The Evolution of a CEO

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1979. The two had founded Apple four years earlier, and the company was growing like crazy. But the best years of their collaboration were already over. Ted Thai/Polaris

A 1979 gathering of the Seva Foundation, which Steve backed with a $5,000 donation. His close friend Larry Brilliant is at the center with his baby boy, Joseph; Brilliant’s wife, Girija, is to the right, arms crossed and leaning back. Dr. Venkataswamy, the Indian opthamologist whose anti-blindness operations were funded by the group, stands to the left of Wavy Gravy, sitting and wearing the propeller hat. Ram Dass, author of the bestseller Be Here Now, is squatting at the far left. Courtesy of the Seva Foundation

Lee Clow, here with Steve at an advertising industry awards show that honored their triumphant “1984” Super Bowl ad introducing the Mac, was one of Steve’s closest colleagues. Steve thought Chiat\Day’s creative leader was a true genius. Courtesy of Lee Clow

Regis McKenna was Steve’s most important early mentor. The marketing wizard helped craft Apple’s indelible image. © Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis

The renegades who left Apple to start NeXT Computer: (back row) Rich Page, Steve, and George Crow; (front row) Dan’l Lewin, Bud Tribble, and Susan Barnes. “I definitely thought about the risk of going to work for him and leaving my job at Apple,” says Lewin. “But I worried that if I didn’t go to NeXT, I would have always said, ‘Dammit, I should have gone along for the ride.’ ” © Ed Kashi/VII/Corbis

Avie Tevanian joined NeXT out of Carnegie Mellon University and worked for Steve for sixteen years, there and at Apple. At a party honoring him for his promotion to Chief Software Technical Officer in 2003, he was given a set of framed CDs of various pieces of software he had masterminded. Three years later, he left Apple. Courtesy of Wen-Yu Chang

Jon Rubinstein, known as “Ruby,” also worked for Steve at NeXT and at Apple, overseeing hardware design and manufacture. Ruby was instrumental in helping Apple develop a faster metabolism for coming up with great new devices year after year. He and Steve celebrated at his 2001 wedding, which took place just ten days before the introduction of the iPod. Courtesy of Jon Rubinstein

Just a week before Steve’s death, Eddy Cue helped introduce the iPhone 4S at an event on the Apple campus. “What I loved about working for Steve,” says Cue, “is that you learned that you could accomplish the impossible. Again and again.” Courtesy of Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Katie Cotton, Apple’s longtime head of communications, coordinated the strategy of making Steve available to only a few select outlets and writers. Courtesy of Brent Schlender

In 2007, Steve visited a class taught by Andy Grove at Stanford University. Grove, the former CEO of Intel, was an important behind-the-scenes advisor. When Steve called in 1997 to ask if he should take the job as interim CEO of Apple, Grove growled, “Steve, I don’t give a shit about Apple.” Courtesy of Denise Amantea

Steve would lunch three or four times a week with his most important collaborator, Jony Ive. The design chief was on the CEO’s wavelength, and Steve knew from the moment he met Jony that he was “a keeper.” © Art Streiber/AUGUST

At the Academy Awards in 2005, the Incredibles gang from Pixar paused for a photo on the red carpet. John Lasseter is front and center, flanked by his wife, Nancy, and Steve’s wife, Laurene. Director Brad Bird is at the far right, with his wife, Elizabeth Canney. Steve is in the back, with the goofy grin.

Watching Pixar president Ed Catmull, Steve absorbed a series of lessons about managing a creative corporation that became the foundation of his moderated behavior upon his return to Apple. © Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis

In 2004, Steve swore he would never sell Pixar to Disney. But then Disney replaced Michael Eisner with a new CEO, Bob Iger. Iger, at right in 2005 when he and Steve announced that ABC programming would be available on the iTunes store for Apple’s video iPods, worked slowly and carefully to wipe away years of mistrust between Disney and Pixar. He and Jobs eventually became close friends. Disney acquired Pixar in 2006. Courtesy of the Walt Disney Company

Tim Cook joined Apple in 1998, and eventually succeeded Steve as CEO. A quiet and intense Southerner, Cook became Steve’s go-to guy for any particularly gnarly situation, and the two developed a keen friendship. Once, Steve called Cook’s mother to encourage her to convince her son to start a family. © Kimberly White/Corbis

Steve’s presentations were always carefully choreographed, none more so than the 2010 event where he introduced the iPad. The homey set conveyed the sense of how simple and intimate the device was supposed to be, but the leather loveseat was also a concession to Steve’s frail health. © Kimberly White/Corbis

Chapter 6

Bill Gates Pays a Visit

In the early afternoon of July 21, 1991, five people converged on Steve Jobs’s house in Palo Alto. It was an unusually warm summer Sunday; the temperature had soared well into the nineties, and judging from the stuffy atmosphere inside, it didn’t seem that Steve had gotten around to turning on the air-conditioning. He had dashed back from a weekend Yosemite getaway with Laurene at the Ahwahnee lodge, the same rustic inn where the two had been married a few months prior.

Steve had only recently purchased the house. Neither he nor Laurene was interested in raising a family in a rambling, crumbling mansion isolated in the hills of Woodside. They wanted their children to grow up in a more central location, and Old Palo Alto, as the neighborhood was known, was quiet, shady, and within walking distance of schools and downtown. Also, Steve’s first child, Lisa—now a teenager—lived nearby with her mother. The house featured enormous wooden beams that had been used as forms for concrete work on the Golden Gate Bridge, yet it was anything but ostentatious, at least by Bay Area standards. (John Lasseter puckishly calls it the “Hansel and Gretel” house.) Steve would call this home for the rest of his life.