Chapter 124 50 year old lion

Jobs' 30th and 40th birthdays were celebrated with Silicon Valley celebrities and celebrities from all walks of life.But in 2005, after he had cancer surgery, his wife threw a surprise party for his 50th birthday, featuring mostly his closest friends and colleagues.The party was held at the friends' home in San Francisco, and celebrity chef Alice Waters presented salmon from Scotland, couscous, a famous North African dish, and a variety of garden vegetables."It was very intimate, with adults and children sitting together," Waters recalls. The entertainment was an impromptu performance by the cast of Whose Line Is It Anyway?.Jobs' good friend Mike Slade was also there, as were colleagues from Apple and Pixar, including Lasseter, Cook, Schiller, Crowe, Rubinstein and Tevanian.

Cook managed the company well during Jobs' absence.Under his leadership, Apple's individual employees performed well, and at the same time, Cook kept himself out of the public eye.In a way, Jobs liked strong people, but he never really let others represent his work or share his stage.It's hard to be his understudy, damn it if you're in the limelight, and damn it if you're not.Cook managed to avoid these dangers.He is calm and decisive when giving orders, but at the same time, he does not seek attention and acclaim. "Some people resent the fact that everything goes to Steve, but I've never cared about that," Cook said. "Honestly, I wish my name never appeared in the paper."

After Jobs returned to Apple after his medical leave, Cook returned to his previous job-tightly integrating Apple's various operational departments, and still calmly faced Jobs' anger. "I know people misinterpret some of Steve's comments as yelling or outright disapproval, but in reality that's just his way of expressing passion. That's how I deal with his emotional style, and I never feel He was targeting me." In many ways, Cook was the polar opposite of Jobs: unflappable, emotionally stable (as the dictionary installed in the NeXT machine explains it), more Saturnian than Mercury. "I'm a good negotiator, but he's probably better than me because he's bold and cool," Jobs said later.After a few more words of praise for Cook, Jobs quietly expressed his reservations, "But Tim himself is not a product guy." He was serious, but he rarely said that.

In the fall of 2005, Jobs appointed Cook as Apple's chief operating officer.When they flew to Japan together, Jobs told Cook without consulting him, "I've decided to make you COO." Around that time, longtime Jobs friends Jonathan Rubinstein and Avi Tevanian decided to leave Apple.They were team managers for hardware and software, respectively, and they were rehired when Jobs returned to Apple in 1997.Tevanian has made a lot of money and is ready to retire. "Avi is a great guy, a nice guy, more down-to-earth than Ruby, less arrogant." Jobs said, "Avi's departure is a great loss for Apple. He is unique and a genius."

Rubinstein's departure was slightly controversial.He was dissatisfied with Cook's promotion, but also because he had worked under Jobs for nine years and was physically and mentally exhausted.Their quarrels became more and more frequent.There was also a practical problem: Rubinstein had repeatedly clashed with Jonny Ive, who had worked under Rubinstein and now reported directly to Jobs.Ive regularly pushes the limits of engineering, creating dizzying but elusive designs.Rubenstein, cautious by nature and whose job it was to build hardware in a way that worked, often rejected Ive's designs. "Then Ruby used to work at HP," Jobs said. "He never got to the bottom of it. He wasn't aggressive."

At one point, Apple needed to make screws for the Power Mac G4 to hold the handle.Ive thinks these screws should also be polished and shaped.But Rubenstein dismissed the idea, arguing that the cost of doing so would be "astronomical" and delay the project by weeks.His job is to provide products, which means he has the power to weigh decisions.Ive felt that this approach was not conducive to innovation, so he went directly to Jobs, bypassing Rubenstein, and also bypassing him to contact mid-level engineers. "Ruby would say, you can't do this, it's going to delay the schedule. I said, I think it's okay." Ive recalled, "I really knew it was okay, because I had already approached the product team behind his back." And in other incidents, Jobs sided with Ive.

At times, Ivor and Rubenstein were at odds with each other, almost fighting.In the end, Ive said to Jobs: "Pick me or him." Jobs chose Ive.By this point, Rubinstein was ready to leave.He and his wife bought a property in Mexico where he wanted to take some time off and build a home.Later, he went to work for Palm, which wanted to compete with Apple's iPhone.Jobs was outraged that Palm had hired his ex-employee and started complaining to Bono.Bono is a co-founder of a private equity group run by former Apple CFO Fred Anderson that also holds a controlling stake in Palm.Bono wrote back to Jobs: "You should calm down. You're acting like the Beatles are freaking out because Herman's Hermits took their tour crew." Jobs later admitted that he reacted over. "Their utter failure lessens the damage done by this," he said.

Jobs installed a new management team that was less controversial and more obedient.In addition to Cook and Ive, key members include: Scott Forstall, who ran the iPhone software; Phil Schiller, who ran marketing; and Bob Mansfield, who produced the iPhone software. Mac hardware; Eddie Coue, handling web services; and Peter Oppenheimer, chief financial officer.While the members of this top management team appear to be the same—all middle-aged white men—they have different styles.Ive was emotional and expressive; Cook was steely; they both knew they owed Jobs respect, but also needed to challenge his ideas and be comfortable arguing with them.It's a tricky balance to strike, but they all do a good job."I realized early on that if you don't speak up, he's going to push you away," Cook said. "He's going to take adversarial positions to spark more discussion because it might lead to a better outcome." results. So if you’re not used to opposing his ideas, you can’t stay at Apple.”

An important place for free expression is the management team meeting every Monday morning, which starts at 9 am and lasts for three to four hours.Cook would give a 10-minute diagram showing how the company was doing, followed by a broad discussion about each of the company's products.Discussions often focus on the future: what should each product do next, what new things should be developed?Jobs would use the meeting to reinforce Apple's sense of shared mission.This centralized control keeps Apple as tightly integrated as a single Apple product and prevents the inter-departmental struggles that have plagued decentralized enterprises.

Jobs also used the opportunity to emphasize the company's focus.On Robert Friedland's farm, his job was to prune apple trees so they could thrive, a move that became a metaphor for how he streamlined Apple.Instead of encouraging each team to add product lines for marketing reasons or to allow ideas to fly wild, Jobs insisted that Apple focus on two or three priority projects at a time. “No one was better at ignoring the noise around him,” Cook said. “That way, he was able to focus on a few things and say no to many others. Very few people were good at that.” In ancient Rome, when a victorious general returns home in triumph, legend has it that a servant will repeat the "warning of death" (memento mori) by his side.Meaning, remember that you will die eventually.Mortal warnings help heroes put things in perspective and develop humility.The warning of Jobs' death came from a doctor, but that didn't make him humble.On the contrary, after recovering from surgery, he yelled more passionately, fearing that he would not have much time left to complete his mission.As he said in his speech at Stanford University, the disease reminded himself that he had nothing to lose, so he should go full speed and forge ahead. "He's coming back with a mission," Cook said. "Even though he's running a big business now, he keeps making some bold moves that I don't think anyone else would do."

For a while, there were signs, or at least hopes, that Jobs's personal style had softened, with cancer and the onset of 50 making his distractions a little less rough.Tevanian recalled: "When he first came back to the company after surgery, he was completely impatient. If he was upset, he would yell at people, or curse at people in a rage, but he would not do anything to completely destroy the other person. He did that just to make the other party do better." Tevanian pondered for a moment after speaking, and then added: "Unless he thinks someone is really bad and has to leave, every time this happens It will show up in a while." But anyway, the grumpy man came back after all.Most colleagues are used to this, and they know how to deal with it.What bothered them most was that Jobs' anger annoyed strangers.“We went to Whole Foods to buy a smoothie once, and there was an older woman who made the smoothie, and Jobs complained about the way she made the smoothie, and it was annoying,” Ive recalled. “And then he felt sorry for the woman. , saying 'she's older and doesn't want to do this kind of work.' He didn't connect the two things at all, and acted like it had nothing to do with it." During a trip to London with Jobs, Ive picked out hotels, a thankless job.He settled on The Hempel, a secluded five-star boutique hotel with refined minimalism that Ive thought Jobs would like.But as soon as he checked in, Ive braced himself for Jobs' scolding, and sure enough, the phone rang a minute later. "I hate this room," Jobs said, "it's like shit, let's go." So Ive took his luggage and went to the front desk.Facing the astonished waiter, Jobs directly explained his thoughts.Ive realized that most people, including himself, if they think something is bad, usually don't say it outright, because they don't want to be disgusted. "It's really a vanity character." Explanation is too lenient.Anyway, Jobs didn't have that quality. Good natured, Ive wondered why a man whom he loved so deeply, Jobs, would behave in this way.One evening, in a bar in San Francisco, he leaned over and analyzed this point for me: When Jobs lost control, a bright colleague would often pull him aside and calm him down.Lee Crow is a master of it. "Steve, can I talk to you?" he would whisper when Jobs publicly belittled others.Crowe would walk into Jobs' office and explain to him how hard everyone worked.Once Crowe said, "When you humiliate people, you only weaken them, not motivate them." At this point, Jobs would apologize and say he understood.But after that, he was still the same. "That's how I am," he'd say. However, Jobs did mature in his attitude towards Bill Gates. In 1997, Microsoft agreed to continue to develop excellent software for the Macintosh computer, but the negotiations have been unsuccessful.In addition, Microsoft has consistently failed to replicate Apple's digital-hub strategy, which has weakened its identity as an Apple competitor.Gates and Jobs took very different approaches to products and innovation, and the rivalry between the two gave each other a surprising sense of self. At the All Things Digital conference in May 2007, Wall Street Journal columnists Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher tried to get Gates and Jobs to do a joint interview.Mossberg first invited Jobs, who didn't often attend such meetings, and surprised Mossberg by saying he would go if Gates went.After hearing about the incident, Gates also accepted the interview invitation.But a Newsweek interview with Gates nearly put the plan on hold.Gates erupted when The Weekly's reporter Stephen Levy asked about Apple's "Mac vs. PC" TV ad — a series that made fun of Windows users, portraying them as downright dumb and Macs as trendy The product. "I don't understand why they're trying to come across as superior," Gates said, growing emotional. "Isn't honesty important in these ads? Or, even if you're really cool, does that mean you can Lying all you want? There's not a shred of truth in it." Levy added fuel to the fire, asking whether the new Windows operating system, Vista, had copied many of the Mac's features. "If you really care about the facts, look it up yourself and see who showed these things first," Gates responded. "If you just want to say, 'Steve Jobs made the world, The rest of us just follow his lead', whatever you want." Jobs called Mossberg and said there was little point in having a joint interview given what Gates said in the Newsweek interview.But Mossberg managed to put things back on track.He wanted the joint evening interview to be a friendly discussion, not a debate.But Mossberg's hopes seemed dashed when Jobs lashed out at Microsoft earlier in the day in a separate interview with Mossberg."It's like pouring ice water on someone in hell," Jobs joked, referring to the popularity of Apple's iTunes software for Windows computers. Mossberg was concerned that Jobs and Gates would meet in the guest lounge before their joint interview that night.Gates arrived first with his assistant Larry Cohen, who had briefed Gates on Jobs' comments.A few minutes later, Jobs ambled in, took a bottle of water from the ice bucket, and sat down.After a moment of silence, Gates spoke without a smile on his face, "I guess I'm the man from hell." Job paused for a moment, showing his signature mischievous smile, and handed the ice water to Gates .Gates' mood eased, and the tense atmosphere was swept away. The joint interview turned out to be a fascinating conversation between the two, with two-figure geniuses talking discreetly and then passionately about each other.Most impressive of all, when technology strategist Lise Buyer in the audience asked what the two had learned from each other, they gave candid answers. "Well, I'd give up a lot to have Steve's taste," Gates replied.There was a burst of laughter at the scene, and the atmosphere was a little tense; ten years ago, Jobs once said that he was dissatisfied with Microsoft because it was completely tasteless.But Gates insisted he meant it when he said that, and that Jobs' "intuitive taste was innate, both in people and in products."He recalled sitting with Jobs, reviewing the software Microsoft was developing for the Macintosh. "Steve's ability to make decisions based on how he feels about people and products, you know, it's hard to even explain to me. The way he does things is very unusual, I think it's amazing. If that's the case, I can only Exclaimed 'wow'." Jobs stared at the floor.He later told me that he was struck by Gates' honesty and demeanor.When it came Jobs' turn to answer, he was just as honest, though not quite as personable as Gates.He described the conceptual gap between Apple and Microsoft. Apple wants to create end-to-end integrated products, while Microsoft licenses its software to competing hardware manufacturers.He pointed out that in the music market, the integrated approach is better, as evidenced by the iTunes/iPod combination, but in the PC market, Microsoft's separation policy has developed better.This statement immediately begs a potential question: In the mobile phone market, which approach is better? Then he made a brilliant point.The difference in design philosophy has made him and Apple less adept at working with other companies. "Because when Woz and I started the company, we were doing everything ourselves, so we weren't very good at collaborating with people," he said, "I think it would be great if Apple was a little more collaborative in nature. "