Goodbye, Steve, Thousands March & GET OUT OF LIBYA!

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Thousands march in support of Occupy Wall Street!

Professor Juan Cole adds to the Jobs file that we all know some part of from our own experience and/or research. I remember noting that he had had many failures throughout his career, but he never stopped trying to find the right calculus that would ultimately produce a product that would be both useful and cool to millions of eager users. It's a mistake to forget that his long-time friend Steve Wozniak actually did almost all of the heavy-duty computer designing, and Jobs supposedly ripped-off Woz when they were doing one of their first gaming projects at Atari. His success after buying the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd., which was spun off as Pixar Animation Studios, may have been his boldest experimental move and his most lucrative.
 
I also used to wonder about Jobs being reported as discovering and embracing Zen during his trip to India; from my own life experiences and research I would have thought he'd have come back more acquainted with Hinduism than with Zen, which traveled from India many hundreds of years ago and relocated itself in China. I also remember that Jobs got an inside look at the Xerox PARC facility's icons (graphical user interface (GUI)) and "mice," which were just then being developed, when he was a high school student as an intern at Hewlett-Packard, which monumentally influenced his later choices when he was contemplating decisions about the future of computer usage.

Steve Jobs was an original. As an American boy, who was the son of a Syrian Muslim father and an Armenian stepmother (among others), he was encouraged by his parents to find his own path, and he did so well at it that he helped us find ours. In my opinion, he was a marketing rather than a design genius.

Jobs was the biological son of Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali (a Syrian Muslim then graduate student in political science from Homs, which is now in revolt against the Baathist regime). That is, like Barack Obama, Jobs was the son of a Muslim.

Simpson, young and unmarried, gave Jobs up for adoption, but she and Jandali later wed and gave Jobs a sister. He never appears to have met his father, a political scientist who later went into the casino business, but he did get to know his biological sister Mona. That is, Jobs’s childhood was wrought up with a) Muslim immigration to the United States and b) the sexual revolution, both phenomena of the 1950s that accelerated in subsequent decades. Of course, these two parts of his heritage had only an indirect impact on him.

His adoptive parents were Paul Jobs and Clara Hagopian Jobs (his adoptive mother would therefore be of Armenian heritage.)

Jobs dropped out of college, gathered Coca-Cola bottles to turn them in for money, got free meals from the Krishna Consciousness Society (“Hare Krishnas”), and later made a trip to India, where he converted to Buddhism.

I’d be interested to know how that happened. There is very little Buddhism in India. Tibetan Buddhists have centers in places like Varanasi (Banares) in North India, because these monks are political or cultural exiles from Communist China. The Dalits or ‘untouchables’ of western Indian have had a conversion movement to Buddhism. Jobs is said to have gone with a college buddy to see a Hindu guru devoted to the monkey-god, Hanuman. I really wonder whether the Buddhism was not encountered in the US rather than in India, though the trip to India may have influenced his decision.

In the same period, he was doing psychedelic drugs like LSD, which he later said were very important to his creative vision.

So the whole world made Jobs, and he remade the world. Homs in Syria is the city of his biological paternal forebears. It produced scientists and historians. Hilal al-Himsi, who died in the 9th century, translated from Greek into Arabic the first four books of Apollonius’s work on the geometry of cones.

Indic spiritual traditions were important to Jobs, especially Buddhism. The quest for states of altered consciousness, which characterized some in my generation, was central to his creative vision.

The DOS operating system was something that only an engineer could love, a set of odd commands entered on a blinking line against a black backdrop. Jobs preferred icons, and changed computing forever. He, at least, was convinced that without the liberal social and spiritual experimentation of his youth, his creative vision would not have been the same.

Buddhist Mandala

iPhone 4

The conservative backlash of the past 30 years has put hundreds of thousands of people behind bars for drug use (though not for alcohol use, the licit dangerous drug), and Rick Perry’s insistence that the US is a Christian nation is an attempt to erase the Steve Jobses from American history. Herman Cain’s Islamophobia is an attempt to exclude people like Jobs’s biological father from American legitimacy. But you can’t take a Muslim Arab immigrant, a Hindu guru, Buddhist monks, and some little pills out of this great American success story without making nonsense of it.

Multiculturalism and cultural and religious experimentation, not fundamentalism and racism, are what make America great. Jobs showed that they are not incompatible with that other American icon, business success. Contemporary conservatism has given us over-paid and under-regulated financiers who add no real value to anything, unlike Jobs. If the Perrys ever do succeed in remaking the US in their own image, it will be a much reduced, crippled America that can no longer lead the world in creative innovation.

Gizmodo tells a slightly different tale (highlighting a contrastive view of Jobs' technical expertise and personal and business ethics).

Jobs presents the famous "1984" ad, directed by Ridley Scott (of Blade Runner), to the board. They absolutely hate it and vote to sell back the Super Bowl air time they'd bought (which cost more than the commercial's production costs of $750K). They couldn't sell the space, and they decided to run the ad, which pictured a dystopian world like that in Orwell's novel, implicitly run by IBM and shattered by the coming arrival of the new Mac. The ad went on to win awards. Jobs said, "Luck is a force of nature...Using the 1984 theme was such an obvious idea that I worried that someone else would beat us to it, but nobody did."

The Mac launches on January 24th. Jobs wore a polka dot bow tie and recited Bob Dylan lyrics from "The Times They Are A-Changin'." Then he unveiled the Mac, which began to speak using a voice synthesis program: "Hello, I am Macintosh", finishing with, "So it is with considerable pride that I introduce the man who's been like a father to me, Steve Jobs."

The Apple III, meant to replace the Apple II, is discontinued on the same day Jobs announces the Apple IIc, a compact version of the II meant to feel more appliance like, to Jobs' insistence. The celebration, called "Apple II Forever," was interrupted by a 6.2 richter scale earthquake in San Francisco.

1984 Part 2

The Mac initially sells well, but starts to falter in sales because of word of its bugginess and lack of competitive functionality. Programmers joke about the need to continuously swap disks for programs and saving files; they called it the "Disk Swap Olympics" or the resulting injury "Disk Swapper's Elbow." Microsoft's three programs, Paint, Word and Write, were some of the rare applications available. People start to blame Jobs for not doing any market testing beyond what he would want.

Jobs gains control of the Lisa team again and berates them as having "fucked up" in front of the newly combined Mac/Lisa team.

Jobs' Mac development team starts to discover that they, slaving under the motto of "working 90 hours a week and loving it" were grossly underpaid compared to the Lisa team's staff, and even compared to the junior engineers on the Mac team. Many feel betrayed by Jobs. Bonuses helped alleviate morale problems, but then the profitable Apple II team became resentful of the Mac team's privileges.

Jobs stars as President Roosevelt in a war-themed "1984" ad parody called "1944," where Macs waged war on IBM computers. It costs $50k to develop and is shown off to the international sales team at the annual meeting in Waikiki, HI. "IBM wants to wipe us off the face of the earth," said Jobs to Fortune magazine.
Vietnam Vet memorial artist Maya Lin is Steve's most recent flame.

Jobs buys Jackling House, a 1926 Woodside CA mansion, built for mining and metallurgical engineer Daniel Cowam Jackling in 1926 by famous architect George Washington Smith. Jobs lived in the 17,000-square-foot house for another 10 years, hardly furnishing it. He rented it out for a time after that.

1985

Jobs and Woz receive the first National Medal of Technology from Ronald Reagan.

Around this time, either before or after it, Jobs discovers that Woz has resigned. Woz would eventually going back to college under an alias, Rocky Clark. He earned a CS/EE bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley.

Ella Fitzgerald sings at Jobs' 30th birthday party at the St. Francis hotel in San Francisco, a black-tie dinner dance.

Jobs visits nerd and supermodel Bo Derek to convert her to a Mac user. She was unimpressed with both Jobs and the Mac.

Jobs says in a Playboy magazine interview that he was not happy that he learned, from a video tape he was not supposed to see, that every US nuke operated out of Europe was being aimed using an Apple II.

Apple executives start blaming him for the miscalculated forecasting of Mac sales and start to build up resentment of his management style. Mike Murray, Jobs' lieutenant in marketing, writes a memo summarizing the problems that Apple has, laying much blame on Steve Jobs. He shows it to Steve first and his reality distortion field begins to deflate. The board and Scully strip Jobs of his control of the Mac group and the Lisa product line is killed.

Scully is tipped off by a VP that Jobs will try to unseat him while Scully attends a a trip to China. When confronted, Jobs says, "I think you're bad for Apple and I think you're the wrong person to run this company." Scully calls an emergency meeting for the next morning. "I'm running this company, Steve, and I want you out for good. Now!" Scully made each man in the room pledge their alliance to Jobs or Scully. Jobs is quiet the entire time. Jobs goes to assure Scully again that he'd respect his leadership, but Jobs is plotting a final coup attempt behind his back. Tuesday evening, May 28th 1985, Jobs is stripped of all duties, but remains the chairman of the board. Friends worry he'll kill himself.

1985 Part 2

Jobs wanders for a bit; he tries to get NASA to let him ride the Space Shuttle, thinks about entering politics and learns about biotechnology. And then he recognizes that he loves creating innovative products and begins plotting a new venture. He informs Apple of his new venture, and his willingness to resign from the board. Apple considers keeping him on and investing in the new company, but realize that he's taking key Apple technologists with him and Jobs ends up resigning entirely from the company.

He resigns at sunset, by handing a letter to Mike Murray on his front lawn, with press in attendance. Dramatically, he told the press, "If Apple becomes a place where computers are a commodity item, where the romance is gone, and where people forget that computers are the most incredible invention that man has ever invented, I'll feel I have lost Apple." "But if I'm a million miles away, and all those people still feel those things...then I will feel that my genes are still there."

Jobs sells almost all his Apple stock, over 4 million shares ($11m), citing a lack of confidence in Apple's managment. He retains one. Some say for sentimental reasons, some say so he still receives quarterly reports.

Apple sues Jobs for using company research to launch a new company. Jobs responds, "It's hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300 plus people couldn't compete with six people in blue jeans." The suit is dismissed before it could go to court.

Microsoft launches Windows 1.0, aping the look and feel of early Mac OS GUIs (which aped Xerox GUIs).

Scully allows Gates to use Mac tech in Windows if Microsoft would hold off on selling a Windows version of Excel, allowing Apple to get a foothold in the business market.

Jobs names his company NeXT. Their first project would be a workstation for higher education, inspired by his interest in biotech, that would be cheap enough for students, but powerful enough to run wet lab simulations. A Businessweek cover story at the time featured a quote by Andrea Cunningham, an ex publicist for NeXT, "Part of Steve wanted to prove to others and to himself that Apple wasn't just luck... He wanted to prove that Sculley should never have let him go.''
Sometime during this year, Apple discontinues the Lisa.

1986

Jobs spends $100K to have designer Paul Rand, creator of the IBM logo, among others, to create a brand identity for NeXT, including a logo.

Around this time, Jobs has begun to build his relationship with his daughter, Lisa, who is about 7.

Jobs finishes his sell-off of Apple stock.

Jobs buys Pixar out of Lucasfilm's computer graphics group for a discounted price of $10m — $5m of which will be used for operations — so that Lucas could finance his divorce without selling Star Wars stock. Jobs is quoted as saying, "If I knew in 1986 how much it was going to cost to keep Pixar going, I doubt I would have bought the company."

1987

Ross Perot saw Jobs on TV, called him, and offered to be an investor. Jobs waited a week to play it cool. Perot gained 16% share of NeXT by investing $20m.

Jobs, sometime in his thirties, learns of his birth parents: Joanne Carole Schieble, a speech therapist, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian political science professor.

He also finds out that they have a daughter — his birth sister — Mona Simpson, who is a novelist.

Mona, brings Jobs to a book party for her new novel, Anywhere But Here, revealing their relationship as siblings to those who attended the party. Some believe Jobs was the base from which Mona created her main character in a later book, A Regular Guy. Mona Simpson's husband, Richard Appel, was a writer for The Simpsons, and he named Marge's mother after his wife. His interactions with her, and upon learning how similar they were, impacted Steve Jobs. Steve Lohr wrote for the NY Times, "The effect of all this on Jobs seems to be a certain sense of calming fatalism — less urgency to control his immediate environment and a greater trust that life's outcomes are, to a certain degree, wired in the genes." Just years earlier, Jobs was firm on most of his character having been formed from his experiences, not his birth parents or genetics.

NeXT's robotic factory opens in Fremont, not to control labor costs but to use lasers to more accurately solder circuits for improved quality.

1988

Windows starts looking uncannily like Mac OS. Apple sues Microsoft for copying their GUI, claiming the earlier agreement to use Mac tech in Windows only extended itself only to Windows 1.0.

Jobs sells King Juan Carlos I of Spain a NeXT computer at a party, before it's even been released.

In October, the NeXT computer, nicknamed the Cube, was unveiled in a symphony hall, to show off the machine's stereo sound processing. The magnesium-cased machine had an ethernet port and inline graphics and audio in email (rare at the time), and a 17-inch black-and-white monitor. Most universities preferred color screens for workstations by this time. It also had a magnetic-optical disc that was a bit too slow and expensive. Frogdesign's Esslinger works on the ID, but only on the terms that he has free reign.

The PR machine tells the press that Steve's mellowed out a bit, and gained some self awareness. One ex employee told an opposing story that ''everyone would put in their one vote. Then Steve would put in his 70 votes.''

Steve did change, though. One example is of the unusual pay scheme at NeXT. Up till the early '90s, there were only two tiers of pay, $50K and $75K, based on how early you started in the company. Pay day came once a month and the check was for the upcoming 4 weeks. Seniors who joined with NeXT were given 2% in company stock. The even handedness stood in stark contrast with the chaotic pay and reward schemes found early at Apple.

At a dinner with important representatives from universities, the major target buyers of NeXT machines, the staff neglected to prepare a vegetarian dish for Jobs. He canceled the entire entree portion of the meal for the room, leaving a room full of potential customers hungry.

1989

Apple is sued by the Beatles' Apple Corp. Steve's a big Beatles fan, once even saying his model for business is the same as that the Beatles have, the sum of the parts being greater than the individuals involved.

Apple is sued by Xerox for the GUI.

The NeXT cube starts shipping to customers. When asked about the ship date's delay, Jobs responds that the computer is still five years ahead of its time, regardless.

In 1989, the last 2700 Lisa computers would be quietly dumped in a landfill in Logan, Utah, so Apple could collect a tax writeoff.

Mac Portable comes out.

1990

About this time, Jobs meets Laurene Powell, when he speaks at a class at Stanford business school. They exchange numbers. Jobs had a business dinner that night. ''I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman? I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we've been together ever since.''

1991-1992

The PowerBook comes out.

Steven Jobs and Laurene Powell are married at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park, on March 18th in a ceremony held by Buddhist monk Kobin Chino. Their first child, Reed Paul Smith is born later that year, named after Reed college and Jobs' father.

Around this time, daughter Lisa starts living with Jobs and continues to through her teenage years.

1993

The Newton Message Pad comes out.

The Macintosh TV comes out.

John Scully ousted by the board in June, replaced by Apple Europe head Michael Spindler.

After selling only 50,000 of their machines, NeXT exits the hardware game, focusing solely on software. They work on porting the NeXTSTEP OS to 486 intel processors.

1994

PowerMac 6100/60 comes out.

QuickTake Camera comes out.

1995

Jobs and his best friend Larry Ellison, of Oracle, are on vacation in Hawaii and they discuss the possibility of a hostile takeover of Apple while walking on the beach. They'd arranged for $3m in financing and to have Jobs take the helm. "We came very, very close to doing it,'' Ellison says to the NY Times, ''Steve is the one who decided against it.'' ''I decided I'm not a hostile-takeover kind of guy,'' Jobs says. ''If they had asked me to come back, it might have been different.''

Pixar releases Toy Story, Job's 80% stake in Pixar is worth $600m.

Mac clones live.

Erin Seinna, second child to Steve and Laurene Powell, is born.

The Microsoft/Apple cases are finally settled; Apple loses.

1996

"I am saddened by the fact...that Microsoft...makes really third rate products," said Jobs in an interview this year.

To Fortune magazine, Jobs says, "You know, I've got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can't say any more than that its the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But no body there will listen to me."

Gil Amelio replaces Michael Spindler as CEO of Apple, and the stock soon hit a 12-year low.

Apple's aging OS needs replacement. Apple considers buying BeOS, or even licensing Windows NT from Microsoft. But instead, they look to NeXT and the NeXTSTEP OS, which directly influenced Apple's modern OS X UI, architecture and multitasking abilities, which is used in the iPhone and all Macs today.

Apple announces intent to purchase of NeXT for $430 million to pay back investors, and 1.5m in Apple shares to Jobs. Jobs would also re-enter the company as an advisor, bringing "a lot of experience and scar tissue." He's also recognized as having mellowed out in his management, as one Pixar employee describes: "After the first three words out of your mouth, he'd interrupt you and say, 'O.K., here's how I see things.' It isn't like that anymore. He listens a lot more, and he's more relaxed, more mature.'' Jobs attributed the change to an increased faith in people: "'I trust people more.''

Jobs steps back onto the Apple campus, wildly changed since he'd last been there, for the first time since 1985.

1997

"Steve is going to fuck Gil so hard his eardrums will pop," says an anonymous ex-Apple employee in regards to Jobs returning to Apple, to New Yorker magazine. Sure enough, Steve Jobs is swiftly installed as interim CEO after ousting Gil Amelio.

Jobs: "The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament."

Jobs calls Dell computers boring beige boxes; Michael Dell says if he ran Apple, he'd give the share holders back their money.

Jon Ive is hired, beginning a new era of Apple design.

The 20th Anniversary Mac, with a DVD player and TV tuner comes out as Ive's first piece of work.

1998

Jobs shuts down many projects, focusing on computers at Apple.
Eve Jobs born.

The first iMac is born.

1999

Pirates of Silicon Valley, the movie, comes out. Noah Wyle plays Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall plays Bill Gates. The film opens on the set of the 1984 Super Bowl ad for the Mac.

2000

Jobs is the permanent CEO of Apple again.

PowerMac Cube comes out.

Jobs stops maintaining the Jackling House mansion he bought in 1984.

2001

First Apple retail store opens in McLean, Virginia.

iPod comes out.

OS X 10.0 comes out.

2003

Power Mac G5 comes out in familiar all-aluminum case.

Al Gore joins Apple's Board.

Jobs discovers malignant tumor in his pancreas. It's a rare form of pancreatic cancer that can be cured. He tries 9 months of alternative medicine, unsuccessfully curing the cancer.

2004

Steve has a surgery to remove a tumor in July and takes a month off to recover. In a letter to Apple employees, he wrote from the hospital on a 17-inch PowerBook, "I have some personal news that I need to share with you, and I wanted you to hear it directly from me... This weekend I underwent a successful surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from my pancreas."

Jobs receives permission to demolish the Jackling House and rebuild a smaller home on the land. Local preservationists veto the decision.

2005

Apple announces Intel inside of Macs, long culminating project "Star Trek", which was about running OS X on x86 Intel hardware. PCs and Macs are the same, essentially, component wise. Only software and design are their differences; Jobs' awareness of design, emphasized early on in his days at Apple, and the importance of software over hardware learned at NeXT, would help guide Apple through the coming years.

Jef Raskin, father of the Mac, dies of pancreatic cancer in his home in Pacifica, CA.

Jobs turns 50.

iPod Nano, Video iPod, iPod Shuffle come out.

Jobs gives the commencement speech at Stanford, telling three stories, one about intuition and how he went to college and what he learned from it despite dropping out. One was about his love for Apple and losing the company. And the last was about death and his experience with cancer. The video and transcript are widely available online and the most personal look we have at his life during his second era at Apple.

2007

The iPhone is announced in January, then launched in June.

Apple TV comes out.

2008

Macbook Air comes out. Rumors abound about Steve looking too thin to be healthy.

Psystar announces a $400 mac clone, using Hackintosh work arounds to get OS X on a clone PC.

Jobs be(g)ins to give keynotes by sharing the stage with other Apple executives.
Gizmodo runs a rumor that Steve is sick and will step down in the Spring; the mainstream press denies it, particularly CNBC bureau chief Jim Goldman and some WSJ reporters, until January.

2009

Steve Jobs takes a health related leave of absence in January, until June. Tim Cook takes over day to day responsibilities while Jobs retains the CEO title.
Jobs receives permission to tear down Jackling house and build a smaller home on the property.

Steve Jobs receives a liver transplant in Tennessee. The NY Times raises the question of how he received a transplant so quickly and the hospital releases a statement, with Jobs' permission, that he received it quickly because he was the most sick on the list of recipients.

Steve Jobs returns to Apple in June 2009, quietly, by appearing on campus, and by being quoted in a press release.

2010

Jobs begins 2010 by getting his keynote groove back in earnest, debuting the iPad in January.

At a corporate town hall, Steve calls Google's "Don't be evil" slogan "bullshit."

Employee applause follow.

Steve's former tech pal Eric Schmidt turns foe as their companies become rivals. A later sit down meeting shows things are still tense.

Apple announces the iPhone 4 in June.

Design flaws in the iPhone 4 lead to spotty reception when gripped normally. Jobs replies to one user's email, "Just avoid holding it in that way."

A testy Jobs later holds an event to defend the iPhone 4's antenna, but informs users they'll be eligible for a free bumper case. He also takes the opportunity to claim his health is "fine," call a WSJ article about antenna mis-engineering "bullshit," and accuse the NYT of "just making this stuff up."

The Magic Trackpad comes out.

Steve takes the keynote stage again to introduce new Apple TV, iPod Nano, iPod Touch, and iPod Shuffle.

Jobs makes non-tech headlines over email bickering with a 22 year old journalism student. "Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade," he replies, before finally dropping a "Please leave us alone" bomb.

Apple sells more iPads than Macs for the first time ever.

Steve mounts the stage again to show off OS X Lion, iLife '11, and two new MacBook Airs.

The Financial Times names Steve Jobs its Person of the Year, lauding him as "A rebuttal of F. Scott Fitzgerald's much-quoted aphorism that there are no second acts in American life."

2011

After much anticipation, Verizon offers the iPhone 4. Steve Jobs not in attendance at announcement.

Jobs sends out a company-wide memo informing Apple that he'll be taking another medical leave of absence, though says he will "continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company." Tim Cook placed in charge of "Apple's day to day operations." It remains unclear whether the departure is a consequence of Jobs' liver transplant or earlier bout with pancreatic cancer. "I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can," he concludes.

On August 24th, Steve Jobs announces his resignation as Apple CEO, moving to become the company's Chairman of the Board. He writes the following in a letter to the company:

I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

On October 5th, Steve Jobs passed away, peacefully, surrounded by his family.

Rest in peace, restless spirit.

"Thank you."
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

And on another important front:

Goodbye, Libya!


Rep. Dennis Kucinich Aug 26, 2011

"A negotiated settlement in Libya was deliberately avoided for months while NATO, in violation of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions 1970 and 1973, illegally pursued regime change. NATO chose sides, intervened in a civil war and morphed into the air force for the rebels, who could not have succeeded but for NATO's attacks.

NATO acted with impunity. The NATO command recklessly bombed civilians in the name of saving civilians."

Comment on Speech

"President Obama's speech to the nation raised as many questions as it answered. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs were not consulted, but the Arab League was. So was the UN. This is the same UN that applauded Gaddafi's wild rants in New York just last fall. It is the same body that elected Libya to its Human Rights Council." - American Thinker Mar 30, 2011

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