Steve Jobs

Fast Company has an extensive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, focusing on what has changed and what has stayed the same since he took over from Steve Jobs. The interview comes a day after FastCo published a sizeable excerpt from the book Becoming Steve Jobs, in which Cook criticized the portrayal of Jobs in Isaacson’s biography.

Cook said that while much has changed, the culture–the fundamental goal of the company–remained the same.

Steve felt that if Apple could do that—make great products and great tools for people—they in turn would do great things. He felt strongly that this would be his contribution to the world at large. We still very much believe that. That’s still the core of this company.

The company has never tried to be first to market, he said, but rather to “have the patience to get it right” … 
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Little-known until its debut at SXSW this weekend, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney’s “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” has been picked up by Magnolia Pictures for a North American theatrical release, and CNN Films for television broadcasts, Deadline Hollywood reports today. An earlier story from The Hollywood Reporter claimed that several Apple employees in attendance walked out early, and Apple’s Eddy Cue has used Twitter to denounce the film, calling it “inaccurate and mean-spirited.”

[tweet https://twitter.com/cue/status/577493714567852032 align=’center’]

The Man in the Machine includes interviews with a number of former Apple employees including Jon Rubinstein, Bob Belleville and Daniel Kottke, as well as Jobs’ ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan, and even video footage from a 2008 SEC deposition given by Jobs himself. Early reviews have described the documentary as “a riveting and important corrective to the myths Jobs helped to propagate,” and “unsparing portrait of Steve Jobs [that] will prove extremely displeasing to devotees.” A few representative quotes from those reviews follow…

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7hP47HogmY]

Oscar winner Alex Gibney’s documentary about Steve Jobs. The film debuts at SXSW this month.

Sometimes I lose count of the movies about Steve Jobs but I’m pretty sure this one wasn’t on my radar until recently. Premiering at SXSW today is “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine”, a documentary funded by CNN and directed by Alex Gibney, who is just off releasing a controversial Scientology exposé “Going Clear”.

Alex Gibney is one of America’s pre-eminent filmmakers. He won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side and was nominated for Enron:The Smartest Guys in the Room. Most recently Mea Maxima Culpa:Silence in the House of God won three Emmys and a Peabody. This spring Going Clear:Scientology and the Prison of Belief and a Sinatra doc miniseries airs on HBO.

Reading the Q&As at Variety and Hollywood Reporter, it appears that this isn’t going to be a love-fest like the new book. Still, given the subject matter and the brief clip above, I’m intrigued…

Update: notes from the film, which we can now confirm doesn’t cast a good light on the Apple founder follow. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Apple Employees who attended the film walked out:

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More details about the upcoming biography Becoming Steve Jobs have been revealed through the book’s preview on Amazon (which has since been cut down significantly), revealing several interesting tidbits about the Apple co-founder’s life that were previously unknown (via Cult of Mac).

One example is a story about an offer then-COO Tim Cook made to Jobs when the latter was battling cancer. Cook says that he discovered he shared a blood type with Jobs and decided to undergo numerous medical tests before offering to donate part of his liver to the executive.

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London’s Financial Times today carries a profile of Jony Ive in which he discusses how the Mac changed his dislike of computers, why he is consumed by design and disinterested in sales, the difference between designing a phone (and its slim battery)  and designing a smartwatch–and why Apple decided to take a low-key approach on even the top-end Edition watch.

The piece also contained an interesting (if possibly mistaken) estimate on Apple Watch pricing (update: Apple PR has now confirmed to us that the FT is indeed mistaken) … 
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Almost everything Apple has done since the unfortunate passing of Steve Jobs has been met with comments about what the company would or wouldn’t have done had Steve still been here – even though his marching orders for Tim Cook were to never ask what he would have done.

But things certainly would have been different. The flattened user-interface of iOS 7 versus the skeuomorphic approach of the Jobs era. Would have it have happened at all? Would he have stopped it going quite so far? Would Apple have gone in a different direction?

What about an Apple Television? Steve said years ago that he “finally cracked it,” suggesting that he had a design and user-interface he was happy with. If the hold-up now is the content, would Steve have been able to bulldoze through the necessary deals to have launched it by now … ? 
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The New Yorker has published an extensive profile on Jony Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Design. Many newspapers have written up articles on Ive in recent years, but this latest account by Ian Parker is by far the most detailed and (arguably) the most interesting, revealing new anecdotes and tidbits on Apple’s latest products in the process.

The story tracks how Jony arrived at Apple back in the late 90’s, how his relationship with Jobs developed over that period, and how he is adapting to ‘leading’ design in post-Jobs Apple. The piece includes some new details about how the Watch project and the newest iPhones formed, as well as incorporating quotes from Tim Cook, Bob Mansfield, and others.

Read on for some select excerpts from The New Yorker’s story.

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With filming of the Aaron Sorkin-written Steve Jobs biopic based on Walter Isaacson’s official biography kicking off in recent days, Universal Pictures has shared an official release date for the film. According to CNBC, the film’s studio says the Jobs film will be released in theaters later this year on October 9th, 2015.
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Photo via @motro68

As filming for the announced Steve Jobs biopic continues, first at Steve Jobs’ childhood home, then at the Flint Center where the original Macintosh was unveiled, the first photos of Michael Fassbender and Seth Rogen as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have appeared.

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Universal Pictures has announced that principal filming of the Steve Jobs biopic written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle is now finally underway. The announcement confirms that the movie, dropped by Sony back in November, will still follow the original three-act structure based around three keynote presentations.

Universal Pictures today announced that principal photography has commenced in San Francisco on Steve Jobs. Set backstage at three iconic product launches and ending in 1998 with the unveiling of the iMac, the film takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution to paint an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.

Surprisingly, Universal says that the final product announcement will be the iMac, in 1998, rather than the launch of the iPhone as had been widely expected … 
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Image via <a href="http://www.cnet.com/news/lights-camera-apple-filming-starts-for-new-steve-jobs-biopic/" target="_blank">CNET</a>

The Sony- Universal-produced Steve Jobs biopic starring Michael Fassbender has finally started filming after what seemed like an endless array of cast and crew changes. CNET spotted production crews setting up at the Los Altos childhood home of Steve Jobs earlier today.

As was revealed last year, the movie, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle, will likely feature only a handful of locations, including the former Jobs home garage. While Fassbender is set to play Jobs, several other cast members have been tapped to portray other prominent individuals in the executive’s life.

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Pudong, Shanghai, store left; latest Chongqing store right

Apple is creating in Chongqing, China, what appears to be a smaller version of its iconic glass cylinder Apple Store in Shanghai. ifo Apple Store shared a series of photos as the wraps came off what is set to be Apple’s third retail store in the Chongqing region, which has a total population of more than 28 million people.

Workers dismantled the huge steel structure that has been covering the entrance for nearly the past year, revealing a 30-foot tall glass structure that will lead to the underground store. The entrance is set in a plaza and surrounded by tall buildings, a setting similar to the [Shanghai] store, but on a smaller scale.

The first Apple Store in Chongqing opened in July of last year, and a second one is under construction. More photos of the latest store can be seen below … 
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A Fortune interview with Disney CEO Bob Iger, featured on the magazine’s cover (seen below) today, makes much of the importance of Iger’s relationship with Steve Jobs.

Fortune’s Michal Lev-Ram writes: “If there is one particular relationship that has most shaped [Bob Iger’s] thinking, it’s the six-year friendship he had with another CEO: the late Steve Jobs […]

Ed Catumull, Disney’s animation president, says of the Iger/Jobs relationship: “Steve recognized that in Bob he actually had a partner. In the subsequent years they thought of each other as true partners. That’s what he wanted, and that’s not what he had previously.”

The mutual respect the pair felt for each other was reflected in the fact that Jobs, before his death, asked that Iger be invited to take his place on the Apple board … 
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The class-action lawsuit against Apple over alleged anticompetitive behavior in how the iPod handled songs from third-party much stores is finally in the hands of a jury. Following last week’s final witness testimony, the jury has started deliberations in the decade-old case.

The evidence and testimony in this case have given us quite a bit of insight into the way Apple operated ten years ago with regards to its iPod and iTunes business. Former CEO Steve Jobs took jabs at rival Real Networks in a videotaped deposition (which the media wants the public to see, but Apple doesn’t). We also learned details of Apple’s contracts with record labels.

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Michael Fassbender will reportedly play Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic

While we’ve already learned some interesting details about the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic from the recently leaked Sony Pictures files, it seems there’s still more to be gleaned from the company’s documents. As the Verge notes today, new emails have revealed the possible settings for the film, which include “two auditoriums, a restaurant, and a garage.”

Those locations were included in an email sent from screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who, along with director Danny Boyle, will be taking the film to Universal Pictures for production after working with Sony on it for several years.

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As we noted earlier today, several media outlets have filed a motion that would allow them to air the videotaped deposition of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs that was played for jurors in the ongoing iPod antitrust lawsuit. Now the Verge reports that Apple is fighting back against the motion, with the company’s lawyers accusing the media of wanting to see “a dead man.”

As Apple attorney Jonathan Sherman put it:

The marginal value of seeing him again, in his black turtleneck — this time very sick — is small. What they want is a dead man, and they want to show him to the rest of the world, because it’s a judicial record.

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