Our Take On: “Steve Jobs: One Last Thing"

The first thing we appreciated about Steve Jobs: One Last Thing  was that it covered the entire arc of Steve Jobs’ life through interviews with people who knew him well at each stage of that life. His childhood friend shares how “the two Steve’s” met through knowing him. It set the tone for how normal, and typical his life was at that time. It also showed how the Age of the Geek was about to begin in earnest. Both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were electronics nerds who began their auspicious careers with some (mainly) innocent phone line jacking for fun. Through their introduction to each other and a local hobbyist club they made the early connections that would make the Apple I possible.  Wozniak was the engineer and Jobs was the visionary whose main gifts were his persuasiveness and his ability to see the full potential of nascent, great ideas.

We thought his refrain that “when you realize that people around you are no smarter than you, you can change things… sometimes you can mold it. The film showed how they molded the Apple II and succeeded with the idea that a computer focusing on an individual user and making that experience enjoyable for the user was as valid as the pursuit of mainframe, industrial computing and could be as profitable, or more so. We liked the way that they brought in Jobs interest in Zen and calligraphy and how these interests were stirred into the mix of Apple’s look and feel. With Jobs personal charisma and that persuasiveness, consumers began to see Apple as the creative, pioneering computer company – where there was always “just one more thing” that Jobs & company would present that would stun the high tech world as well as its artistic user base.

Jobs had earned over 100 million dollars by age 23. In interviews with chief “frenemy” Bill Gates, he dominated the encounters and was included in celebrity events like Sean Lennon’s birthday. At the birthday, he gave Sean one of the first Macintosh person pcs. (He showed Andy Warhol how to “paint” with it at the party too!) We could see how all this, at such an age would have gone to his head. Never a person to whom personal relationships seemed to be a priority, Jobs was nevertheless stunned when John Scully, his CEO at the time and personal friend, and the board at Apple ousted him from the company.

His subsequent middling effort at NeXT might have been the end of his story, but for two things: it got him back on his feet in the king of entrepreneurial environment he thrived in, and it got him involved in Pixar. His success – and the success he claimed from Pixar, set him up for a homecoming with Apple. Apple did not do well without Steve Jobs, and Steve Jobs proved he could succeed without Apple. Called by many “the greatest Second Act in business” Jobs’ return to Apple set the stage for the introduction of “I” – and all its many varying products.

We talked about how one interviewee points out that Steve Jobs could claim a major role in the Telephone industry, the Motion Picture industry, the Computer industry and the Music industry. “He had 4 – Thomas Edison had 3” (Edison dominated the Power industry, Motion Picture industry, and the Music Industry. We had to agree he makes a great case for future generations to regard Steve Jobs as the Edison of our generation. In the end we found that it he unquestionably shaped, and continues to shape, the high tech part of our culture. We also felt the trade of he made for this was his inability to form lasting personal relationships with others. This dichotomy in Jobs had us questioning whether this is the sacrifice individuals have to make to have this degree of impact on the world or not. In all, a very thoughtful and interesting discussion! 

The graphic "heard 'round the world"

Here are links to more on Steve Jobs:

IMDb's Biography on Steve Jobs

Wikipedia's Biography on Steve Jobs

Biography.com's entry on Steve Jobs

The Strange Eating Habits of Steve Jobs