of orders were riding on how things went that evening. Shortly before dinner, Jobs learned that the staff had not made him a vegetarian meal. He was so furious he cancelled the main course for all the guests. Despite attempts by his close associates to calm him down, he would rather let his potential clients starve than change his attitude.

At the beginning of 1993, he wallowed in misery, as he contemplated his shattered dream on that unbearable February day when NeXT’s assets were auctioned off like cheap scrap metal. 

As the years went by, he saw the terrible prospect of becoming a has-been looming before him.

At the very least, he could be proud of having left his mark on history. During a TV interview about NeXT, he spoke at length about what he had accomplished.  

Steve Jobs said how taken aback he had been when he walked into a classroom and saw children with Apple IIs on their desks, to realize how much it had changed their approach to learning. Yet, all of that had come from a simple idea, that of the personal computer.

That’s an incredible feeling...to know that you can plant something in the world and it will grow, and change the world, ever so slightly.

Meanwhile some no-good journalists were beginning to write the words THE END. And then, the tables turned.

At the last minute Jobs was saved by a lesser passion, which he stumbled upon by chance. 3D animation had made for rough sailing on the seas but, like Christopher Columbus, Jobs came upon a new land on which he built a colony.  A resurrection was beginning to take shape.

He touched down on the runway somewhere that nobody was expecting him to: the triumph of Pixar put him back in the spotlight.

Toy Story had just saved the day.

Then, by an incredible turn of events, Apple called the once forsaken golden child to the rescue.

At age 42, Steve Jobs was no longer who he used to be. After a roller coaster ride, he experienced a personal renaissance. His crazy youth was but a sepia-toned fotonovela. The Viking’s locks that he had once sported with flair had thinned out.

A fundamental change had taken place. He met the woman of his dreams, as beautiful as she was shrewd, vegetarian and Buddhist like he was, and she gave him two beautiful children. Having been celebrated, bitten the dust and tasted success again had matured him. Although he was still motivated by the desire to improve life, he had learned to separate things.

A few days earlier, Steve Jobs had appeared on PBS on the show Wall Street Week. He was asked how he viewed the company that he had founded and he was preparing to take back.

"The way I see it, Apple is a company that was based on innovation. When I left Apple ten years ago, we were ten years ahead of anybody else. It took Microsoft ten years to copy Windows. The problem was that Apple stood still, even though it invested cumulatively billions in R&D, the output has not been there and people have caught up with it and its differentiation has eroded, in particular with respect to Microsoft.

And so the way out for Apple, and I still think Apple has a future, there are some awfully good people there and there’s a tremendous brand loyalty to that company.

I think the way out is not to slash and burn, it’s to innovate."

The coming years would be extravagant, aglitter with fleeting jewels that would nevertheless manage to make a small mark on human history: iMac, iPod, iPhone. He did not know it yet but, somewhere out there, good vibes were seeping into the atmosphere, heralding new joys.

Steve Jobs was writing volume IV of his life.

Life One: The Quest

Chapter One – Childhood

False start...the dice landed on the table and one of them stood balancing on an edge, making it impossible to tally up the score. Another went so far that it could not be found. As for those showing their upper faces, they showed ones, threes and twos.

Steve Jobs messed up his entry into the world. On that twenty-fourth day of February, 1955, nobody was expecting him, and those who should have welcomed him hid, turning their backs on their obligations. All was not lost. An unassuming couple would give him his chance. They wanted a child so much.

That did not prevent the biological mother from laying down the conditions for this baby she intended to give up. Before abandoning him to his fate, à la Moses in a basket on the Nile, she wished for this boy, whose emotions she would not share, could rise above the confusion. She would not give up full custody unless she was assured that he would go to school. In hindsight, this demand seemed quite petty. Why did she not send her son to school herself?

Life started out tough for Jobs, bewildered and illegitimate. He was left to fend for himself and he would establish his place in the pecking order.

Several decades later, when the string of events would allow a wise look back, Jobs would take another look at this beginning of his existence.

In 2005, he would go back to that beginning and remind those who wanted to understand that sometimes you have to wait a long time in order to get a good look back at past events:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

And yes, on that twenty-fourth day of February, 1955, Lady Luck smiled on him while still ignoring him. She led him to California, a land soaked in sun, surrounded by a sea which seemed to invite adventure. To get the best out of the times to come, this land is all-around favorable. Twelve years from now the hippie movement would set up its stronghold in the brightly lit city of San Francisco. A little later, Silicon Valley would see the emergence of a geyser called micro-computing.

Jobs arrived just a little too late to take part in the cultural revolution of the sixties. He would be nevertheless immersed in it, intensely adopting the dreams of a better world, the desire to change things. He would also develop an unbridled love for this fairy recently elected to the chapter of the angels: technology. It would give him his first delights, his first feeling of self-confidence. To appease her, he would give back to her what she gave him a hundredfold.

In that year, 1955, the residents of San Francisco had other concerns. America was in a golden age, peaceful overall, with the emergence of a lifestyle marked by the benefits of progress.  A wind of rebellion was blowing in the background with the swaying hips of young Elvis Presley, who had the gift of driving the teenagers of the southeastern United States wild. However, the wave still only touched an isolated population.

First and foremost, Jobs would benefit from a privileged family environment, undoubtedly a lot better that his biological mother would have been able to provide for him. The Jobses were exemplary parents, as much as simple people could be; they struggled to make ends meet but were determined to offer their love and their knowledge to the children they adopted. Throughout his youth and up to the birth of Apple, he would find continuous and gracious support from his adoptive parents.  Who could have imagined a better background for this unsettled soul, constantly second-guessing himself, hypersensitive and uncomfortable in his own skin?

I was very lucky, said Steve Jobs in 1995. My father, Paul, was a pretty remarkable man. He never graduated from high school. He joined the Coast Guard in World War II and ferried troops around the world for General Patton; and I think he was always getting into trouble and getting busted down to Private.

Two years later, Steve Jobs would utter touching words in memory of Paul: I just want to try to be as good a father to [my children] as my father was to me. I think about that every day of my life.

Though his story began on a low note, He would take it to great heights. As a Chinese proverb he holds dear says, The journey is the reward.

Unbeknownst to everyone, Ariane wove a thread that let him out of the labyrinth.

To think Steve Jobs might...

In those days, the fifties, when Steve Jobs was born, conservative America had not yet suffered the televised assaults of the fragile Elvis Presley and Rock and Roll and to a lesser extent the spasms of the future counterculture. Men were earning meager salaries, their wives kept the house clean as a whistle and the children were well brought up, Sunday was car-wash day and the lawn was kept neatly trimmed. No one dared to deviate from the norm. What people said was the yardstick when it came to social behavior. People never seemed to complain and besides, many a Spielberg or Lucas-style filmmaker portrayed this peaceful atmosphere of the fifties with nostalgia.

Meanwhile, Joane Carole Schieble was only twenty-three and she was carrying a baby conceived out of wedlock, something society frowned upon. What was more, the father was not at all an American from a good family, which, all things considered, would have made the sin easier to accept. But he was Syrian!

It was at the University of Wisconsin that the misdeed was done. Joanne the student fell in love with her Political Science professor Abdulfattah Jandali. Mr. Schieble Senior opposed their marriage and threatened to disown her if she disobeyed. Confessing to him that she was pregnant was too much for her. To hide her pregnancy, Schieble would give birth in California and seek out adoptive parents.

On February 24, she gave birth to this child conceived by accident. It was a boy. The only thing was, the expected adoptive home, a family of lawyers, was picky. They wanted a girl and would not change their minds. Sorry, but they just did not want to raise a boy.

Joanne fell back on the couple who was next on the waiting list: Fifty-something year-old Paul jobs and his wife Clara.

In the middle of the night Paul Jobs got a phone call:

We have a baby, a little boy. Do you want him?

Of course! Jobs replied.

Paul and Clara Jobs were ready to adopt the illegitimate child. But it was Joanne’s turn to be difficult. The Jobses were middle class, far from the prestige of a family of lawyers. The way Steve Jobs himself put it was: My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

Destiny would take a funny turn for Joanne Carole Schieble. Around Christmas, she married the Syrian, Jandali, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In June 1957, while Steve Jobs was growing up in California, the Jandalis had a second child, a girl named Mona. Their union would, however, only last seven years. Meanwhile, Steve Paul Jobs had a sister but he did not know it yet.

The Jobses lived under modest conditions in a suburban house with no bells and whistles. Clara was an accountant, while Paul Jobs worked as a machine operator at a company which made lasers. When Stephen was five, his mother was forced to take babysitting jobs to pay for his swimming lessons. The Jobses would later adopt a second child, a girl named Patty.

In 1960, the family moved from San Francisco to Mountain View, in the heart of what would become Silicone Valley. The five-year old was amazed to discover a region that seemed like paradise to him; The Valley was dotted with orchards of apricot trees and plum trees. The air was so pure that he could make out all of the houses like they were hills, so far away.

Little Steve was fascinated by his adoptive father’s skill who was a genius with his hands as he would go on to say. He could spend hours watching him chop wood then nail it on the workbench in his garage. One day, when his son was six, Paul Jobs cut off a piece of that bench and gave it to Steve: Steve, this is your workbench now!

He would go on to give him a few of his small tools and show him how to use a hammer and a saw.

He spent a lot of time teaching me how to build things...how to take things apart, put them back togetherii

Stephen Paul was not what one would call a smart boy. Although he showed above-average activity in general, his behavior revealed a certain ‘scatterbrained-ness’. Twice his adoptive parents had to rush him to the emergency room. The first time to have his stomach pumped after he swallowed a bottle of insecticide. The second time he stuck a pin in an electric outlet.

As his mother taught him to read herself, Jobs started school with the hope that he would be able to read books and that it would be possible to go exploring the world around him. In practice, his contact with authority did not go too well. All the curiosity I had developed naturally had practically been chased away.

Steve Jobs was seven when the Cuban missile crisis erupted on October 16, 1962. This threat to world peace came as a shock to him.

I probably didn't sleep for three or four nights because I was afraid that if I went to sleep I wouldn't wake up. I guess I was seven years old at the time and I understood exactly what was going on. I think everybody did. It was really a terror that I will never forget, and it probably never really left. I think that everyone felt it at that timeiii

A year later on November 22, 1963 three in the afternoon, Steve Jobs returned home quietly when he heard a scream in the street. President Kennedy had just been assassinated! Yet again he was traumatized; he was only eight. Without really knowing why, he was aware that America had just lost one of its great historical figures.

School began to affect Jobs more and more. With the help of a classmate, Rick Farentino, he wrought havoc in class. His claim to fame was launching rockets in the teachers’ offices. They would even go as far as releasing snakes in class.

As he would emotionally reveal later, Steve Jobs no doubt stayed out of prison thanks to the wisdom of one of his fourth grade teachers, Miss Hill. This wonderful teacher found a way to channel the overflowing energy of that nine-year old troublemaker. I’ll give you five dollars if you do all the problems in this math workbook and this giant lollipop too. Encouraged, Steve Jobs studied hard and found a passion for learning. At the end of his second-to-last year in elementary school, he was in a position to be able to skip a grade and go straight to junior high school.

During his teenage years, two movements