Steve Jobs by Patricia Lakin

Author:Patricia Lakin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

9

APPLE’S STAR

THE APPLE COMPUTER IPO WAS THE largest in U.S. corporate history since 1956, when the Ford Motor Company first listed its shares. More than forty Apple employees became millionaires that day. But Dan Kottke—Steve’s old friend, former roommate, and one of the first Apple employees—wasn’t one of them. He’d been asking Steve for months about getting stock in the company before it went public. Steve kept brushing Dan off.

Another longtime employee, Rod Holt, learned that Dan hadn’t been included in the stock options. So he approached Steve and suggested they each give him an equal number of shares from their own vast amount. Steve replied that he’d give Dan “zero” shares.

Woz was distressed about the employees who didn’t receive shares. He personally sold some of his stocks to Dan and others at a fair price so they could reap the rewards of their loyalty and hard work.

While Dan bore no grudge, he was puzzled by Steve’s behavior. If Steve had acted out of anger, he never shared that fact with Dan. To this day, Steve’s action remains a mystery to him.

By the age of twenty-five, Steve had superstar status after becoming a multimillionaire. He was on the cover of Inc. and later Time magazine.

He bought his own house in Los Gatos, and even though he could certainly afford to furnish it, he didn’t. Choosing furniture meant selecting items that fit his sense of style and design. Not much did. His living room was “furnished” with sound equipment, a bookcase half-filled with books, an original Tiffany lamp, and his meditation mat. His bedroom was equally as sparse—it contained his mattress and, on the walls, black-and-white photos of the guru he had hoped to meet, Neem Karoli Baba, and the famous physicist Albert Einstein.

The massive success did nothing to calm Steve. At work he was more temperamental than ever. He was put on the Lisa Computer team but then removed. Next it was the Macintosh team. He was excited by their work and wanted to lead their group. However, Jef Raskin already headed the team, and he and Steve had intense disagreements about the direction of the Macintosh.

Jef wanted to make this computer truly affordable, which meant selecting certain inexpensive parts over others to keep down the cost. And even though Jef wanted to incorporate graphics in the computer, he didn’t feel that all the innovative features they’d seen at PARC were essential. He was ready to use a less expensive microprocessor, eliminate many of the graphics, and do away with the mouse. Steve was appalled. He felt that using graphics for application windows with pull-down menus, controlled by using the mouse, was absolutely critical. Jef differed and wasn’t impressed by Steve’s star power. Their conflicts became personal as well as professional, and increasingly more disruptive. Steve wanted to assemble his own crew and take over the Macintosh project.

Mike Scott, the president, reluctantly stepped in. He summoned Steve and Jef into his office with Markkula present. As he had done before, Steve burst into tears.

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