Speaker 1: Also media. Anderson was found on the streets of the
Speaker 1: Inland Empire about to get on the freeway, covered in
Speaker 1: ticks and sleeze. And now she dresses nicer than everyone
Speaker 1: I know, Yeah she does.
Speaker 2: She dresses nicer than me. I'm Robert Evans, host of
Speaker 2: the podcast that Sophie is trying to ruin by attacking
Speaker 2: my sense of fashion. You know whose sense of fashion
Speaker 2: is unimpeachable Anderson our guest today, Ed Zetron. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: m hm.
Speaker 3: They love me. They love me, and they love my fashion.
Speaker 3: They love how I talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you are a classy man, Ed, And that's
Speaker 2: why you're personally offended by Steve Jobs, a man who
Speaker 2: was the opposite of classy in any given situation.
Speaker 3: It's almost like he chose the most classless action every
Speaker 3: time look a remark, almost deliberately, but it's uncua. He
Speaker 3: was just an awe hole and idioto both.
Speaker 2: I've had to you know, for me, I've had to
Speaker 2: go back and forth on this because on paper, I
Speaker 2: love the idea of someone going into meetings with all
Speaker 2: of these like finance ghoules and like being just like
Speaker 2: filthy and gross and like washing your feet at the
Speaker 2: table because like, fuck you, like I know you want
Speaker 2: you want in on this, and you'll give me the
Speaker 2: money anyway. That would be that's kind of a cool
Speaker 2: flex if you're just legitimately like a like a punk weirdo,
Speaker 2: like like a gross man who's like, yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: I just don't give a shit. The fact that Steve's
Speaker 2: Steve always has to like dress it up with like, well,
Speaker 2: I don't need to shower because I know the secret
Speaker 2: of mucus and how to stop yourself from ever needing
Speaker 2: to bathe, or like, well, you shouldn't have to wear
Speaker 2: shoes because it blocks the energy waves.
Speaker 1: You know, Anderson has a better hygiene.
Speaker 3: Ropes easily well, Sleeve Drops really has bad hygiene now
Speaker 3: because he's dead.
Speaker 4: Wow, you had for that really fun bad.
Speaker 2: If he were sleep Drops, if he were like this,
Speaker 2: if he were just coming in being like, look, man,
Speaker 2: I woke up at like an hour before this meeting.
Speaker 2: I haven't bathed in four days because I have been
Speaker 2: doing nothing but like taking hallucinogens and mashing. And now
Speaker 2: I'm going to sell you a computer that's more respectable
Speaker 2: than like, actually, you don't understand I'm not gross. You
Speaker 2: just have understand health wrong. Let me tell you what
Speaker 2: my guru told me. One of those is more annoying
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 3: This is the one charming thing about future Bosstard Sam
Speaker 3: Bankman freed, though, I do kind of respect that he'd
Speaker 3: go on meetings with Sequoia Capital or whoever and just
Speaker 3: play League of Legends in the background, like I'm I
Speaker 3: just gonna down and do this, Like yeah, sure, it's
Speaker 3: a shame. He was just like a giant scam artist.
Speaker 3: Yeah he was, But I do like it. It's more
Speaker 3: respectable for him to just well, I don't know. He
Speaker 3: kind of did dress it up though, too, because his
Speaker 3: whole thing was like, at least the thing. It's hard
Speaker 3: to tell how much of this is Sam and how
Speaker 3: much of this is other writers just like looking for
Speaker 3: an angle, but like the I can't not be playing
Speaker 3: Legal Legends because my giant brain needs the distraction to focus.
Speaker 3: Is kind of like the modern is doing to ADHD
Speaker 3: what Steve Jobs did to Eastern mysticism, right where he
Speaker 3: like built this this aura around himself.
Speaker 2: Is this like I went to the East and I
Speaker 2: learned the secrets of the Orient, and now I've brought
Speaker 2: back my wisdom to incorporate into capitalism. Right, that's just
Speaker 2: the back then version of like, well, my ADHD gives
Speaker 2: me a super brain, but I can never actually pay
Speaker 2: attention to anything Otherwise.
Speaker 3: Me and my friends are the only people smart enough
Speaker 3: to be nice properly. Yeah, that'll be a good future one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we've done some Sam Bankman Freed. We've done
Speaker 2: a lot of Sam Bankmanent Freed. I haven't done a
Speaker 2: dedicated one on the effect of altruists, but they are
Speaker 2: all in like a continuum from jobs, right, he would
Speaker 2: never He would be furious about and like disgusted in
Speaker 2: the effective altruists in much the same way as I
Speaker 2: think like people who grew up in the Internet using
Speaker 2: something awful hate four Chan, Right, yes, but not neither
Speaker 2: of them is better than the other. They're just in
Speaker 2: a continuum. Right. Actually, I mean something off is a
Speaker 2: little better than four Chan.
Speaker 3: But nice to high bar jobs with jobs, he would
Speaker 3: have been very angry at how fake it was, and
Speaker 3: possibly seen that as a challenge to make a real one.
Speaker 2: But to know, yeah, one of the great I can
Speaker 2: talk myself either way into, Like Steve Jobs would have
Speaker 2: been the biggest crypto guy or Steve Jobs would have
Speaker 2: been a lone voice in the wilderness crying out for
Speaker 2: people to stop doing this dumb shit. Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: you could go either way, fifty to fifty. I think
Speaker 2: it's entirely because he does. We don't really cover it
Speaker 2: in these episodes. He does try briefly to get into
Speaker 2: social media later and you know, after he's come back.
Speaker 3: To Apple iTunes pain Yeah right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that was it. It doesn't it's not
Speaker 2: really worth talking about because it's just like, yeah, it
Speaker 2: didn't work out, but it's not in a way that's
Speaker 2: particularly compelling. What is compelling is how shitty Steve Jobs
Speaker 2: was now and a lot of ink has been spilled
Speaker 2: about Steve's hatred of meat, and it's to reiterate because like,
Speaker 2: that's the kind of thing I think an ethical person,
Speaker 2: even if you eat meat, can be like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: like being vegans obviously better as a general rule than
Speaker 2: eating factory We can talk about like carbon and like, well,
Speaker 2: if you're like hunting or whatever a meat is that
Speaker 2: lower carbon costs than you know, or picking up roadkill,
Speaker 2: that's all outside of it, but most people can agree, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's reasonable to think that our attitudes towards red
Speaker 2: meat as a culture's fucking nuts.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: Maybe this was the thing that Steve's Steve was right about,
Speaker 2: because there is a lot of horrible stuff that goes
Speaker 2: on in you know, the animal products industry. But it's
Speaker 2: important to reiterate here Steve's hatred of meat does not
Speaker 2: stem from any kind of real moral objection, right, Like
Speaker 2: he'll make he'll signpost about that from time to time,
Speaker 2: but he's pretty clear whenever you really get him talking
Speaker 2: about it, that it stems centrally from his these weird
Speaker 2: pseudoscientific beliefs he has about health and diet, and this
Speaker 2: is a kin to a religion for him, which is
Speaker 2: why he got really angry when people would like try
Speaker 2: to make him sh right, because he's following he's on tech,
Speaker 2: as the scientologists say, so he shouldn't stink, and there's
Speaker 2: something wrong with you if you think he does.
Speaker 3: You're the one with the mucus problem, buddy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's you know, I think that, you know,
Speaker 2: I definitely have known people who were who were vegetarianter
Speaker 2: vegan who like if a friend you know, or a
Speaker 2: family member they were if with ordered meat, they could
Speaker 2: get kind of like snippy at that person. I think
Speaker 2: I've ever met someone who is a vegetarianter vegan who
Speaker 2: would be shitty to a small child for wanting to
Speaker 2: order meat, right, And that's the kind of guy Steve
Speaker 2: Jobs was. Right. Oh yeah. So when Steve's daughter Lisa
Speaker 2: was in her early grade school years, her father came
Speaker 2: back into her life and this meant a few awkward
Speaker 2: visits at first, mostly centered around trips to like skating
Speaker 2: and the like, but they did gradually overtime expand And
Speaker 2: one thing I will say for Steve is that his
Speaker 2: relationship with his daughter evolves, right, And that does show
Speaker 2: he has some capacity for growth as a human being,
Speaker 2: which I do think separates him from a lot of
Speaker 2: the people who came after him. Like musk Rite, he
Speaker 2: does have more ability to grow than some of these
Speaker 2: people have. This is not a rapid or a smooth process, though.
Speaker 2: One year, Lisa's cousin Sarah came to visit her and
Speaker 2: her mother. Now this was back before like Steve had
Speaker 2: re entered their lives, when they were still on welfare.
Speaker 2: Her aunt Kelly had invited them in and kept a
Speaker 2: roof over their head during this, Like really crucial period
Speaker 2: of poverty. And so when you know Steve has a
Speaker 2: chance to meet with like their daughter, you might think, well,
Speaker 2: maybe he'd want to be extra nice to her because
Speaker 2: like this family took care of his daughter when he
Speaker 2: kind of abandoned her for a period of time. Right,
Speaker 2: he seems to have been angry about this instead, and
Speaker 2: not angry at himself or even angry at like Kathy,
Speaker 2: Chrisanne's sister, which would have been wrong, but at least
Speaker 2: more understandable than what he did, which was get incredibly
Speaker 2: pissed at this small child, his daughter's cousin, who I
Speaker 2: think is about seven. This everything that's happening, this is
Speaker 2: he's doing this to like a first or a second
Speaker 2: grade girl. So when he meets it's during this family
Speaker 2: dinner he's having with Chrisanne and Lisa in Stanford, and
Speaker 2: Lisa describes that as soon as she sees him, she's
Speaker 2: immediately aware that her father doesn't want to be here,
Speaker 2: and his mood was like black soot in the air. Right,
Speaker 2: That's how she describes it in her book, which is
Speaker 2: wonderfully evocative.
Speaker 6: That's what you want from you that yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 6: it comes time to order dinner, and Chrisanne and Lisa
Speaker 6: both avoid in a red meter poultry because they know Steve, right,
Speaker 6: and they know that if we order red meter, if
Speaker 6: we order poultry, he'll get like shitty at us.
Speaker 2: Right, So they order like fish or something because I
Speaker 2: think he does eat fish. But Sarah, who doesn't know
Speaker 2: Steve at all, this seven year very young girl, orders
Speaker 2: a hamburger right right. Lisa is immediately horrified. I wanted
Speaker 2: to muffle her to protect her and to protect myself.
Speaker 2: The trick I learned later was to give him less
Speaker 2: surface area to knife, so he would stab someone else,
Speaker 2: always someone if not me. Now that is such a
Speaker 2: I live with an abuser thing to say abuse, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that is changed my habits to make sure
Speaker 3: I didn't get in trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm always looking for who can be the
Speaker 2: target of their ire other than me, right, like what
Speaker 2: because this person is just so unpredicable child age? Yeah,
Speaker 2: and here's another kid. So things get more and more tense,
Speaker 2: you know, as they're they're waiting for the food to arrive.
Speaker 2: And then the food arrives, Sarah gets this burger sat
Speaker 2: down in front of her, and Steve gets angrier and
Speaker 2: angrier at her quietly at first, until this occurs quote
Speaker 2: after we'd taken a few bites, my father's face shifted
Speaker 2: and tightened. What's wrong with you? He asked Sarah what
Speaker 2: she said She was chewing on a bite of meat. No,
Speaker 2: he said, really. At first, it seemed that he was
Speaker 2: acting her to answer him. What was wrong with her?
Speaker 2: Why did she miss social cues? Why did she have
Speaker 2: such a biting, high voice at the top of the register,
Speaker 2: always calling for attention as acute as a baby crying?
Speaker 2: His voice became high pitched and piercing. You can't even talk,
Speaker 2: he said. You can't even eat. You're eating shit. She
Speaker 2: looked at him. I could tell she was trying not
Speaker 2: to cry. Have you ever thought about how awful your
Speaker 2: voice is? He continued, Please stop talking in that awful voice.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it was happening, even as it was happening. Steve,
Speaker 2: stop it right now, my mother said. I could see
Speaker 2: him through Sarah's eyes, or I thought I could. If
Speaker 2: having a father around was like this, it wasn't so great.
Speaker 2: I wish I wasn't here with you, he said. I
Speaker 2: don't want to spend another moment of my life with you.
Speaker 2: Get yourself together, pull yourself together. He talked loud enough
Speaker 2: so the people at other tables could hear him. Sarah
Speaker 2: slouched in her chair and looked at the table and
Speaker 2: began to cry. Steve, my mother said stop. You should
Speaker 2: really consider what's wrong with yourself and try to fix it,
Speaker 2: he said. At this point, he got up and went
Speaker 2: for the bathroom, leaving a small child stopping behind him.
Speaker 2: Like that is wildly hostile. He is worse than Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: He is worse than all of them.
Speaker 3: Steve Drugs is the most evil tech guy. I am sorry,
Speaker 3: what a fucking scumbag. Jesus is rare that I am
Speaker 3: shocked by sheep, but Jesus, h fuck, oh my god.
Speaker 2: Whatever, Like the are good people, but like, I don't
Speaker 2: think Elon Musk would do that to a seven year old,
Speaker 2: Like that's even such.
Speaker 3: He values all fifteen of his children. Yeah, yeah, god, it's.
Speaker 2: Not like it'd be one thing if you were to
Speaker 2: tell me, like, I can imagine any of these shitty
Speaker 2: tech guys like yelling snapping at a kid. I can
Speaker 2: imagine most parents snapping kids because everyone does it right.
Speaker 2: It's not good. But it's universal. This is not snapping
Speaker 2: at a kid. This is like specifically psychologically abusive, noticing
Speaker 2: that she has kind of a speech impediment and like
Speaker 2: laying into her for that right, mocking her voice, telling
Speaker 2: her to get herself together.
Speaker 4: She's like, eight, this you fucking sposed to have together?
Speaker 3: What is she meant to get together?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a wild thing to accuse a small
Speaker 2: child of get your shit together.
Speaker 3: Can't get your shit together? What are you doing with
Speaker 3: your life? Mm hmm yeah, I can't unshowered to spend
Speaker 3: my time with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh my god, what a what a weird asshole?
Speaker 2: So it's it's cool, like this night ends with chris
Speaker 2: An and Lisa having to explain to Sarah after dinner,
Speaker 2: like why why Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple worth
Speaker 2: a quarter of a billion dollars, was like there basically
Speaker 2: had to be like, it's not your fault. He's just a.
Speaker 3: Dick terribly So your father's a fucking awshome.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So one of the frustrations I've had when
Speaker 2: researching this book is that many of the other books
Speaker 2: about Jobs by Isaacson and Moritz and Malone and stuff,
Speaker 2: they'll describe him being verbally abusive to employees, and they'll
Speaker 2: use those terms. They're not really like mincing words, but
Speaker 2: they don't really give a lot of detail, right, They'll
Speaker 2: usually just say, like, he was shitty to someone because
Speaker 2: he yelled at them about this or whatever. What I
Speaker 2: like about Lisa's book and why I think this is
Speaker 2: such a useful addition to the guy the Jobs canon
Speaker 2: is that this is not just somebody who like maybe
Speaker 2: walked past as Steve was being shitty, or like heard
Speaker 2: some stories from some other people just being like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, he could be a dick. This is like
Speaker 2: somebody who had both at one point was traumatized by him,
Speaker 2: but also has grown up enough that they are able
Speaker 2: to contextualize and put in pretty unsparing detail how he
Speaker 2: treated people around him. Right, It's not just sort of
Speaker 2: like a recollection of a horrible thing he did. It's
Speaker 2: somebody who knew him for a long time and has
Speaker 2: enough distance from that from her childhood to like contextualize
Speaker 2: his behavior. And I value it a lot for that.
Speaker 3: You know what, I remember when Steve Jobs died. I
Speaker 3: remember the death. I remember reading these things like oh
Speaker 3: Malek who ran a cycled Gigo home at the time,
Speaker 3: these teary fucking things about this great man who died.
Speaker 3: I just think the entire tech industry needs to have
Speaker 3: a fucking referendum on this guy. This is monstrous.
Speaker 2: He's such a bad man.
Speaker 3: He's such a horrifying creep. It's one thing to it's
Speaker 3: he screamed at the mobile me people. We know that one.
Speaker 3: He's screamed he fired people in the elevators. And I'm
Speaker 3: sure you've got so much worse to share, But this
Speaker 3: is horrifying.
Speaker 2: This isn't just.
Speaker 3: This isn't just. It's one thing yelling at a grown
Speaker 3: as man. It's another thing excoriating a child for their
Speaker 3: lack of eloquence or at all h for anything, even
Speaker 3: if they did something wrong. You don't yell at children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it like it'd be one thing if like
Speaker 2: she had broken something and he'd flip. That's still really wrong.
Speaker 2: But at least there was like there was like a
Speaker 2: thing that was that you can say had caused a problem,
Speaker 2: right as opposed to like, yes, a fucking eight year
Speaker 2: old girl ordered a hamburger, Dude, you can't expect her
Speaker 2: to have read the Weird Mucus book. You read had
Speaker 2: come to all the same conclusions.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, keep going.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm just yeah. So I think it's interesting. It's
Speaker 2: useful to study this book because of what it says
Speaker 2: about how Jobs treated people around him. Wosniak is again,
Speaker 2: he's kind of the only guy who has a partial
Speaker 2: immunity to any of this. And that's largely possible because
Speaker 2: Jobs in Wosniak. After the company has its IPO, they're
Speaker 2: gonna have relative little to do with each other, right
Speaker 2: they are in Neither of them is running the company.
Speaker 2: They are both founders. They both have a lot of stock,
Speaker 2: and I think Steve is chairman of the of the board.
Speaker 2: He's got like a significant position as a result of
Speaker 2: how much stock that he owns. But they're just kind
Speaker 2: of like managing different chunks of the company. Wosniac stays
Speaker 2: with the Apple two. Right, that is the thing that
Speaker 2: is sustaining Apple's growth. That's nearly all of Apple's money
Speaker 2: up through the early nineties comes from the Apple too.
Speaker 2: They don't stop selling this thing until nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: so this is this is around forever. And they're not
Speaker 2: just selling the same product, right, they're upgrading it. They're
Speaker 2: adding you know, different expansions, they're adding chips, they're i
Speaker 2: think at one point up Grady the processor. So they
Speaker 2: are like continually improving the Apple too. This is like
Speaker 2: a real important job. Wosniak is kind of for a
Speaker 2: while at least the point man on a lot of
Speaker 2: that stuff. And this continues to be why Apple has money. Right,
Speaker 2: everything we're going to talk about with Steve has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with the Apple too. From this point forward,
Speaker 2: it's importantly that you understand what's actually funding everything Steve
Speaker 2: is doing right now is Wosney Ax, not just his invention,
Speaker 2: but his like continuing maintenance of that invention. But Jobs
Speaker 2: hates the Apple too, and the reason for this is simple,
Speaker 2: he didn't make the fucker right, and the fact that
Speaker 2: the Apple everyone who knows, like everyone who knows anything,
Speaker 2: Jobs had no like, didn't have enough control over reality.
Speaker 2: When Apple is starting off, everyone knows it's Wosney as baby, right.
Speaker 2: People I think generally respect Steve for his vision, him
Speaker 2: being good at putting people together and all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff is that sort of thing. But the Waws
Speaker 2: is the genius here. And it's also pretty well known that,
Speaker 2: like the Apple, Too is successful in part because Wosniak
Speaker 2: wins the argument over how many expansion slots to have,
Speaker 2: and that's a thing that Steve was wrong about. So,
Speaker 2: for the sake of his ego, Jobs is going to
Speaker 2: spend the next decade and change throwing himself into every
Speaker 2: project that is not the Apple Too Right. And the
Speaker 2: first one of these projects is the creatively named Apple three.
Speaker 2: It was set to be a groundbreaking computer capable of
Speaker 2: displaying This shows you how primitive shit is. One of
Speaker 2: the big selling points in the Apple three is it
Speaker 2: can display both upper case and lower case letters like
Speaker 2: we finally got it, guys, both council letters. Oh yeah, baby,
Speaker 2: yeah it really. Uh, it's remarkable how much better these
Speaker 2: things have gotten and how much worse a lot of
Speaker 2: other stuff has. But I don't need to get all
Speaker 2: but Larry and g hot on you. Although it's appropriate
Speaker 2: now that that we're on Doune week as these episodes
Speaker 2: are being recorded.
Speaker 3: So do the podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah fine, find a thinking machine, kids, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: do it. Look up whatever they did on Dune and
Speaker 2: then do that. I can't be held legally responsible if
Speaker 2: I tell you to do it together. Dune to the
Speaker 2: thinking machines. Yeah, Google, Google Dune. Someone's going to sue
Speaker 2: us for reading all of the Dune books. And while
Speaker 2: they do that, you guys go listen to these ads.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, we're back, and I'm I'm just in
Speaker 2: awe of that ad transition. It's the first Frank Herbert
Speaker 2: themed one I've done, but I think I'm gonna try
Speaker 2: it again. So yeah, we're at the Apple three. So
Speaker 2: Wozniak is safely close to it away keeping the company profitable,
Speaker 2: and Jobs is taking control of the Apple three project,
Speaker 2: and he lays out a design one of the things
Speaker 2: because this is his project, Like the Waws is not
Speaker 2: in the room, so there's nobody who he has to
Speaker 2: like take seriously, he can just sort of dictate. He's like,
Speaker 2: we're going to design the case before we actually build
Speaker 2: the computer. Like I want to design this perfect case
Speaker 2: that like right, and then you build a computer around it.
Speaker 3: The thing that needs to be dictated by the actual stuff,
Speaker 3: We'll design that first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is a problem, right, because
Speaker 2: Job does not really know how to design a computer,
Speaker 2: and this says a lot about him. His attitude is
Speaker 2: we can figure out the internals later because What matters
Speaker 2: is how the fucking thing looks right on your tea
Speaker 2: meaning someone else, we meaning this team of people. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna scream at all day to no surprise. This does
Speaker 2: not make a great computer. It is. They do eventually
Speaker 2: do some updates to it that it does kind of
Speaker 2: like grab find some niche uses, but it is not
Speaker 2: immediately successful. Particularly next to the Apple Too Right, Isaacson
Speaker 2: includes a lovely quote from an Apple engineer who struggled
Speaker 2: against Jobs on the project. This is one of the
Speaker 2: people he's like verbally abusing at elevators. Quote the Apple
Speaker 2: three was kind of like a baby conceived during a
Speaker 2: group orgy and later everybody had this bad headache and
Speaker 2: there's this bastard child, and everyone says, it's not mine.
Speaker 2: And I think the funniest thing about that is the lie, sorry,
Speaker 2: it's not mine. And I that's, like, first off, an
Speaker 2: extremely Silicon Valley way to describe a project. Like it's
Speaker 2: funny to me because of like the way this guy
Speaker 2: is describing Apple three is how Steve Jobs treated his
Speaker 2: actual child, right conceiving her and then denying the g
Speaker 2: entity responsibility for her. Jesus Christ, that's going to be
Speaker 2: extra ironic here in a second, So right around the
Speaker 2: time this is not that point, but it's coming right
Speaker 2: around the time the Apple three fails. Steve Wozniak is
Speaker 2: in this horrible plane accident. He makes the worst mistake
Speaker 2: you can as a rich guy, and he gets into airplanes.
Speaker 2: That always ends badly, Like folks take it for if
Speaker 2: you suddenly make one hundred million dollars and you've always
Speaker 2: wanted to fly a plane, that is going to be
Speaker 2: how you'll die. Like you're not Harrison Ford. You're not
Speaker 2: going to bounce back like a Jelloman.
Speaker 4: Avoid helicopter.
Speaker 2: Avoid helicopters as well. Wosniak is not Harrison Ford. He
Speaker 2: does not bounce back right away. It messes him up,
Speaker 2: and he's he's basically out of the picture for five years.
Speaker 2: And it's not coincidentally kind of when this character of
Speaker 2: the company's founding bounces that the character of Apple is
Speaker 2: also kind of undergoing a change. Wozniak being out of
Speaker 2: the picture for a while isn't the only thing, but
Speaker 2: it's kind of a sign of the times. Some of
Speaker 2: this comes down to the fact that CEO Michael Scott
Speaker 2: is like he's obsessed with trying to like be the
Speaker 2: adult in the room and take the company like in
Speaker 2: a more responsible direction. We needed these like hippie hacker
Speaker 2: kids when we were getting off the door. But now
Speaker 2: it's time to become like a traditional corporation. Jobs had
Speaker 2: always patterned Apple off of HP and as someone who's
Speaker 2: interested in tech in the modern day. It's so weird
Speaker 2: that they used to be like the sexy hip tech company.
Speaker 3: Well, but they also made their money quite boringly. Yes,
Speaker 3: and they have one of the old time loses, see
Speaker 3: as Meg Whitman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have had an interesting journey since the time
Speaker 2: where Jobs is like idolizing them, but he does in
Speaker 2: this period of time. And so the fact that tech
Speaker 2: is kind of made in the image of aerospace and
Speaker 2: these early like you know, government contractors, means that like
Speaker 2: they're not these guys are not being used to being
Speaker 2: seen as disposable for the sake of a stock price. Right.
Speaker 2: Their dads really hadn't been and most of their dads,
Speaker 2: like Wosniak, come out of this this aerospace world. So
Speaker 2: they're all very shocked when suddenly Apple starts acting like
Speaker 2: companies are increasingly going to act in the eighties and
Speaker 2: is like, hey, what if we lay off a bunch
Speaker 2: of people in order to pump the stock price? Right?
Speaker 2: This is particularly surprising because it happens just a couple
Speaker 2: of months after the IPO and it comes to be
Speaker 2: known in company law as black Wednesday. Now, this is
Speaker 2: a Michael Scott production. Jobs is just a manager there,
Speaker 2: but he is a major stockholder, and he chose not
Speaker 2: to take any action to try to stop the layoffs,
Speaker 2: and in fact he's signed off on them. When a
Speaker 2: long time colleagues, here's what's happening, and like, tell Steve,
Speaker 2: this is no way to run a company. Steve responds acidly,
Speaker 2: how do you run a company? It's like, I don't know, man,
Speaker 2: maybe not firing everybody immediately after they make you two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million dollars.
Speaker 1: My coping mechanism here is thinking that it's Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: dealing with actual Steve Carell from the office as Michael Scott,
Speaker 1: and that helps that this.
Speaker 2: Helps, so for a while, he flits from idea Steve.
Speaker 2: After the Apple three, he kind of flits from idea
Speaker 2: to idea. At first, he thinks touch screens are the future, right,
Speaker 2: which is that's interesting that like in nineteen eighty one. Yes,
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, he really is, like he's ahead of
Speaker 2: the curve on a lot of stuff. He has some legitimate,
Speaker 2: like insight. The problem is that like I don't know
Speaker 2: if you ever try to use a touch screen, mean
Speaker 2: like nineteen ninety five, fourteen years after this, but shit, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's like, yeah, they were horrible. It's because they were
Speaker 2: I think, resistive instead of capacity. But they also just
Speaker 2: like the tech was bad. And so he brings in
Speaker 2: a bunch of Apple engineers and is like, tell me
Speaker 2: about touch screens. I think this might be the future.
Speaker 2: And it's immediately clear to him. I only he understands why,
Speaker 2: but based on what they're saying, it's very clear that
Speaker 2: like touchscreens are not a reasonable thing for us to
Speaker 2: be trying to put into a consumer product right now.
Speaker 2: And he the guys who are there like tell him,
Speaker 2: we were like made to prepare all this info, and
Speaker 2: he immediately checked out of the conversation and then just
Speaker 2: started like yellow asked for bringing him in convenient information.
Speaker 2: People on in the subreddit or there were a couple
Speaker 2: of people who were like, well, I don't think it's
Speaker 2: bad to like cry when you're sad, and I agree
Speaker 2: with you on that's what's I think it's worth shit
Speaker 2: talking Steve for is he's really mean to people just
Speaker 2: by default. Whenever he is a disagreement, whenever they bring
Speaker 2: him bad news, and then whenever anyone challenges him on
Speaker 2: anything in a meeting, he starts crying. And that's like
Speaker 2: it's manipulative. That is also kind of an abusive tactic, right,
Speaker 2: And someone made.
Speaker 3: A good point where it's like there are neurodivergent people
Speaker 3: who do cry, and like this is very much not that.
Speaker 2: No, it was not crying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is manipulative, very very different. And also if
Speaker 3: he met a neurodivergent person, he would make them cry.
Speaker 3: He would do so to prove they were weak. Like
Speaker 3: that's who he was. He was not Steve Jobs, was
Speaker 3: not someone who would ever show anyone else any kindness.
Speaker 3: So no, and also he definitely didn't cry because he
Speaker 3: was sad. He cried because he was annoyed and wanted
Speaker 3: someone to do something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's he doesn't know how to deal with
Speaker 2: being told no with any on anything, because I mean,
Speaker 2: his life has been one long show of people telling
Speaker 2: him yes. And in fact, Lisa's later going to kind
Speaker 2: of theorize, I think that part of why he was
Speaker 2: so angry about me for a while is that, like
Speaker 2: I was this this single piece of evidence against his perfection, right,
Speaker 2: that he had slipped up, and he just like couldn't
Speaker 2: forgive her for.
Speaker 3: That, and that he couldn't tell her no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fucked up. So after kind of this like
Speaker 2: soul searching moment, going through a bunch of technologies, Jobs
Speaker 2: goes back and is like, you know what, we're just
Speaker 2: going to make another personal computer, but this one's going
Speaker 2: to be better. This one's not going to be like
Speaker 2: the Apple three. This is going to be the next
Speaker 2: Apple two. We finally cracked the code and we need
Speaker 2: to throw all of our resources into this project. And
Speaker 2: he names this project the Lisa. Now, the immediate question
Speaker 2: one would have here is like did he name this
Speaker 2: computer after his daughter? And the answer, which Job's ultimately
Speaker 2: cop to, is obviously yes, right, obviously, yes he has
Speaker 2: a daughter named Lisa. And then a few years later
Speaker 2: he names a computer he's working on the Lisa.
Speaker 3: Of course like that, but he acknowledges this one.
Speaker 2: Well, not as yeah, he does acknowledge the computer or
Speaker 2: at least for a while. It's not going to go well.
Speaker 2: The lease is about as doomed as the Apple three.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe it's a little bit more successful, but
Speaker 2: it's still not what Apple needs, right, And he does
Speaker 2: eventually abandon this, like he abandons his daughter, and he
Speaker 2: starts having like caught like conflicts within the Apple three
Speaker 2: team basically, And so he finds another personal computer project
Speaker 2: at Apple. And the fact that there are so many
Speaker 2: of these projects going on is probably evidence that like
Speaker 2: there's not enough good direction coming in that you've got
Speaker 2: like multiple separate next generation PC teams that wind up
Speaker 2: fighting each other for resources, right, And so he comes
Speaker 2: into this this computer's what's being set as like this
Speaker 2: is going to be a personal computer for the masses.
Speaker 2: We're going to produce a cheap, simple PC that anyone
Speaker 2: can use off the shelf. Right. That is the idea
Speaker 2: behind what becomes known as the Macintosh. And the guy
Speaker 2: who's like running this team is like a really well
Speaker 2: respected major engineer at Apple, and Steve like forces him
Speaker 2: off the team, and in order to take control of it,
Speaker 2: he's kind of shitty to the guy. He basically like
Speaker 2: burns his name a little bit to get him off
Speaker 2: of this project. And then once he's off the Lisa
Speaker 2: team and he's now heading the Macintosh team, he treats
Speaker 2: it exactly like he had treated Chris Anne. Like he's
Speaker 2: publicly insults it. He belittles his former these people who
Speaker 2: just put on his team. He's like, yeah, the Lisa
Speaker 2: team were all assholes. They're all like dipshits. They're wasting
Speaker 2: all of our money. We should cut the project. Like
Speaker 2: he immediately abandons and betrays his old team while like
Speaker 2: now showering blessings on the new team. It's very much
Speaker 2: the same as how he treats like the people in
Speaker 2: his life. So I guess at least he's consistent.
Speaker 3: So this is very much against the whole mythos of
Speaker 3: him being this master operator manager.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, this is.
Speaker 3: This is actually early days startup bullshit. Yeah, just running
Speaker 3: burning eight fires, killing things based on how upset you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and lighting like he's part of why the Lisa
Speaker 2: doesn't Like he costs the company a lot of money
Speaker 2: by like specifically fucking over the Lisa team this way,
Speaker 2: and the Macintosh is going to do a lot better
Speaker 2: than the Lisa had, but it's still not nearly we'll
Speaker 2: talk about this not nearly as successful as they had
Speaker 2: planned on it being. And while he is lighting all
Speaker 2: of this money on fire and these really petty squabbles
Speaker 2: to like make a thing that finally is as good
Speaker 2: as the Apple Too, the Apple Too is continuing to
Speaker 2: sell like a motherfucker, right, Like all of Apple is
Speaker 2: built on this machine that he hates and is angry at,
Speaker 2: while he is like fighting wars with his co workers
Speaker 2: in order to try to get to make it.
Speaker 3: No one give some credit for either. Now everyone knows
Speaker 3: this was everyone.
Speaker 2: Likes was yeah, yeah, exactly, And that is what establishes.
Speaker 2: You have to understand here. You know, when I say Macintosh,
Speaker 2: you could do the oh wow, this is the moment.
Speaker 2: But like the Macintosh really ain't shit for a while.
Speaker 2: It takes a spell for it to become like a
Speaker 2: popular product. All of Apple's early reputation and all of
Speaker 2: this like cultural weight that it accumulates prior to the era.
Speaker 2: You know, when jobs comes back is due to the
Speaker 2: Apple Too, Like that's the fucking thing, you know. But
Speaker 2: Steve hates the Apple Too, and he also now hates
Speaker 2: the Lisa. In the book Infinite Loop, Malone writes quote,
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs no longer cared about the two. He publicly
Speaker 2: derided it, saying the two group was the doll and
Speaker 2: boring division, that it had shitty ideas, and calling its
Speaker 2: engineers Clydesdale's because they were little more than dull draft horses.
Speaker 2: Even worse. Jobs undermine sales by broadly hinting to the
Speaker 2: world that once the MAC arrived on the scene, the
Speaker 2: two would be obsolete. So he looks at this cash
Speaker 2: cow that's still making them a fortune and is like, hey, everybody,
Speaker 2: you're gonna want to stop buying this thing in a while.
Speaker 2: This new thing coming up. These guys are all drug addicts.
Speaker 3: An idiot is morns.
Speaker 2: It is so. It is so that guy that like
Speaker 2: everything you have is built on the back of this computer.
Speaker 2: Steve don't treat it like and he and he and
Speaker 2: Wosniak are gonna have like a conflict because at the
Speaker 2: Apple two keeps getting left out at like these big
Speaker 2: corporate events. He'll do when he'll talk to about the
Speaker 2: other teams, and the Wosneak's like it makes all of
Speaker 2: our money, as he should. Yeah, and the evening is
Speaker 2: not just jobs too, because I think Wosney is gonna
Speaker 2: leave over this in part, and like there are other
Speaker 2: like it's the Jobs is not the only guy at
Speaker 2: the company who has like I can't wait for the
Speaker 2: next thing, not the thing that works brain right to
Speaker 2: the extent that they damage the company. Right, obviously, you
Speaker 2: always got to be looking for the next thing. But
Speaker 2: to like jettison your cash cow over it is just
Speaker 2: so Again it's evidence against like the idea that he
Speaker 2: was always this like flawless business.
Speaker 3: Mind you exactly the thing to put his money in
Speaker 3: that you a safe bat.
Speaker 2: No and a big non yeah. A big part of
Speaker 2: like why he does the things he does later is
Speaker 2: he causes a lot of failures through his arrogance. He
Speaker 2: does learn from some of them, which again maybe makes
Speaker 2: him puts a step beyond a number of these other guys,
Speaker 2: but like, these are some pretty major mistakes. And Job
Speaker 2: also continues to be fucking impossible to work with due
Speaker 2: to his personal quirks, which put an unreasonable burden on
Speaker 2: everyone around him. From Isaacson's book quote, there was also
Speaker 2: the issue of his hygiene. He was still convinced against
Speaker 2: all evidence, that his vegan diets meant he didn't need
Speaker 2: to use deodorant or take regular showers. We would have
Speaker 2: to literally put him out the door and tell him
Speaker 2: to go take a shower, said Markola. At meetings we
Speaker 2: had to look at his dirty feet. Sometimes to relieve stress,
Speaker 2: he would soak his feet in the toilet, a practice
Speaker 2: that was not as soothing for his colleagues.
Speaker 7: What and where I'm back to like a logistically, Some
Speaker 7: logistically is he's staying on top of it with his
Speaker 7: fate in that h I think he's standing.
Speaker 2: He gets a shoe off and puts his foot in
Speaker 2: the toilet. I don't know Spender does in one of
Speaker 2: the movies. No, I think he would just dip it.
Speaker 2: But I am basically off of Hollywood magic, because you
Speaker 2: can get this day, you could get. I will say
Speaker 2: the more I don't know. You know, I actually go
Speaker 2: back and forth because I wanted to say. It'd be
Speaker 2: one thing if he like had built a fancy like
Speaker 2: spa footpath and just held meetings there. But you know what,
Speaker 2: I don't think that's good. That's bougie, Sophie. This is respectable.
Speaker 2: Sticking your foot in the toilet or using a twenty
Speaker 2: dollars Amazon and trying to hide it on a recording
Speaker 2: from Sophie.
Speaker 4: Both of those things.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying Steve and I are Mavericks baby that
Speaker 2: just happened. Yeah, I'm gonna play that Jeep Renegade commercial
Speaker 2: again and rock out. Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we broke and close fucking free. I'm
Speaker 3: sorry he's still dealing with that, but he's so rich
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: You don't have to use a toilet as a footback steak.
Speaker 3: There's a sink. There's a sink in the same room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess, I guess where I've come around to is.
Speaker 2: I think that part's funny. Oh, it's very funny. It's
Speaker 2: a nice break from mentally abusing a child.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't think it's funny. Foot massage podcast.
Speaker 2: Or Yeah, I'm gonna get a massage chair Sophie and
Speaker 2: I'm gonna start one of those as MR podcasts where
Speaker 2: it's just the sound of the massage chair as I
Speaker 2: get a massage. We're gonna make twelve million in the toilet?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, what's that? Dan will just quit?
Speaker 2: Sorry. So The Lisa debuts to pretty disappointing sales about
Speaker 2: a year before The MAC is scheduled to have its release,
Speaker 2: and we'll Jobs threw himself into this project. He remained
Speaker 2: only an occasional presence in the life of his daughter.
Speaker 2: She recalls being utterly bold over when her mother told
Speaker 2: her Jobs had launched a computer project named the Lisa.
Speaker 2: She saw this as proof that her dad really loved her. Now,
Speaker 2: Steve could not admit that he loved his daughter. He's
Speaker 2: back in her life at this point, but that would
Speaker 2: have been like, that would have been like acknowledging she
Speaker 2: was his and that she deserved a place in his heart,
Speaker 2: and that is just not a thing he was ready
Speaker 2: to do at that point. So whenever she'd ask him,
Speaker 2: he'd be like, no, sorry, it's not named after you.
Speaker 2: Just a coincidence. I named a computer after my daughter.
Speaker 2: Has nothing to do with you. Sorry, get big Simpson's head. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And several times when he's asked at like he'll like
Speaker 2: take her his daughter to a party. When he starts
Speaker 2: acknowledging her more, He'll go to an event and people
Speaker 2: will ask him like, oh, that's Lisa. Is that who
Speaker 2: you name the computer after? And he'd be like, fuck, no,
Speaker 2: absolutely not in front of this little girl. Regis McKenna,
Speaker 2: who's an Apple employee, who works on the Lisa project
Speaker 2: in the early days when Jobs is in charge of it,
Speaker 2: tells Isaacson, we had to come up with an acronym
Speaker 2: so that we could claim it was not named after
Speaker 2: Lisa the child, and the eventual acronym they pick for
Speaker 2: Lisa was Local Integrated Systems Architecture. This does not mean anything,
Speaker 2: like this guy is like not only is he like
Speaker 2: lying to his daughter and his friends, but like he
Speaker 2: made us come up with an acronym for Lisa demeans.
Speaker 3: So that he was so dedicated to his kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has a team of men to help him
Speaker 2: not be there for his kids.
Speaker 3: He's diverting company resources to help otaize his child.
Speaker 2: It's it's pretty funny. I mean, it would be devastating
Speaker 2: to be that kid, but it's pretty funny now, I
Speaker 2: guess or not. One of the two engineers on the
Speaker 2: project would joke that Lisa stood for Lisa invented stupid acronym,
Speaker 2: which is also a bad acronym because you're not supposed
Speaker 2: to have the name of the acronym in the acronym.
Speaker 2: But beggars can't be choosers here, right, Like.
Speaker 4: Shut the fuck up toilet feet, like.
Speaker 3: Stinky toilet free.
Speaker 2: Such a shitty thing to do. And we're gonna get
Speaker 2: to the conclusion of this story, which, to everyone's surprise, includes,
Speaker 2: well it includes Bono, but we're building to that. So
Speaker 2: what became the Macintosh had started? Bono? Yeah, Bono's Bono's
Speaker 2: gonna be in play later, Sophie.
Speaker 3: Does this have to do with when they say not
Speaker 3: another acronym?
Speaker 2: No better off? Not around around? I could make it work,
Speaker 2: might agree.
Speaker 1: I'm mad when they violated all our phones by putting
Speaker 1: that You two album on them without our consent?
Speaker 4: Does it have to do with that?
Speaker 3: It's so funny.
Speaker 2: I do think it would now be really funny if
Speaker 2: some like powerful hacking group started putting copies of a
Speaker 2: YouTube album in people's hard drives, Like if that was
Speaker 2: just this mystery for a while, everyone woke up with
Speaker 2: it and they all blame Apple. How did you get
Speaker 2: this on my PC? You souns of bitches? I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe listen in Russia. That's how you can really
Speaker 2: fuck with us through a U two CD on the
Speaker 2: on the do od's hard drive.
Speaker 4: You're in rare form today.
Speaker 7: It's thank you, It's great.
Speaker 2: I'm really feeling. I'm feeling the power of the spirit
Speaker 2: moves through the spirit of jobs. I also have only
Speaker 2: nineteen minutes left on my memory cards. So we are
Speaker 2: in gonna be a gonna be a baller baller run
Speaker 2: through the rest of this episode here. So, the Macintosh
Speaker 2: had started as the project of this former professor named
Speaker 2: Jeff Raskin. Jeff wanted to create a computer for the masses,
Speaker 2: and he saw it as like an appliance, like you'd
Speaker 2: buy like any other appliance. Right, some mom would go
Speaker 2: down to a store and just like you'd pick up
Speaker 2: a fucking what is an appliance, sophie What.
Speaker 4: Is an appliant you're talking about?
Speaker 2: I have too miserable hammer and a gun, right, that's
Speaker 2: all I need.
Speaker 4: A dishwasher, a dishwasher.
Speaker 2: It's like buying a dishwasher. That's what they want the
Speaker 2: Macintosh to be, right. And the downside of this idea
Speaker 2: is that, like, you can't make a sexy computer that's
Speaker 2: like a dishwasher, right, because dishwashers are inherently not very
Speaker 2: s not really, Sophiella, you can't make a dishwasher be sexy, right.
Speaker 2: And Raskin's idea, which I think is probably, I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously it's good. It's what all computing winds up being
Speaker 2: based around.
Speaker 4: As somebody who likes things clean.
Speaker 2: Disagree, Sure, Sophie, to just break your dishes when you're
Speaker 2: done with them. So Raskin is like, I think we
Speaker 2: should have like a cheap, accessible machine anyone can use,
Speaker 2: and Jobs is like, sure, but I want to throw
Speaker 2: all this sexy bullshit in there. So he forces Raskin out.
Speaker 2: And one of the harms this is going to do
Speaker 2: for Apple is Raskin had been like one of Apple's
Speaker 2: better engineers, and he like pushes him out in order
Speaker 2: to steal the Macintosh project and then like fuck it up.
Speaker 2: So that's really cool. Raskin's vision of what customers wanted
Speaker 2: in a computer had been pretty astute, and Jobs mostly
Speaker 2: rejected it. Right, He's going to understand elements of this
Speaker 2: in the future, but he has a different idea about
Speaker 2: like what he wants from this, and a lot of
Speaker 2: it's based on this visit he takes to the labs
Speaker 2: of Xerox, who have invested in Apple. Xerox engineers had
Speaker 2: built the first graphical operating system, right, it has the
Speaker 2: first what's called like a graphical user interface. That's what
Speaker 2: everything has. We just call it a UY today, right,
Speaker 2: because it's just the only way shit works pretty much.
Speaker 2: But back then, it's like the Xerox skunk Works project
Speaker 2: and Jobs falls in love with it and steals a
Speaker 2: lot of it for what becomes the Mac. Hey, everyone,
Speaker 2: Robert here, the Lisa was actually the first mass market
Speaker 2: computer with a graphical user interface. Obviously, it's a little
Speaker 2: muddled because Jobs is on the Lisa and then he
Speaker 2: hops over halfway onto the Mac, which is also an
Speaker 2: early guy computer. I just wouldn't make that clear. It's
Speaker 2: also worth noting that, like Bill Gates sees basically the
Speaker 2: same demo, and like they also take a lot from
Speaker 2: Xerox in order to make what becomes Windows. Everybody's kind er. Yeah,
Speaker 2: everywhere everyone copied Xerox. Yeah, that is funny. It's really
Speaker 2: funny because it seems to be universally agreed that, like,
Speaker 2: you could be pissed off at Bill and Steve for this,
Speaker 2: but Xerox like absolutely, like fiercely rejected the idea that
Speaker 2: they should do anything new or exciting, Like they had
Speaker 2: this brilliant idea that defined the future of computing and
Speaker 2: We're like, we are absolutely never going to funny people
Speaker 2: never stop making copies. So Jobs, it is funny though
Speaker 2: that Jobs is like livid at Gates for stealing from Xerox,
Speaker 2: even though like it's like it's like being angry at
Speaker 2: a bank robber who steals from the same bank, Like
Speaker 2: you said, up a bit, I robbed them. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: Jobs is very excited about what he thinks the mac
Speaker 2: is going to mean for the future of computing. And
Speaker 2: as he's like stacking all these new requirements on and
Speaker 2: it makes the processor balloon. That makes it basically it
Speaker 2: like triples in price. Effectively, it turns into a premium machine.
Speaker 2: And some people are like, hey, maybe this is going
Speaker 2: to be too expensive to sell a lot of these things.
Speaker 2: The Apple too is like a common man's computer, and
Speaker 2: what you're building is not. He kind of would like
Speaker 2: paper over that with these like lavishing praise to the
Speaker 2: Macintosh team about like you guys are building the future,
Speaker 2: that we're the only force that can stop IBM. If
Speaker 2: IBM takes over the personal computer market totally, you know
Speaker 2: that it's going to like clamp down on all of
Speaker 2: mankind's future. It's going to be a boot on the
Speaker 2: human face, like you guys are freedom fighters making like
Speaker 2: what becomes a twenty six hundred dollars machine something like that,
Speaker 2: which is an insane that's like not cheap now, it's
Speaker 2: like an insane amount of money at the time. And
Speaker 2: obviously Jobs is also governing Apple in his heartless and
Speaker 2: brutal a fashion, as like anyone at IBM does anything.
Speaker 2: But he's good at selling this vision to the team, right,
Speaker 2: He's even good at selling it to like some cutthroat
Speaker 2: businessman who should have known better. And this is where
Speaker 2: we get jobs at his cult leaderist, right, this is
Speaker 2: where we really see his quality. It's not going to
Speaker 2: work out as well now as it will in the future,
Speaker 2: but his ability to people call it a reality distortion
Speaker 2: field because he was legitimately around for the creation of
Speaker 2: some great products that actually changed the world. But like
Speaker 2: when anyone else does this, we just call them a
Speaker 2: cult leader, Like, yeah, this man came in and sold
Speaker 2: people a fanciful view of reality in order to get
Speaker 2: stuff out of them. Well, that's a cult leader or
Speaker 2: a con man, right, same diff up to a certain point, right,
Speaker 2: And the best vision we get of how this process occurred,
Speaker 2: how Jobs would kind of enrapture somebody in his personal
Speaker 2: vision of himself in the future is the story of
Speaker 2: John Scully. John is going to become the CEO of Apple.
Speaker 2: He's head hunted at Steve Jobs's request. Jobs wanted a
Speaker 2: and one of the reasons why Jobs goes after Scully
Speaker 2: Scully is a marketer, right, he is the most famous
Speaker 2: marketer of his day. He had come up through Pepsi
Speaker 2: and he had gotten like this job. He basically been
Speaker 2: put in charge of like sales in the in what
Speaker 2: becomes the EU, I think at this point, and he
Speaker 2: completely revitalizes the business. Right. Pepsi is like barely exists
Speaker 2: in Europe, and he makes it popular there. Right, he increases,
Speaker 2: He turns them from a vision that's losing a bunch
Speaker 2: of money to the one that's making a bunch of money.
Speaker 2: And because of this he gets like he basically becomes
Speaker 2: chief marketer of the entire company. And he launches this
Speaker 2: thing called the Pepsi Challenge. Some like the old people
Speaker 2: in the audience are like screaming, now it's a pervert
Speaker 2: strinth that tastes terrible. It is a pervert strink, which
Speaker 2: is why I love it. I'm a doctor pepper Man.
Speaker 2: Legally I have to be you. I like PEPSI. I
Speaker 2: don't hate pepsi, Sophie. I like all poison. I f
Speaker 2: I said, Look, I support other people doing methamphetamine too,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't. I don't. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: have a problem with anything cigarettes, you know, Rick and I.
Speaker 2: And that's all good. Baby turpentine. Sure, why not drink
Speaker 2: some turpentine. It's all a substance. Putting substances inside you
Speaker 2: and see what happens.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: That's that's my advice to the listener Personally, I think
Speaker 2: you should get back to the script before you're before
Speaker 2: you're at dcartist full Robert, Oh, yeah, we're we are
Speaker 2: at twelve minutes forty four seconds. Maybe Daniel can throw
Speaker 2: in like the twenty four ticking, you know, from that.
Speaker 8: Show John Scully.
Speaker 2: So this guy John Scully comes up with a pepsi
Speaker 2: challenge and it causes like the soda wars are this thing.
Speaker 2: People don't really talk about it now, but like this
Speaker 2: was like the big corporate conflict of its day, and
Speaker 2: this led to like Pepsi's largest continued period of like
Speaker 2: dominance over Coca Cola or at least relative to like
Speaker 2: the way things had been. And this is why Jobs
Speaker 2: wants Scully right. For one thing, he looks at IBM
Speaker 2: and Coca Cola as very similar and he wants to
Speaker 2: dethrone IBM, which is the giant in his space. And
Speaker 2: he sees Apple is a lot like Pepsi, right, which
Speaker 2: says a lot again about that kind of like rebel
Speaker 2: image he's trying to craft for Apple computers that like, well,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, you're not like some
Speaker 2: rebel alliance, you're Pepsi, right, You're literally Pepsi. You even
Speaker 2: brought the Pepsi guy in. But he also wants Scully
Speaker 2: in there because Jobs think soon he'll be ready to
Speaker 2: be the CEO, but he knows he's still not ready yet.
Speaker 2: It's this weird little bit of like humility you get
Speaker 2: from him, and he's like, I want a marketer because
Speaker 2: I think I have more to learn from my marketer, right.
Speaker 2: And one of the things this says is that like
Speaker 2: Jobs is for all that he pretends to be this
Speaker 2: like enlightened creative thinker, He is a guy who identifies
Speaker 2: with the marketers and the finance dudes and a lot
Speaker 2: of these like, but in terms of like what they're
Speaker 2: actually doing, these are the people that he is a
Speaker 2: lot more like when it comes to his actual behavior, right.
Speaker 2: And it's also him being very conventional because this period.
Speaker 2: A big thing that's happening to a lot of American
Speaker 2: corporations in this period, like kind of the fad of
Speaker 2: the day is marketers are being put in charge of
Speaker 2: a lot of these massive companies because there's this increasing
Speaker 2: belief that is the CEO is basically the chief salesman, right,
Speaker 2: and pulling for Scully is jobs really buying into that
Speaker 2: very conventional wisdom to a substantial extent. And it's a
Speaker 2: terrible misjudgment. These are not the same industries, right. The
Speaker 2: idea that you'd be like, well, coke and Pepsi, that's
Speaker 2: like IBM and Apple. It doesn't really work because coke
Speaker 2: and Pepsi were both very old companies, right, and from
Speaker 2: the time that like soda became a universally consumed beverage
Speaker 2: in American culture, the industry didn't shift. Right. If it
Speaker 2: moved one percent in cocer Pepsi's favor, that's a huge
Speaker 2: deal at the time. It's also very different from computers
Speaker 2: because it's easy to sell people a so you can
Speaker 2: buy a soda for pocket change. You can't purchase a
Speaker 2: two or twenty five hundred dollars Macintosh computer on a whim. Right,
Speaker 2: they're not the same kinds of like ass.
Speaker 3: And that was probably worth much more in the day, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, a lot more. And it's also like most
Speaker 2: clients are still corporate clients, So you're not just saying, like, hey,
Speaker 2: why don't you try a pepsi today at lunch instead
Speaker 2: of a coke? That's easy. You're saying, hey, why don't
Speaker 2: you consend her spending millions of dollars to completely replace
Speaker 2: your company's IT infrastructure with Apple? Right, they're very different asks, right,
Speaker 2: But Jobs had sold himself on Scully and he wouldn't
Speaker 2: take no for an answer. And Scully himself is not
Speaker 2: sure he wants to do this. He's like, I don't
Speaker 2: know tech, why am I getting?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Why would I take this risk? And Jobs just keeps
Speaker 2: he love bombs him.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Not only is he calling constantly, he like flies to
Speaker 2: New York pretending to look for a real estate so
Speaker 2: he can like spend more time with the guy. He's like, hey,
Speaker 2: can you give me some advice buying an apartment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it could be in a different man. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to quote from the book Infinite Loop here. It was
Speaker 2: a Sunday afternoon, so the visit began at Scully's exquisite
Speaker 2: modern home in Greenwich. Jobs toured the ground, met Leezy Scully,
Speaker 2: which I guess is his wife, and the pair retired
Speaker 2: to the library to talk. Why are you talking to me,
Speaker 2: Scully asked, why don't you go talk to somebody at
Speaker 2: IBM or Culett Packard. Why do you want somebody out
Speaker 2: of the soft drink at drink industry. I don't know
Speaker 2: anything about computers. A lot of people would ask the
Speaker 2: same question in the years to come. In reply, Jobs said,
Speaker 2: what we're doing is never been done before. We're trying
Speaker 2: to build a totally different kind of company, and we
Speaker 2: need really great people. My dream is that every person
Speaker 2: in the world will have their own Apple computer. To
Speaker 2: do that, we've got to be a great marketing company.
Speaker 2: And it's this does show you a little bit of
Speaker 2: the reality of distortion effect. Maybe that washed over you,
Speaker 2: maybe it didn't, But he starts that by saying we're
Speaker 2: going to be a completely different company, and the end
Speaker 2: thought is by hiring a Marketer as our CEO, like everyone.
Speaker 3: Else, the thing that everyone is doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, think that everybody's doing different. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 2: it works on a guy like Scully, Right, it's going
Speaker 2: to work on somebody who's maybe a little bit on
Speaker 2: the way to being a narcissist like you often have
Speaker 2: to be to succeed at that level in business. And
Speaker 2: Jobs is telling him what he wants to hear, whateveryone
Speaker 2: wants to hear, which is, you can change the world
Speaker 2: for the better by doing exactly what you're doing right now. Right,
Speaker 2: That's what everybody wants, and Jobs knows that. Right. It's
Speaker 2: why people can be convinced that like just tweeting anger
Speaker 2: at some dude or a lady or whoever is going
Speaker 2: to like fix a major social problem.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: It's the same impult. Like any cult leader understands why
Speaker 2: humans are motivated by the things they are, we all
Speaker 2: secretly want that, right. You have to fight against this
Speaker 2: constantly if you do want to like be a better person.
Speaker 2: There's always this desire to believe that however I'm being
Speaker 2: is at least the best I can be. Right, and
Speaker 2: Jobs not just understands that fundamental fact, but he understands
Speaker 2: how to use that fact to create a script that
Speaker 2: is going to take this guy, and it absolutely works.
Speaker 2: Scully is charmed with Steve Jobs, bordering on obsessed. His wife, however,
Speaker 2: doesn't buy this shtick. When he asked her what she
Speaker 2: thought of him, her handswer was basically, I don't know, bro, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: stinky goblin. Yeah, listen to your wives about the sinky
Speaker 2: goblin who tries to get you to take a job. Folks,
Speaker 2: if you're ever in this situation, jobs, we are jobs. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So back at Apple, Jobs's employees and colleagues are equally
Speaker 2: unimpressed with Scully, who was boring and uncharismatic. But Jobs
Speaker 2: forced the marriage into being, and he even convinced Scully
Speaker 2: to take a forty percent pay cut to do it.
Speaker 2: Part of how he did this was by leaning on
Speaker 2: his star power, and this is from Infinite Loop again.
Speaker 2: They met on another Sunday. They had lunch and then
Speaker 2: went for a walk in Central Park. Scully would later
Speaker 2: remember how chagrined he was by all the people recognizing Jobs.
Speaker 2: It was hardly the anonymous meeting Scully had hoped for.
Speaker 2: I want you to come and work with me, said, Jobs,
Speaker 2: I can learn so much from you. They walked through
Speaker 2: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As they walked, Schooly began
Speaker 2: to imagine himself as the teacher of a brilliant student,
Speaker 2: an Aristotle say to Alexander. He confessed that if he
Speaker 2: hadn't been a businessman, he would have probably become an
Speaker 2: artist Jobs and a remarkable coincidence, said that if he
Speaker 2: hadn't become a technologist, he would have been a poet
Speaker 2: in Paris.
Speaker 3: Oh fuck, these people are stupid as hell.
Speaker 2: I do this is where and again none of the
Speaker 2: Jobs movies show this guy. They all want to show
Speaker 2: him like wooing crowds or like being you know, a technic.
Speaker 2: None of them seemed to want to show him like
Speaker 2: being a cult leader manipulating rich people to like do
Speaker 2: whatever he wants them to do, like getting it. He
Speaker 2: finds with each of these guys, he finds out like
Speaker 2: what do you want? And he finds a way to pride.
Speaker 2: He does the same thing, by the way, and it's
Speaker 2: not funny when he does it to Was. But he
Speaker 2: does this to Was. What does Wasniak want? He wants
Speaker 2: to have an adventure with his best friend. So that's
Speaker 2: how Jobs frames it. What a Scully want to change
Speaker 2: the world by selling pepsi, right, and that's what he gives.
Speaker 3: Him, you know, by selling a computer.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, yeah, exactly, the pepsi of computers. So Jobs eventually,
Speaker 2: like Scully, it goes kind of back and forth, and
Speaker 2: it kind of it does culminate. You could film this
Speaker 2: really well because there's this like dramatic confrontation on top
Speaker 2: of a skyscraper they have and Jobs puts it all
Speaker 2: on the line and is like, do you want to
Speaker 2: spend the rest of your life selling sugar water or
Speaker 2: do you want a chance to change the world? And
Speaker 2: that breaks Scully's will. He takes the job. The Mac
Speaker 2: launch was coming up in January of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: After the failure of the Lisa. The company desperately needed
Speaker 2: some hype to carry it through. Right. The Apple two
Speaker 2: was still selling strong, but it's starting to reach kind
Speaker 2: of like it's starting to fall off, right. They can
Speaker 2: see that, and they really do need something new. Now,
Speaker 2: Steve throws all of his hopes and all of the
Speaker 2: hopes of his company behind a new ad, this kind
Speaker 2: of groundbreaking new strategy for advertising Apple products. Based on
Speaker 2: some ideas that had been brought to them, the ad
Speaker 2: from chaiat Day. They had written this ad. This is
Speaker 2: the famous nineteen eighty four ad right where you've got
Speaker 2: like these lines of people all up in front of
Speaker 2: this screen where this like big brother, you know figure
Speaker 2: is like preaching, you know, reading a bunch of like
Speaker 2: political ideology tracks to them basically, and then this this
Speaker 2: woman in athletic shorts with a mall runs up and
Speaker 2: she throws the hammer through the screen. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the computer is going to stop nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 8: Bro.
Speaker 3: It's the kind of hilarious that like, looking back at that,
Speaker 3: it is it is, I mean, because it was mocked
Speaker 3: by like the Pepsi guy and this thinking you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the pepsi guy and the smelly weirdo. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty four ad had actually been written before
Speaker 2: chaiat Day contracted with Apple, but and this is what's
Speaker 2: funny to be, they brought it to a bunch of
Speaker 2: other companies because they were just trying to sell this
Speaker 2: idea to anybody who wouldn't want to be nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four is coming up. Someone's going to have the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four ad, and they also understand every company wants
Speaker 2: to feel like they're the little guy, or at least
Speaker 2: wants to make themselves look like the little guy fighting back.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like how all these giant car companies
Speaker 2: are like, you're just a humble rancher, like, and we're
Speaker 2: just a humble tool provider for a humble rancher and
Speaker 2: also worth the GDP of Japan or whatever. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so this ad that they try to sell to everybody
Speaker 2: like keeps getting turned down because it's it's like kind
Speaker 2: of narcissistic and up its own asshole. So as soon
Speaker 2: as job sees it, he's like, yes, we have this
Speaker 2: is the best idea, bring it on. So they like
Speaker 2: they they they filmed this thing. My favorite side detail
Speaker 2: is that they have to bring it a bunch of
Speaker 2: skinheads as extras. Right now, I don't know are these
Speaker 2: because there's different kinds of skinheads. But I also feel
Speaker 2: like the skinheads who are you're can most easily get
Speaker 2: in an Apple commercial might not be the good kind.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, Trouble said, it's it's a huge hit with
Speaker 9: the fans, and I want to have I want to
Speaker 9: have Sophie, play you a clip of like from the
Speaker 9: end of this ad when it's I think this is
Speaker 9: at Macworld when they play it for the first time,
Speaker 9: because I want you to hear the audience here.
Speaker 5: Right on January twenty four, Apple Computer will introduce MacIntire
Speaker 5: and you'll see why nineteen eighty four w the nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty four.
Speaker 2: This ads like a huge hit with the listeners, but
Speaker 2: Apple's executives are are kind of like furious about this, right,
Speaker 2: Like when they see the ad for the first time,
Speaker 2: they're all they all have the reaction of all the
Speaker 2: people who turned it down. They're like, what the fuck
Speaker 2: is this thing? Why are we trying to use this
Speaker 2: like dark bleak apocalyptic ad sell Computers cancel a bunch
Speaker 2: of our ad spots, and Scully has to tell chaiat
Speaker 2: Day to sell off their Super Bowl airtime, and Jay
Speaker 2: chaiat where at the company like basically fights back. They
Speaker 2: had they had bought like a sixty second and a
Speaker 2: thirty second slot, and Chai it sells the thirty second slot,
Speaker 2: but then he's like, it's too late for us to
Speaker 2: sell the longer ones. We might as well just run
Speaker 2: the ad, right, And this it's interesting. I don't know
Speaker 2: how you want to like qualify the level of success
Speaker 2: or failure this ad has. Right, it's it's seen as
Speaker 2: one of the greatest ads of all time. It is remembered, right,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really sell any macs, So that is a problem. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that is a problem. Like is it successful because it's
Speaker 2: really well known and famous and parodied a bunch or
Speaker 2: because like some snooty ad people think it was great,
Speaker 2: or should you judge it based on like how it sells?
Speaker 2: And the mac is not an immediate hit some of
Speaker 2: why the Macintosh was kind of seen as a disaster.
Speaker 2: It's not super fair because it does like make money.
Speaker 2: They sell a couple hundred thousand in the first year,
Speaker 2: which is good. It's like a decent product line. But
Speaker 2: Jobs had expected to two million sales, and in fact,
Speaker 2: like when he comes up with, like, we're gonna sell
Speaker 2: two million of these in our first year, it gets
Speaker 2: cut down to one million by the company, who's like,
Speaker 2: that's an insane thing to tell shareholders that we're expecting
Speaker 2: to sell. No one's ever sold anything close to that
Speaker 2: many computers in a year. We certainly aren't with this
Speaker 2: fucking thing. And that is still that the estimate the
Speaker 2: company comes up with a million is still like more
Speaker 2: than four times as many as actually sell. So this
Speaker 2: is if if Jobs hadn't run his mouth, hadn't started
Speaker 2: lying that this is going to sell like a million
Speaker 2: or two million units, he could have just said, yeah,
Speaker 2: we launched the Mac and it's making us a bunch
Speaker 2: of money. Great, But for one thing, he's gotten everyone
Speaker 2: to expect a million sales and they don't make that.
Speaker 2: And for another thing, Apple has stocked up on a
Speaker 2: bunch of materials they don't wind up actually needing because
Speaker 2: of how many more of these they expect to sell.
Speaker 2: So that's a real issue, and it makes the Mac
Speaker 2: kind of come out looking like it was a bomb.
Speaker 2: Steve bears a lot of the fault for this. Part
Speaker 2: of why the back doesn't sell better is that he
Speaker 2: had insisted that it not be compatible with IBM. Right.
Speaker 2: Not only that, he's like, I don't want this to
Speaker 2: be compatible with IBMS or with the Lisa right, this
Speaker 2: other computer will making fuck it like my computers won't
Speaker 2: talk to it.
Speaker 3: Once again, severing the connection with Lisa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really is such a predictable man. This whole
Speaker 2: ideology had infected a lot of Apple at this point.
Speaker 2: Because Steve hates the rest of the company, he kinds
Speaker 2: of builds this situation where every team is really siloed
Speaker 2: from the other teams. You've got the Apple two, the
Speaker 2: Apple three, the Lisa, and the Mac teams, and like
Speaker 2: they avoid talking or communicating. They all have their separate
Speaker 2: marketing and accounting firms, which is like it's wasting a
Speaker 2: ton of money. So Scully gets in right before the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four AD. He's there for these kind of
Speaker 2: disappointing MAC sales and Jobs' reality distortion field starts to
Speaker 2: fail right and Scully is like, well, we need to
Speaker 2: make some changes. I don't care if how Steve wants it.
Speaker 2: So he integrates all of these teams so we can
Speaker 2: eliminate a bunch of these redundant positions. And this infuriates
Speaker 2: Jobs because like now the Mac team has to like
Speaker 2: share resources with other teams, and he thinks that that's vile.
Speaker 2: Scully also makes himself head of the Apple two team,
Speaker 2: which Jobs hates because he's like he hates the Apple too,
Speaker 2: and Scully doesn't know enough to be the head of
Speaker 2: the Apple two team. But this does at least show
Speaker 2: that he what he's trying to do, I think is
Speaker 2: just kind of signal to Wozniak and the others, like, hey,
Speaker 2: the Apple too is important to us, the thing that
Speaker 2: makes all our money. The other bad call that Jobs
Speaker 2: had made around this time is that he was obsessed
Speaker 2: with something called the Twiggy drive, which is Jobs thinks
Speaker 2: floppy discs aren't the right technology. He's like, I've got
Speaker 2: we've got this bespoke replacement for the floppy disc called
Speaker 2: the Twiggy drive, and this is going to be the
Speaker 2: future of memory, and it they never get it working
Speaker 2: very well, right, Like, He's part of why the MA
Speaker 2: gets delayed is he's obsessed with it having a Twiggy
Speaker 2: drive and that has to be working rather than like
Speaker 2: just putting it a disc drive using everyone uses yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and yeah. I want to quote from Infinite Loop here
Speaker 2: because it really gets to like one of Jobs is
Speaker 2: more significant technical fuck ups. Jobs in fact, had been
Speaker 2: partly responsible for the problems with Twiggy. His rule, laid
Speaker 2: down for esthetic reasons that Apple computers have not have
Speaker 2: noisy cooling. Fans had made the creation of Twiggy nearly
Speaker 2: impossible from the outset. Disk drives with their electric motors,
Speaker 2: spinning platters and moving armatures produce a lot of heat
Speaker 2: in the uncol heart of an Apple computer. A high
Speaker 2: speed advance drive like a twiggy simply cooked, burning out
Speaker 2: its own chips and melting or distorting the mylar diskette.
Speaker 2: He's so angry about the concept of a fan that
Speaker 2: he he shackles this thing to a melting a twiggy drive.
Speaker 2: It's very funny, everyone, Robert here, Just to be very clear,
Speaker 2: the mac does not launch with a twiggy drive because
Speaker 2: they don't get that working. It launches with the flobby.
Speaker 2: And actually it's only able to launch with the flabby
Speaker 2: because they decide, like near the end, that they just
Speaker 2: can't make it work. Thankfully, somebody on the team has
Speaker 2: sort of secretly against jobs his orders worked on a
Speaker 2: way to fit in a floppy drive with a Macintosh,
Speaker 2: and so the day has saved no thanks to Steve Jobs.
Speaker 2: But I just want to make that clear as well.
Speaker 3: He was so bad at this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really is at this point, so bad at
Speaker 2: his job. That's important to understand is most of his
Speaker 2: skill up to this point, most of his impact has
Speaker 2: been in his ability to like manipulate money people and
Speaker 2: marketing people, and he is to an extent good at marketing,
Speaker 2: but he's like wrong about every technical call he makes
Speaker 2: at this point in his.
Speaker 3: Life, seemingly every business decision too, Yeah, a.
Speaker 8: Lot of them.
Speaker 2: Now. Not long after this, Jobs would also intervene to
Speaker 2: kill like the kind of the last Apple two the
Speaker 2: two X, which would have had that we're going to
Speaker 2: have both a more powerful processor in it and also
Speaker 2: a second slot for another processor where you could plug
Speaker 2: in an IBM chip, which would have made Apple products
Speaker 2: IBM compatible for the first time. And Job Jobs like
Speaker 2: personally he goes out of its way to strangle this thing,
Speaker 2: and it's crazy, this thing must do less. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So Jobs also ensured that the Apple two team was
Speaker 2: cut out of any credit or praise during the annual
Speaker 2: Apple media events he headlined and again had This helps
Speaker 2: to kind of push Wosniak to quit the company, and
Speaker 2: you can see why, Like, you know, the WAZ comes
Speaker 2: back and he gets right into Apple two stuff, and
Speaker 2: he's kind of frustrated by how everyone else seems to
Speaker 2: treat them like shit, except for Skully. It's not a
Speaker 2: coincidence that he does this that he kind of like
Speaker 2: bails on the company about a decade after Steve Jobs
Speaker 2: stole that money from the Atari Job because while Jobs
Speaker 2: doesn't like the Apple too and won't say anything nice
Speaker 2: about him, but he knows Wosniak is a star, so
Speaker 2: he pulls him out of Apple two work for a
Speaker 2: while to do press for the Mac, and Wosniak, being
Speaker 2: a good company man, does it. And while he's on
Speaker 2: this media tour traveling around to like talk up Jobs
Speaker 2: as Mac, he reads the first book about Apple and
Speaker 2: reads this story about Jobs stealing five or seven thousand
Speaker 2: dollars from him, and he like weeps openly about it,
Speaker 2: like this is I think part of why he makes
Speaker 2: the decision to leave. Things keep getting worse for Apple
Speaker 2: from this point forward. The nineteen eighty four commercial had
Speaker 2: not moved a lot of max, but its critical success
Speaker 2: had convinced Jobs to do whatever the Chayat Day people said.
Speaker 2: And they follow up the nineteen eighty four commercial with
Speaker 2: the Lemmings commercial, which shows, like IBM customers, this Lemmings
Speaker 2: marching suicidally off a cliff Like it's both kind of
Speaker 2: disturbing and also like really pisses people off.
Speaker 3: Hey, you fucking idiot, buy my diure or you'll die.
Speaker 2: And by this point sales have become dire enough, and
Speaker 2: like he gets in trouble.
Speaker 3: For this time, the game Lemmings came out as well.
Speaker 2: I think it would have predated that that was.
Speaker 8: Not the eighties.
Speaker 3: Let me yeah nice, my bad, my bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah, this is kind of the mid eighties.
Speaker 2: And like right after that, he comes out at like
Speaker 2: the Macworld event and he proposes a detent with IBM.
Speaker 2: So it's this weird mix of like shit talking the company,
Speaker 2: calling them the Evil Empire, and then suddenly coming out
Speaker 2: on stage and being like, hey, we actually want to
Speaker 2: work with you guys, when like none of your shit
Speaker 2: sells as well as you thought it would and this
Speaker 2: is all messy, right, this is hard to clean up.
Speaker 2: It's bad for the stock price. And Scully's job evolves
Speaker 2: into an even mix of like cleaning up Jobs as
Speaker 2: messes and like apologizing for him and trying to occasionally
Speaker 2: chart a path forward for the company. He is bad
Speaker 2: at both of these tasks, and he and Jobs eventually
Speaker 2: wind up in a conflict over control of the board
Speaker 2: when Jobs tries to engineer a coup On the day
Speaker 2: Scully is heading overseas to celebrate a major sale. Somebody
Speaker 2: warns Scully and he shows it. He and Jobs like
Speaker 2: fight it out in front of the board basically, and
Speaker 2: Scully wins Jobs resigns from Apple. He is devastated by this,
Speaker 2: but the one consequence of this failure is that he
Speaker 2: starts spending time around his daughter and Chrisan. Again, the
Speaker 2: way Lisa describes it, he seems to have lint on
Speaker 2: them to the extent that he lint on anybody once
Speaker 2: his world fell apart. But Jobs wasn't going to be
Speaker 2: a failure for long, and this is where we get
Speaker 2: to what actually made the man special. Throughout the early
Speaker 2: part of this story, I've hit on a couple of
Speaker 2: decisions that Jobs made that were wrong in the moment
Speaker 2: but right in the long term. He wanted to fight
Speaker 2: Wohsneyak on expansion slots for the Apple too, which is
Speaker 2: dumb then, but in the long term that is where
Speaker 2: technology trended, and trended there because of Jobs, but he
Speaker 2: was able to sell it to people right, and his
Speaker 2: desire for closed independent ecosystems that customers couldn't meddle with
Speaker 2: is super profitable. Like, look at the iPod, look at
Speaker 2: the iPad, look at the iPhone. All of them work
Speaker 2: that way, and a lot of other companies have gone
Speaker 2: in that direction. Likewise, his early flirtation with Touch Greens,
Speaker 2: he correctly anticipated the future there, right. He has sometimes
Speaker 2: a good eye for it, right, And so after he
Speaker 2: has this kind of humbling experience of being forced out
Speaker 2: an Apple, his next few years he's going to make
Speaker 2: some really good bets throughout the nineties. He establishes this
Speaker 2: new computer company Next, which, if you're looking to spell it,
Speaker 2: it's spelled the way an asshole would spell it. Just
Speaker 2: the X is capitalized. I think it's infuriating. And the
Speaker 2: Next seems like a dumb computer on paper. They cost
Speaker 2: like twelve grand each, and he means them for the
Speaker 2: education market, right, like, it's this the most cost It's
Speaker 2: kind of if you take him at face value, it's
Speaker 2: an insane thing to try to do. The case is
Speaker 2: also a perfect cube for whatever reason, nobody, which like
Speaker 2: nobody wants right.
Speaker 3: Nobody's buying case. It looks like an old safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They eventually repurposed that design for the Xbox uhuh so,
Speaker 2: But again this is not like this seems like a
Speaker 2: bad idea. But Apple buys Next because they like what
Speaker 2: he's doing with the operating to how it looks so much.
Speaker 2: They're so enthralled with like the vision he presents. He
Speaker 2: cons these guys one more time, and that's how he
Speaker 2: gets back in an Apple right. A few years later,
Speaker 2: by like ninety seven, they buy Next and they bring
Speaker 2: jobs back in to run the company. He also, during
Speaker 2: this kind of like most of the nineties interregnum period
Speaker 2: of his life or whatever, he founds Pixar, which you
Speaker 2: know is Pixar. It works out pretty well, so he does.
Speaker 2: This is kind of the start of the job's comeback story.
Speaker 2: And one thing you have to give the man is
Speaker 2: that both of these are evidence that he has more
Speaker 2: personal growth than a lot of guys in his position. Right,
Speaker 2: And in the similar manner, he makes some strides in
Speaker 2: improving his relationship with his daughter over this period of time.
Speaker 2: He also provides more support to Chrisanne. He eventually like
Speaker 2: buys her a house. And I think Mona Simpson is
Speaker 2: the large It seems like Mona kind of comes into
Speaker 2: his life and sees how he's treating Lisa and Chris
Speaker 2: Anne as like, man, you Steve Jobs, buy your fucking house,
Speaker 2: buy your kids to new clothes. What the fuck are
Speaker 2: you doing, Steve, stop this like you're being a dick
Speaker 2: for no reason. Yeah, and he actually listens to her, right,
Speaker 2: which you know, I guess you maybe says something that
Speaker 2: said he is still Steve Jobs. And I am never
Speaker 2: going to say in this period that he has a
Speaker 2: great dad and he's always weirdly agro about his daughter,
Speaker 2: like wanting anything from him, any kind of acknowledgment or
Speaker 2: anything else. One moment she relates in her book is
Speaker 2: that like when she's like, I think twelve or something,
Speaker 2: He's driving her around in his brand new Porsche, right,
Speaker 2: and she asks him like a little like a kid would, Hey,
Speaker 2: when you're done with the Porsche, can I have it right?
Speaker 2: Which I think I don't know many twelve year olds
Speaker 2: who wouldn't want their dad's Porsche if they can't have it.
Speaker 3: Right, especially when that that is filthy rich.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they grew up poor right there. These memories
Speaker 2: are on well anything any Steve Jobs.
Speaker 3: This is directly as a result of Steve Jobs.
Speaker 2: She grew up Paul. Yeah, yeah, This could be if
Speaker 2: she's like thirty asking this question. This could be like,
Speaker 2: you know, part of a character trait in a movie
Speaker 2: that like, yeah, this is somebody who's like grown up,
Speaker 2: you know, greedy or whatever. But she's a child, right,
Speaker 2: this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Here's how
Speaker 2: he responds. Before I made a move to get out,
Speaker 2: he turned to face me. You're not getting anything, he said,
Speaker 2: you understand nothing. You're getting nothing. And she's like, I
Speaker 2: didn't know if he meant the car, and and haarent
Speaker 2: it's like you're not getting any acknowledgment at all from me.
Speaker 2: That like, I mean, like you're getting nothing from me. Period.
Speaker 2: What a devastating thing to tell a little kid get out,
Speaker 2: like a twelve year old at this point, Yeah, like
Speaker 2: a twelve year old. It's one thing to say, Like
Speaker 2: a reasonable thing to say is like, eh, you know,
Speaker 2: if you need a car, you'll get like a nice
Speaker 2: normal like a used car, something that works and is safe.
Speaker 2: But like, I'm not giving a child a Porsche. Very
Speaker 2: reasonable thing to say. That's real fucked up. Now. Throughout
Speaker 2: this whole period in the late nineties, he slowly gets
Speaker 2: better at kind of embracing her but it's always this
Speaker 2: period of like he'll let her in and then he'll
Speaker 2: recoil and say something really cruel. And one of the
Speaker 2: things in like the dark moments in this relationship they have,
Speaker 2: which are many, that Lisa comforts herself with, is the
Speaker 2: knowledge that he had named the Lisa after her. Right,
Speaker 2: she never believes him. She's just waiting for him to say, like, yes,
Speaker 2: it was named after.
Speaker 3: You, Yeah, which would cost him nothing.
Speaker 2: And it would cost him literally nothing. And this is
Speaker 2: what she writes about it. I like the idea that
Speaker 2: I was connected to him in this way. Me and
Speaker 2: I'd been chosen and had a place, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that he was aloof or absent, and meant I was
Speaker 2: fascina to the earth and its machines. He was famous,
Speaker 2: he drove a Porsche. If the Lisa was named after me,
Speaker 2: I was a part of all that. I see now.
Speaker 2: We were at cross purposes for him. I was a
Speaker 2: blot on a spectacular ascent. As our story did not
Speaker 2: fit with the narrative of greatness and virtue he might
Speaker 2: have wanted for himself. My existence ruined his streak. For me,
Speaker 2: it was the opposite, the closer I was to him
Speaker 2: the less I would feel ashamed he was part of
Speaker 2: the world. He would accelerate me into the light, stating
Speaker 2: thing to think.
Speaker 3: Darkness this man has put inside. Even then, she was
Speaker 3: still desperate by him.
Speaker 2: Jesus dead or he's her dead. Yeah, you don't.
Speaker 3: Choose your parents.
Speaker 2: No, oh God. So for years, even after he did
Speaker 2: accept her as his daughter and brought her into his life,
Speaker 2: Steve would continue to refuse acknowledging that he'd named the
Speaker 2: Lisa after her. Eventually, when she's like a young adult,
Speaker 2: I think he finally breaks down. I think she might
Speaker 2: have been like late teens. But this is only when
Speaker 2: she's put in a situation in which denying that the
Speaker 2: Lisa was named after his daughter would have made him
Speaker 2: look bad in front of his most famous friend. And
Speaker 2: this is where Bono comes back into the store. Yes, yay.
Speaker 2: So the following anecdote happens. Jobs goes on this like
Speaker 2: yacht trip around the Mediterranean with like his new family.
Speaker 2: He's like married again, he's got another kid and with Lisa.
Speaker 2: He invites Lisa this is part of him like doing
Speaker 2: a rapproch mall with her, and they stop off at
Speaker 2: Bono's villa on like the Mediterranean Coast for dinner, and Bono,
Speaker 2: who's kind of starstruck by Steve Job, starts asking about
Speaker 2: the early days of Apple. Then Bono asked, so was
Speaker 2: the Lisa computer named after her? And Bona's she's doing
Speaker 2: this casually, right, He's not up on this lore. He
Speaker 2: like knows Steve had a computer named the Lisa. He
Speaker 2: meets Lisa, He's like, oh, he's named after her, right,
Speaker 2: And my father hesitated, looks down at his plate for
Speaker 2: a long moment, then back at Bono. Yeah it was,
Speaker 2: he said. I sat up in my chair. I thought so.
Speaker 2: Bono said, yep, my father said. I studied my father's face.
Speaker 2: What it changed? Why had he admitted it now, after
Speaker 2: all these years? Of course it was named after me?
Speaker 2: I thought, Then his life seemed preposterous. Now I felt
Speaker 2: a new power that pulled my chest up. That's the
Speaker 2: first time he said yes. I told Bono, thank you
Speaker 2: for asking. It was as if famous people needed other
Speaker 2: famous people around to release their secrets.
Speaker 3: Oh God, this poor woman has had her life ruined.
Speaker 3: She just randomly says one of hers og style things
Speaker 3: because Steve Jobs blotted her soul.
Speaker 2: Now she's the first person because she does inherit millions
Speaker 2: of dollars from him, and she's the first person I've
Speaker 2: ever heard of inheriting millions of dollars where I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but you earned that, Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like she should have there, she should have gone billions.
Speaker 3: She should not have Oh my god, fuck out Bono.
Speaker 2: That's the he's the good guy. He's not the bad guy.
Speaker 1: Something to make up for putting that album on.
Speaker 3: It's the first great thing he did. The second thing
Speaker 3: was the Spider Man musical.
Speaker 2: The second was he Oh right, I'll give him. There
Speaker 2: was one other great thing I got bought a.
Speaker 4: Paid bono podcast.
Speaker 2: Intel Nochio flew me out to Dublin. Wants to report
Speaker 2: on this operating system they were making called Migo. That
Speaker 2: was like that was going to be their android. You
Speaker 2: haven't heard of Migo because it was a flop, and
Speaker 2: they're like they flew us all out there and like
Speaker 2: it took us to the Guinness Brewery where there was
Speaker 2: a Bono impersonator and a whole fake He was billed
Speaker 2: as the best Bono impersonator in Ireland. Wow, which is
Speaker 2: maybe a crowded field. I actually don't know. I will
Speaker 2: say I could not have told you it wasn't real Bono.
Speaker 2: You know, he did look the part, and it's you know,
Speaker 2: I'll give him that. I'll give him that.
Speaker 3: Plays an impersonator though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe it was. That's his hobby. He's both getting
Speaker 2: rich people to reveal their secrets pretending to be a
Speaker 2: Bono impersonator. God Willing. All right, well ed? Is there
Speaker 2: any where people can find you?
Speaker 3: You can find me at exit Ron on Twitter, slash rate,
Speaker 3: my newstop bezziest Guy dot Social fun me of course,
Speaker 3: and my new podcast, Better Offline at better Offline dot com.
Speaker 3: Click the podcast button you get all the stuff on
Speaker 3: there and my newsletters on there too.
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