On this episode of Our American Stories, in honor of Apple's founding this week in history in 1976, Walter Isaacson, author of the biography on Steve Jobs, tells the story of the man who created the 21st century and shares how the glass screen on the iPhone (along with other design quirks of his products) showed his intense and unwavering idealism in creating them. We want to thank the Library of Congress for this wonderful audio.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, the story of an American innovator and an
American artist. We're talking about Steve Jobs. Here to tell
the story is Walter Isaacson, the author of the biography
(00:30):
of Steve Jobs, among so many others. We'd like to
thank the Library of Congress for allowing us to use
this audio. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
It was about eight years ago that I got a
phone call from Steve Jobs. I had known him for
the past twenty years, since nineteen eighty four when he
came to Time magazine to show off that wonderful Macintosh computer,
and even back then in nineteen eighty four, I saw
the passion for perfection and also that impatience that was
(01:03):
bred into his personality, and how those two things were connected.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
He showed off the Macintosh.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
At Time Magazine and how beautiful each icon was made
us use a jeweler's loop to look at the beauty
of the pixels, the design, that little off kilter disk
drive that made it look like a smile.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
But then he told us that our magazine stank.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Actually he used a four letter word, and he said
Newsweek was much better because we had not made him
Man of the Year.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
And I realized then that that connection of that passion
for perfection and that driving impatience were all part of
a seamless system, the way a great Apple product, from
the hardware to the software to the content, is part
of a seamless system.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
So when he called me, I was.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Just finishing up Albert Einstein, and Steve said, I want
to take a while with you, and he said, why don't.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
You do my biography next?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Now, my first thought was okay, Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, you.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
But the more I thought about it.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Here's somebody who was the American creation myth, the innovation
myth writ large and writ true, starting a company in
his parents' garage with the kid down the street and
turning it into the most valuable company in the history
of the planet, and doing so by creating great products
(02:35):
that transformed the personal computer industry, the music industry, the
publishing industry, the retail store industry, the digital animated movie industry,
phone industry, up and down the line.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
He was transformative.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
And so what I realized then, especially since he told me,
was that he stood at the intersection of beauty and technology.
Steve was somebody who really believed that beauty mattered and
that success came from making what he called in the
(03:10):
nineteen eighties an insanely great product. All of you have
been involved in business and know in creative things, know
that there's two ways of looking at a business.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Steve said, you could focus.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
On making a profit, or you could focus on making
a great product. If you focus on making a profit,
eventually you're going to cut a few corners.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
You're not gonna make the greatest product you can make.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
But if you really focus on making the greatest possible product,
the most beautiful product, eventually the profits will follow. Plus
you'll make a dent in the universe. You'll be a
real artist. You'll have made something special. I remember walking
around the neighborhood that he grew up his childhood home
(04:00):
at tract House in Los Alta's and we.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Were looking at a fence that he.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Had built with his father when Steve was about eight
years old. And Steve told me that I had to
come around and look at the back of the fence
to see how pretty it was. And he said, when
we were building the fence. My father said to me,
we have to make the back of this fence just
as beautiful as the front of the fence. And Steve said, why,
(04:30):
nobody will ever see it. Nobody will ever know.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And his father said to him, yes, but you will know,
you will care.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
And the person who has a passion for even the
parts unseen is the person who is always going to
be a good craftsman and make something right. This I
saw over and over again in Jobs's career. For example,
when they're launching the Macintos, that beautiful machine he showed
(05:01):
me in nineteen eighty four, with that wonderful sealed case,
like an appliance, beautifully designed, like a piece of art.
But before they shipped it, Steve looked at the circuit
board and he said to the engineers on the team,
this circuit board stinks.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And they said, what do you mean. He said, well,
is that beautiful? The chips aren't lined up there.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
And the engineer said, well, Steve, this is a sealed appliance.
You've made it till nobody can even open the mac.
It's a perfect appliance. Nobody will ever see the circuit board,
Nobody will ever know. And Steve said what his father
had said to him, which is yes, but you will know.
(05:48):
So they hold up shipping the Macintosh until that circuit
board has all the chips lined up beautifully and equally spaced.
And when they got it ready, Steve had them all
take a whiteboard and sign their names with Steven P.
Jobs all in lowercase in the middle, to engrave next
to the circuit board on the inside of that original
(06:10):
Macintosh case, where nobody would ever see it. Nobody would
ever know, but he said, real artists sign their work.
It was that passion for perfection that made him sometimes
a strong cup of tea, somebody hard to deal with.
Somebody could drive people crazy, drive them to distraction, but
(06:33):
also drive them to do things they didn't know that
they could do. Because when you have that passion for product,
even though you might drive people crazy, they become loyal
to you because they're inspired by your vision of making
something of beauty.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And you've been listening to Walter Isaacson, the author of
Steve Jobs All a remarkable story telling the story of
Steve Jobs, And it was his passion for perfection and
his impatience that combination were a part of a seamless system,
Isaacson described, the story of Steve Jobs continues here on
(07:17):
our American Story. This is Lee Habib, host of our
American Stories, the show where America is the star and
the American people, and we do it all from the
heart of the South Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't
(07:40):
do the show without you. Our shows will always be
free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear, consider making a tax
deductible donation to our American Stories. Go to our American
Stories dot com. Give a little, give a lot. That's
our American Stories dot com. And we returned to our
(08:10):
American Stories and with the story of Steve Jobs. The
founder of Apple Telling the story is Walter Isaacson, the
author of the official biography.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Of Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Steve could create amazing things by sheer force of will.
It started even early on when he and Wasniak were
working at Atari or Steve was working on the night
shift at Atari, and at one point they were supposed
to create a game called Breakout, which was a single
player version of Pong, and Steve says, towas you gotta
(08:46):
design the code in four days, because we have to
get back to the Apple Commune for the weekend. They
were working on an Apple Commune in Oregon, or Steve
was hence the name of the company that they would
eventually found, and says to him, I can't do this
code in four days.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Is gonna take me a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Steve Jobs had taught himself even then to stare without blinking,
and he stared at it was and kept saying, don't
be afraid you can do it.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Don't be afraid you can do.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It, said it was amazing. After a while, was said,
I went back to my little cubicle. I stayed up
four nights in a row, and I was able to
write the coding for Breakout. That reality distortion field, over
and over again, was able to help Steve push people
to distraction, push him to anger, but push him to
(09:41):
do what.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
They thought impossible.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Even with the original Macintosh, it took a long time
to boot up. It took more than seventy seconds to
boot up. It was sort of almost as slow as
a Microsoft machine. So Steve said to Larry Kenyon, the engineer,
you got take ten seconds off the boot up time.
Kenyon says, well, Steve, it's you know, elegant code. I
(10:06):
don't think I can do it. Steve said, if you
could save a human life, would you do it. Kenyon goes, well,
I guess so. So Steve goes to a whiteboard and says,
there canna be a million Macintosh is sold next year.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
They'll be booted up maybe a couple times a week.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
If you shave ten seconds off in the course of
a year, you're gonna save the equivalent of one hundred,
one hundred and thirty lifetimes.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Then he looked at Kenyon and said, don't be afraid.
You can do it.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Kenyon said, I went back, went back to work, and
within two weeks I'd shaved twenty eight seconds off the
boot up time.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Over and over again. This happens.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I'll just give you one more example, one that I love,
which is with the iPhone that you know, walking around
Georgetown day before yesterday watching the lines on Wisconsin Avenue
blocking traffic for the next iPhone. Why Because it's a beautiful,
magical piece of technology that you love. Because it's so
(11:04):
insanely well designed and beautiful. And when Steve started off,
one of the things he did want was something like
this plastic.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
On the front of the iPhone. He said he wanted.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
A really great, smooth piece of glass that was tough
but silky, and the claves in China that were making
the glass for the stores all didn't meet his standards.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
He kept saying, no, it's got to be better.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Finally, somebody said, why don't you call Corning Corning Glass
in New York, Maybe they can do it. Steve, being Steve,
picks up the phone, calls a switchboard at Corning and says,
let me speak to your CEO. Switchboard being a switchboard
said we'll take your name and number and have somebody called.
Steve slams down the phone, says typical East Coast bull
and eventually the head of Corning here's the story, smart guy.
(11:55):
He calls the switchboard at Coopertino at Apple, says, let
me speak to your CEO. They say, put your request
in writing and facts it to us. Steve hears about
it and says that guy's cool, and they finally have
a meeting. So Steve meets with the head of Corning
Glass and says, here's what we need. This type of
glass really smooth. The head of Corning says, well, years
(12:17):
ago we developed a process, an ion transfer process that
would make a glass like that, and we called it
gorilla glass, but we never manufactured it. And Steve went
through the process with him, and Steve said, that's what
I want.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I need it.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I need this much by September. We're shipping the phone
this October. And so the head of corning said, well,
I just told you we've actually never.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Made that glass before. Now this is thirty years to.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
The month almost that he did it to Wasniak. I
remember sitting. I went up to Corner Glass, sat with
Wendel Weeks, a wonderful CEO there, and Wendell just Weeks
just told.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Me the story. He said, it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
The guy sat right across from me and stared at
me without blinking, and he said, don't be afraid.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
You can do it eventually, you know. After the meeting,
Weeks picked up.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
The phone and called a plant manager of a corning
plant near Lexington, Kentucky, a plant manager he liked, and said,
I want you to start right away, shifting from making
flat screen TV glass to gorilla glass. Of course, the
plant manager said, well, we don't have that. And basically
when the weeks said to him, he said, I just said,
(13:32):
don't be afraid, you can do it. The upshot is,
that's why every piece of glass on every iPhone that year,
and every piece of glass on every iPhone in your
pocket and iPad is made by Corning Glass. Because Steve
had a reality distortion field and got people to do
things like that. He also had a passion for beauty,
(13:55):
and for him, simplicity was the ultimates official thecation, which
was a phrase they used on the first Apple marketing
brochure that, as Einstein would say, simplicity is the key
to understanding the way the Good Lord created the universe.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
He believed in.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Simplicity as beauty, just as Newton did, just as Kepler did,
just as all great people who try to understand the universe.
They understand that simplicity is a way of saying, we
have not just eliminated stuff. We have gotten to the
essence and we understand it and we can really feel.
(14:42):
Whether it's what a screw does in a particular computer
or the way Maxwell's equations deal with the speed of light,
there's a true simplicity that is integral, at least in
Steve's mind.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
To beauty.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
For example, when he's creating the iPod, what he had
done over and over again was not invent totally new things.
I can remember having an MP three music player before
the iPod. But they were brain dead, they were junkie.
They were horrible. You couldn't figure out how do I
put songs in? How do I make a playlist? How
do I get to the song? You know the interface?
(15:17):
How do I get to the song I want? Steve said,
make it simple. He said, just this simple, A thousand
songs in your pocket, three clicks to get to any song,
and they said okay, okay. He said, no manual, no instructions,
three clicks. So they would show them the different interfaces
they were coming up with and it would have the
(15:38):
different ways. Said well, I can't get to it in
three clicks, and he'd say not good enough. They said, well,
we need a screen for the title, and we need
a screen for the artist and for the hour. He said, no, no,
you don't need all that three clicks any song. And
finally they come up with this absolutely beautiful intuitive design,
which is that scroll will you get to any song
(15:59):
you wanted? Has just growed longer and went down faster.
It was all simple and intuitive, and he loves it.
But he looks at it and there's a big old
button on top, and he says, what the is this?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I'll leave out the middle word.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
They're a little bit scared to answer, but at at
one point somebody finally says, Steve, that's the on off button.
Steve nods and says, what the does it do? Now
they're a little scared because they know he knows what
it does. They finally say, Steve, it turns it on
and off. And then he says, why the.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
We need it?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
And it slowly dawns on him. You don't need that
big old button. If you quit using your iPod, it
powers down. If you start using it again, it knows
to power itself back up. You know, you don't need
a big old button to junk it up to go
on off.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
So they take it.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Off, and it was that's the sort of understanding of
the beauty and the essence of simplicity.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And you've been listening to Walter Isaacson telling the story
of Steve Jobs, and he's also the author of the
official biography of Jobs as well. He could create amazing
things from sheer force of will Isaacson told us, and
created a reality distortion field that drove his engineers to
(17:25):
do hard and even unimaginable things. Don't be afraid, he'd
say to them, after a vulcan stare, you can do it.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
And he did this to strangers.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
He did this to the CEO of Corning, he did
it to everybody. And then that passion for beauty, simplicity
was the ultimate sophistication to Jobs. He believed in simplicity
as beauty. The story of Steve Jobs here on our
American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, the story of an American innovator and an
American artist. We're talking about Steve Jobs. Here to tell
the story is Walter Isaacson, the author of the biography
(00:30):
of Steve Jobs, among so many others. We'd like to
thank the Library of Congress for allowing us to use
this audio. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
It was about eight years ago that I got a
phone call from Steve Jobs. I had known him for
the past twenty years, since nineteen eighty four when he
came to Time magazine to show off that wonderful Macintosh computer,
and even back then in nineteen eighty four, I saw
the passion for perfection and also that impatience that was
(01:03):
bred into his personality, and how those two things were connected.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
He showed off the Macintosh.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
At Time Magazine and how beautiful each icon was made
us use a jeweler's loop to look at the beauty
of the pixels, the design, that little off kilter disk
drive that made it look like a smile.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
But then he told us that our magazine stank.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Actually he used a four letter word, and he said
Newsweek was much better because we had not made him
Man of the Year.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
And I realized then that that connection of that passion
for perfection and that driving impatience were all part of
a seamless system, the way a great Apple product, from
the hardware to the software to the content, is part
of a seamless system.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
So when he called me, I was.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Just finishing up Albert Einstein, and Steve said, I want
to take a while with you, and he said, why don't.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
You do my biography next?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Now, my first thought was okay, Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, you.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
But the more I thought about it.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Here's somebody who was the American creation myth, the innovation
myth writ large and writ true, starting a company in
his parents' garage with the kid down the street and
turning it into the most valuable company in the history
of the planet, and doing so by creating great products
(02:35):
that transformed the personal computer industry, the music industry, the
publishing industry, the retail store industry, the digital animated movie industry,
phone industry, up and down the line.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
He was transformative.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
And so what I realized then, especially since he told me,
was that he stood at the intersection of beauty and technology.
Steve was somebody who really believed that beauty mattered and
that success came from making what he called in the
(03:10):
nineteen eighties an insanely great product. All of you have
been involved in business and know in creative things, know
that there's two ways of looking at a business.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Steve said, you could focus.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
On making a profit, or you could focus on making
a great product. If you focus on making a profit,
eventually you're going to cut a few corners.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
You're not gonna make the greatest product you can make.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
But if you really focus on making the greatest possible product,
the most beautiful product, eventually the profits will follow. Plus
you'll make a dent in the universe. You'll be a
real artist. You'll have made something special. I remember walking
around the neighborhood that he grew up his childhood home
(04:00):
at tract House in Los Alta's and we.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Were looking at a fence that he.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Had built with his father when Steve was about eight
years old. And Steve told me that I had to
come around and look at the back of the fence
to see how pretty it was. And he said, when
we were building the fence. My father said to me,
we have to make the back of this fence just
as beautiful as the front of the fence. And Steve said, why,
(04:30):
nobody will ever see it. Nobody will ever know.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And his father said to him, yes, but you will know,
you will care.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
And the person who has a passion for even the
parts unseen is the person who is always going to
be a good craftsman and make something right. This I
saw over and over again in Jobs's career. For example,
when they're launching the Macintos, that beautiful machine he showed
(05:01):
me in nineteen eighty four, with that wonderful sealed case,
like an appliance, beautifully designed, like a piece of art.
But before they shipped it, Steve looked at the circuit
board and he said to the engineers on the team,
this circuit board stinks.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And they said, what do you mean. He said, well,
is that beautiful? The chips aren't lined up there.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
And the engineer said, well, Steve, this is a sealed appliance.
You've made it till nobody can even open the mac.
It's a perfect appliance. Nobody will ever see the circuit board,
Nobody will ever know. And Steve said what his father
had said to him, which is yes, but you will know.
(05:48):
So they hold up shipping the Macintosh until that circuit
board has all the chips lined up beautifully and equally spaced.
And when they got it ready, Steve had them all
take a whiteboard and sign their names with Steven P.
Jobs all in lowercase in the middle, to engrave next
to the circuit board on the inside of that original
(06:10):
Macintosh case, where nobody would ever see it. Nobody would
ever know, but he said, real artists sign their work.
It was that passion for perfection that made him sometimes
a strong cup of tea, somebody hard to deal with.
Somebody could drive people crazy, drive them to distraction, but
(06:33):
also drive them to do things they didn't know that
they could do. Because when you have that passion for product,
even though you might drive people crazy, they become loyal
to you because they're inspired by your vision of making
something of beauty.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And you've been listening to Walter Isaacson, the author of
Steve Jobs All a remarkable story telling the story of
Steve Jobs, And it was his passion for perfection and
his impatience that combination were a part of a seamless system,
Isaacson described, the story of Steve Jobs continues here on
(07:17):
our American Story. This is Lee Habib, host of our
American Stories, the show where America is the star and
the American people, and we do it all from the
heart of the South Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't
(07:40):
do the show without you. Our shows will always be
free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear, consider making a tax
deductible donation to our American Stories. Go to our American
Stories dot com. Give a little, give a lot. That's
our American Stories dot com. And we returned to our
(08:10):
American Stories and with the story of Steve Jobs. The
founder of Apple Telling the story is Walter Isaacson, the
author of the official biography.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Of Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Steve could create amazing things by sheer force of will.
It started even early on when he and Wasniak were
working at Atari or Steve was working on the night
shift at Atari, and at one point they were supposed
to create a game called Breakout, which was a single
player version of Pong, and Steve says, towas you gotta
(08:46):
design the code in four days, because we have to
get back to the Apple Commune for the weekend. They
were working on an Apple Commune in Oregon, or Steve
was hence the name of the company that they would
eventually found, and says to him, I can't do this
code in four days.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Is gonna take me a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Steve Jobs had taught himself even then to stare without blinking,
and he stared at it was and kept saying, don't
be afraid you can do it.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Don't be afraid you can do.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It, said it was amazing. After a while, was said,
I went back to my little cubicle. I stayed up
four nights in a row, and I was able to
write the coding for Breakout. That reality distortion field, over
and over again, was able to help Steve push people
to distraction, push him to anger, but push him to
(09:41):
do what.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
They thought impossible.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Even with the original Macintosh, it took a long time
to boot up. It took more than seventy seconds to
boot up. It was sort of almost as slow as
a Microsoft machine. So Steve said to Larry Kenyon, the engineer,
you got take ten seconds off the boot up time.
Kenyon says, well, Steve, it's you know, elegant code. I
(10:06):
don't think I can do it. Steve said, if you
could save a human life, would you do it. Kenyon goes, well,
I guess so. So Steve goes to a whiteboard and says,
there canna be a million Macintosh is sold next year.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
They'll be booted up maybe a couple times a week.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
If you shave ten seconds off in the course of
a year, you're gonna save the equivalent of one hundred,
one hundred and thirty lifetimes.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Then he looked at Kenyon and said, don't be afraid.
You can do it.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Kenyon said, I went back, went back to work, and
within two weeks I'd shaved twenty eight seconds off the
boot up time.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Over and over again. This happens.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I'll just give you one more example, one that I love,
which is with the iPhone that you know, walking around
Georgetown day before yesterday watching the lines on Wisconsin Avenue
blocking traffic for the next iPhone. Why Because it's a beautiful,
magical piece of technology that you love. Because it's so
(11:04):
insanely well designed and beautiful. And when Steve started off,
one of the things he did want was something like
this plastic.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
On the front of the iPhone. He said he wanted.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
A really great, smooth piece of glass that was tough
but silky, and the claves in China that were making
the glass for the stores all didn't meet his standards.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
He kept saying, no, it's got to be better.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Finally, somebody said, why don't you call Corning Corning Glass
in New York, Maybe they can do it. Steve, being Steve,
picks up the phone, calls a switchboard at Corning and says,
let me speak to your CEO. Switchboard being a switchboard
said we'll take your name and number and have somebody called.
Steve slams down the phone, says typical East Coast bull
and eventually the head of Corning here's the story, smart guy.
(11:55):
He calls the switchboard at Coopertino at Apple, says, let
me speak to your CEO. They say, put your request
in writing and facts it to us. Steve hears about
it and says that guy's cool, and they finally have
a meeting. So Steve meets with the head of Corning
Glass and says, here's what we need. This type of
glass really smooth. The head of Corning says, well, years
(12:17):
ago we developed a process, an ion transfer process that
would make a glass like that, and we called it
gorilla glass, but we never manufactured it. And Steve went
through the process with him, and Steve said, that's what
I want.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I need it.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I need this much by September. We're shipping the phone
this October. And so the head of corning said, well,
I just told you we've actually never.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Made that glass before. Now this is thirty years to.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
The month almost that he did it to Wasniak. I
remember sitting. I went up to Corner Glass, sat with
Wendel Weeks, a wonderful CEO there, and Wendell just Weeks
just told.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Me the story. He said, it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
The guy sat right across from me and stared at
me without blinking, and he said, don't be afraid.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
You can do it eventually, you know. After the meeting,
Weeks picked up.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
The phone and called a plant manager of a corning
plant near Lexington, Kentucky, a plant manager he liked, and said,
I want you to start right away, shifting from making
flat screen TV glass to gorilla glass. Of course, the
plant manager said, well, we don't have that. And basically
when the weeks said to him, he said, I just said,
(13:32):
don't be afraid, you can do it. The upshot is,
that's why every piece of glass on every iPhone that year,
and every piece of glass on every iPhone in your
pocket and iPad is made by Corning Glass. Because Steve
had a reality distortion field and got people to do
things like that. He also had a passion for beauty,
(13:55):
and for him, simplicity was the ultimates official thecation, which
was a phrase they used on the first Apple marketing
brochure that, as Einstein would say, simplicity is the key
to understanding the way the Good Lord created the universe.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
He believed in.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Simplicity as beauty, just as Newton did, just as Kepler did,
just as all great people who try to understand the universe.
They understand that simplicity is a way of saying, we
have not just eliminated stuff. We have gotten to the
essence and we understand it and we can really feel.
(14:42):
Whether it's what a screw does in a particular computer
or the way Maxwell's equations deal with the speed of light,
there's a true simplicity that is integral, at least in
Steve's mind.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
To beauty.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
For example, when he's creating the iPod, what he had
done over and over again was not invent totally new things.
I can remember having an MP three music player before
the iPod. But they were brain dead, they were junkie.
They were horrible. You couldn't figure out how do I
put songs in? How do I make a playlist? How
do I get to the song? You know the interface?
(15:17):
How do I get to the song I want? Steve said,
make it simple. He said, just this simple, A thousand
songs in your pocket, three clicks to get to any song,
and they said okay, okay. He said, no manual, no instructions,
three clicks. So they would show them the different interfaces
they were coming up with and it would have the
(15:38):
different ways. Said well, I can't get to it in
three clicks, and he'd say not good enough. They said, well,
we need a screen for the title, and we need
a screen for the artist and for the hour. He said, no, no,
you don't need all that three clicks any song. And
finally they come up with this absolutely beautiful intuitive design,
which is that scroll will you get to any song
(15:59):
you wanted? Has just growed longer and went down faster.
It was all simple and intuitive, and he loves it.
But he looks at it and there's a big old
button on top, and he says, what the is this?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I'll leave out the middle word.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
They're a little bit scared to answer, but at at
one point somebody finally says, Steve, that's the on off button.
Steve nods and says, what the does it do? Now
they're a little scared because they know he knows what
it does. They finally say, Steve, it turns it on
and off. And then he says, why the.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
We need it?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
And it slowly dawns on him. You don't need that
big old button. If you quit using your iPod, it
powers down. If you start using it again, it knows
to power itself back up. You know, you don't need
a big old button to junk it up to go
on off.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
So they take it.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Off, and it was that's the sort of understanding of
the beauty and the essence of simplicity.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And you've been listening to Walter Isaacson telling the story
of Steve Jobs, and he's also the author of the
official biography of Jobs as well. He could create amazing
things from sheer force of will Isaacson told us, and
created a reality distortion field that drove his engineers to
(17:25):
do hard and even unimaginable things. Don't be afraid, he'd
say to them, after a vulcan stare, you can do it.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
And he did this to strangers.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
He did this to the CEO of Corning, he did
it to everybody. And then that passion for beauty, simplicity
was the ultimate sophistication to Jobs. He believed in simplicity
as beauty. The story of Steve Jobs here on our
American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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