Walter Isaacson

Time Magazine just released its list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2012, and Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook—following in the footsteps of Steve Jobs— made the list alongside Hilary Clinton, Tim Tebow, Rihanna, and Salman Khan. Also featured on the list this year, after stemming from the incredible success of his “Steve Jobs“ biography, is author Walter Isaacson.

Each entry on the list includes a description written by someone close to the influential person. In the case of Cook, former U.S. Vice President and Apple board member Al Gore did the honors. Gore said Cook has already “led the world’s most valuable and innovative company to new heights while implementing major policy changes smoothly and brilliantly.” Gore’s full entry on Cook is below:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Yesterday, as part of a wider interview with Larry Page, Bloomberg quoted Google’s CEO as saying:

I think the Android differences were actually for show. I had a relationship with Steve. I wouldn’t say I spent a lot of time with him over the years, but I saw him periodically. Curiously enough, actually, he requested that meeting. He sent me an e-mail and said: “Hey, you want to get together and chat?” I said, “Sure, I’ll come over.” And we had a very nice talk. We always did when we had a discussion generally….I think that [Anger at Android] served their interests. For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe that it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better.

However, Page likely was not present for the behind-the-scenes remarks from the former Apple CEO. Jobs probably put on a more distinguished game face, especially in the last meeting the two had when Jobs was very ill. In addition, Jobs’ anger was more than likely focused on former Apple board member and then previous Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Biographer Walter Isaacson was present behind-the-scenes with Jobs, and last night he disputed Page’s assertion that Jobs’ anger was “for show”:

Isaacson continued: “It’s almost copied verbatim by Android. And then they licence it around promiscuously. And then Android starts surpassing Apple in market share, and this totally infuriated him. It wasn’t a matter of money. He said: ‘You can’t pay me off, I’m here to destroy you’.”

As for what will happen now that Jobs isn’t around to go ‘thermonuclear’ on Google, Isaacson thinks that Apple CEO Tim Cook will handle things differently. “Tim Cook will settle that lawsuit”, Isaacson added.

In the book, Isaacson quoted Jobs as saying:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Walter Isaacson, author of the Steve Jobs biography, said in the past he omitted certain details and even referred to the book as a “first or second draft” when discussing plans to expand it with an addendum in a future re-release of the best-selling bio. While we have heard nothing official on those plans since, Isaacson just published a lengthy piece for Harvard Business Review titled “The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs.”

As noted by Isaacson, he was inspired to write the piece after many attempted to draw management lessons from the biography that he claims, “fixate[s] too much on the rough edges” of Jobs’ personality. Most of the piece focuses on Jobs’ management style, but Isaacson also once again talked about the late chief’s desire to produce “magical tools for digital photography and ways to make television simple and personal.” Here is an excerpt:

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOf_2HCX51w&feature=youtu.be]

Fortune’s Phillip Elmer-DeWitt pointed us to an hour long interview and Q&A session at LinkedIn headquarters with “Inside Apple” author Adam Lashinsky.

The interview is conducted by our former boss and current LinkedIn Executive Editor Dan Roth.  As PED noted, one of the more notable exchanges is with a former Apple employee who thought CEO Tim Cook is charismatic enough to be the United States President.  See the clip below (plus another interview this week at Davos).

Interestingly, the former Apple Engineer discusses how his friends at Apple were put on dummy projects until they could be trusted.

Buy the book at Amazon here or free at Audible.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Photo courtesy of BBC

John Sculley, former vice-president and president of PepsiCo and CEO of Apple between 1983 and 1993, is adamant that Apple —not incumbents such as Samsung— is poised to change the first principles of the television experience. Sculley also confessed in an interview with BBC that has not read Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Apple’s late cofounder and CEO. Nevertheless, the executive turned investor underscored Apple’s history of past industry disruptions while opining that the television industry is about to experience Apple’s magic touch:

I think that Apple has revolutionized every other consumer industry, why not television? I think that televisions are unnecessarily complex. The irony is that as the pictures get better and the choice of content gets broader, that the complexity of the experience of using the television gets more and more complicated. So it seems exactly the sort of problem that if anyone is going to change the experience of what the first principles are, it is going to be Apple.

Sculely, 72, is a Silicon Valley investor nowadays, and dispelled some “myths” about his tense relationship with Apple’s cofounder. He said he did not fire Jobs, insisting they had “a terrific relationship when things were going well.” Heck, even Rupert Murdoch is commenting about Apple television, writing on Twitter this morning: “All talk is about coming Apple TV. Plenty of apprehension, no firm facts but eyes on their enormous cash pile”.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsMeo_7wBSs]

When Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson that he finally “cracked the code” to building an integrated television set that is user-friendly and seamlessly syncs with all of your devices, Samsung Australia’s Director of Audiovisual Philip Newton told the Sydney Morning Herald that Jobs’ was talking about connectivity.

He laughed off the mythical iTV and dissed Jobs’ TV brain wave as “nothing new,” saying the future is now and it is his company’s Smart TVs:

When Steve Jobs talked about he’s ‘cracked it’, he’s talking about connectivity – so we’ve had that in the market already for 12 months, it’s nothing new, it was new for them because they didn’t play in the space. It’s old news as far as the traditional players are concerned and we have broadened that with things like voice control and touch control; the remote control for these TVs has a touch pad.

Samsung is promoting Smart TVs left and right at the CES show that is underway this week in Las Vegas. The company is showing off apps and games such as Angry Birds running smoothly on Smart TVs. Feature-wise, Samsung Smart TVs are beating Google TVs to the punch with capabilities such as voice interaction, facial recognition, integrated camera controls for multi-video conferencing and multitasking.

Sony, Panasonic and LG are also pushing integrated television sets built around the Smart TV platform. While not officially an exhibitor, Apple reportedly dispatched 250 employees to attend the show and monitor what competition is doing; among them is the head of iOS product marketing Greg Joswiak. Apple has been rumored for months to launch 32- and 37-inch television sets in the summer of 2012. Does Samsung see Apple as a threat?

Expand
Expanding
Close

Invitation image via @thepeterha

As first reported by The Loop, Apple sent out invites today for a special media event held in New York City next Thursday, Jan. 19. The invitation’s graphic shows the familiar New York skyscraper motif, adorned with the Apple logo silhouette and the tagline:

Join us for an education announcement in the Big Apple.

The invite arrives following a flurry of speculation pertaining to the nature of the event, which was first hinted by AllThingsD. The publication reported on Jan. 2 that Apple’s presser will not be huge —at least not compared to the company’s splashy theatrical announcements—nor will it cover any iPad or Apple TV hardware news.

Instead, it will focus on iBooks, another report said. With education the focus, this leaves iBooks and perhaps textbooks, another market Jobs wanted to disrupt, as the main attraction. The presser is said to involve Apple’s Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, whose recently expanded responsibilities now include the App Store, iTunes Store, iAd, iCloud and iBooks.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Speed increases are an expected part of Apple’s iOS device hardware upgrades, but what Apple has up their sleeves for speed enhancements is typically up for debate. The first-generation iPad clocked around 1GHz with the single core A4 processor, and —a year later—Apple bumped the iPad’s chip to dual-core-speed with the A5 processor. While not quite confirming that a quad-core processor will power Apple’s third-generation iPad, we have obtained evidence that suggests Apple is currently working on quad-core iOS devices.

Hidden deep inside the latest iOS 5.1 beta is updated processing-core management software that not only supports the dual-core processing enabled by the A5 iPhone and iPad chip, but also quad-core processing. The references to quad-core iPhone and iPad chips come by way of a hidden panel that describes cores that are supported by iOS device hardware. The updated core management software includes an option of “/cores/core.3,” and this represents a fourth available processing core… more details after the break:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Fortune Sr. Editor-at-Large Adam Lashinsky spent the last few years digging deep inside Apple looking for what makes Apple, Inc., tick. Fortune ran a bit earlier this year in a cover story called “How Apple works: Inside the world’s biggest startup,” and it holds up as a fascinating read. The full version of the book, “Inside Apple,” is tabulated at 240-to-272 pages and hits stores Jan. 25. It is currently available for pre-order at $16.92 for the hardcover or $12.99 for the Kindle version and $17.92 for the Audio version.

Lashinsky also interviewed Walter Isaacson Dec 14th (posted last week) which turned into an interesting conversation. The two authors, who were both deep diving into Apple, shared notes —so to speak.

One subject we are looking forward to learning more about is Apple University. Lashinsky originally laid it out like this:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Walter Isaacson cannot write an alternate ending for Steve Jobs in his famed biography, but the author is entertaining plans to expand the 630-page book in the future.

Isaacson shared his upcoming plans, and numerous anecdotes about the two years he spent with the late Apple CEO, at a Dec.14 event hosted by the Commonwealth Club of California. Fortune senior editor Adam Lashinsky moderated the sold-out discussion.

The biographer mentioned plans to create an annotated version of the best-selling biography.

According to CNN’s Fortune, the author also described Jobs’ influence on the book’s cover at the San Francisco event. The Apple cofounder apparently teased Isaacson about quitting the interviews unless he was given input over the cover:

“It took me about one and a half seconds to say, ‘Sure!’” said Isaacson to the event’s crowd. “I mean this is one of the greatest design eyes of our time.”

Isaacson further discussed writing an addendum to the book that details the days before and after Jobs’ death:

Expand
Expanding
Close

BBC is getting set to air a new documentary entitled ‘Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy’ tonight at 9:00pm on BBC HD and BBC Two. According to the Telegraph, the documentary apparently presents a more “ruthless image of Jobs” where Wozniak reveals that Jobs reduced him to tears following the release of Walter Isaacson’s ‘Steve Jobs’ bio (click the image above for the clip of Woz from the doc):

Jobs, for instance, tricked a young Wozniak into writing code for a computer game but pocketed the majority of the payment for the project from Atari himself. Wozniak admits on the programme that he cried when he heard about Jobs’s scam following the release of a book on Jobs.

The doc is hosted by Evan Davis, and features appearances from Tim Berners-Lee, Rita Clifton, and Stephen Fry. It will also of course include interviews with Steve Wozniak and others that were close to Apple and Jobs. The program profiles Avie Tevanian, who worked with Jobs as head of software at Apple until 2006, who tells a story of trying to get Jobs to join in on a stag party:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Walter Isaacson signing books in Times Square | Photo: Tanner Curtis

We noted last week that Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography published by Simon & Schuster became Amazon’s best-selling book of 2011, but that included just sales of the dead trees version. Print sales do not, however, paint an accurate picture because Kindle e-books are now outselling hardcover and paperback editions combined, prompting Amazon to include Kindle books into the rankings.

The company this morning issued a press release stating that the biography of Apple’s late co-founder broke all records to become the best-selling book of 2011 – just 50 days following the October 23 release. It’s not just Amazon, the book also topped Customer Favorites chart on Amazon and is #2 on Audible.

The exclusive biography is also a top-seller in the Non-fiction category on Apple’s iBookstore, where it can be yours for fifteen bucks. It’s also available as a digital download from the Kindle store. It did not fare as well on Barnes and Noble however, only garnering a #34 ranking of NookBooks. Go past the fold for Amazon’s list of Top 10 best-selling books overall.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Dark roof adorning Apple’s upcoming Spaceship campus suggest solar panels.

UPDATE [Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 12:55pm]: A reader chimed in about that black roof. Find the update added to the article bottom.

Apple’s upcoming campus in Cupertino, California is reminiscent of a spaceship with a footprint bigger than the Pentagon. The spectacular building should be completed by 2015, provided all goes as planned. Now, over the past few months we’ve been shown breathtaking renderings and descriptions of the 175-acre circular structure adorned in glass. The original conceptual images that had owed Cupertino City Council back in June and detailed drawings released in August have now been coupled with a brand new set of renderings that slip a couple of noteworthy details.

Yesterday, a new proposal Apple submitted on Monday has been made public at the City of Cupertino web site (via iPhoneinCanada.ca). Four PDF documents weighing in at more than a hundred megabytes (Introduction, Site Plan & Landscaping, Floor Plans and Renderings) pitch the Spaceship building as “an integrated 21st century campus surrounded by green space”.

The company specifies its “distinctive and inspiring 21st century workplace” will “consist of 2.8 million square feet over four stories, and accommodate up to 13,000 employees”, respecting Apple’s security needs “in part through perimeter protection”. We can see how taking some paperwork to another department inside this monstrous super structure will be a lunch killer for some employees. The site is bounded by East Homestead Road on the north, properties adjacent to Tantau Avenue on the east, Interstate 280 on the south and Wolfe Road on the west. Apple doesn’t appear to have overlooked anything. Read on…

Expand
Expanding
Close

When author of the official ‘Steve Jobs’ bio, Walter Isaacson, sat down for an interview with Fortune earlier this month, we learned that Steve Jobs had three key industries he wanted to reinvent: the television, textbooks, and photography. We’ve certainly heard a lot of rumors about an iTV in the works, and Apple has arguably already done a lot for the textbook business, despite Jobs having loftier goals for the industry as a whole. While the iPhone 4S’s redesigned camera might be good enough to get an endorsement from photographer Annie Leibovitz, the guys at ADR Studios have created this new ‘iCam’ concept imagining a separate accessory that would turn the iPhone 5 into a full-fledged point-and-shoot.

Keeping rumored iPhone 5 specs in mind, ADR’s concept would include a 10.1 megapixel sensor and provide an “ISO range from 100 to 3200 (extendable up to 6400 equivalent)” for full HD at 60fps. Imagined specs for the accessory include an aluminum unibody, interchangeable lenses, a small touch-screen on the front, LED flash, pico-projector, SD UHS-i slot, motion sensor, and bluetooth. We’re guessing a few companies are already at work on a similar accessory after seeing these gorgeous mock ups.

[slideshow]

Expand
Expanding
Close

Image courtesy of AnimationMagazine.net

According to E! Online, screenwriter, producer and playwright Aaron Sorkin is “strongly considering” writing a screenplay for a rumored Sony movie about the life and work of Steve Jobs. Sorkin was quoted as telling the publication at the P.S. Arts Express Yourself 2011 event in Santa Monica:

Sony has asked me to write the movie and it’s something I’m strongly considering. […] He was a great entrepreneur, he was a great artist, a great thinker. […] He’s probably inspired my 11-year-old daughter Roxy more than he’s inspired me. She plays with all his toys.

Sony Pictures recently acquired feature rights to film a flick based on Walter Isaacson’s authorized bio. As we already informed you, someone from ER is likely to play Steve Jobs. The choice could come down to George Clooney (50) and Noah Wyle (40). The latter played Jobs in Pirates of Silicon Valley and recently said he would give his eye teeth, in the heartbeat, to play Apple’s charismatic co-founder.

Sorkin’s work includes the well-received television show The West Wing. He also wrote screenplay for the controversial movie The Social Network which covers how Facebook came to be while portraying its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg as a ruthless young entrepreneur  who stole an existing idea from the Winklevoss brothers, tweaked it and made it his own.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOlqqriBvUM]

Walter Isaacson, in his  biography on Steve Jobs, didn’t go terribly in-depth on the NeXT era of his subject’s life. Luckily, incredible videos from the series Entrepreneurs have become available online and show Steve Jobs working with his team at NeXT. The videos really highlight Steve Job’s leadership style, at least at that phase of his career and show how hard it is to start a company. (via The Next Web)

Check out a few others after the break:

Expand
Expanding
Close

A rendition of an Apple-branded television set.

The WSJ reports that amid losing money on every television set they make, Sony somehow has a strategy for redemption. Stringer declined to provide details about what Sony is developing but said “there’s a tremendous amount of R&D going into a different kind of TV set”.

He he has “no doubt” Apple’s Steve Jobs also was working on changing the traditional TV set. “That’s what we’re all looking for”, he noted, warning “it will take a long time to transition to a new form of television”. Slim margins, low prices and little innovation make the business of researching, developing and marketing high-definition television sets a cutthroat one, he remarked:

We can’t continue selling TV sets [the way we have been]. Every TV set we all make loses money.

His company, Stringer said, spent the last five years creating an ecosystem to take on Apple, even though the company had seen little success with the Google TV platform and other connected television efforts:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Steve Jobs’s authorized biographer Walter Isaacson and Fortune’s managing editor Andy Serwer on stage at NASDAQ | Photo: Tanner Curtis

In a series of tweets, Fortune released some interesting new quotes by Steve Jobs’ authorized biographer Walter Isaacson, who sat down for a “breakfast conversation” with the magazine’s managing editor Andy Serwer.

“It’s good that we’ve made a big deal out of a creative business leader, rather than a celebrity,” Isaacson told Serwer, describing his rock star status as a cultural icon of our time. “There’s an emotional connection Steve Jobs made across the world – like a rock star or a prince”.

“Steve thought the digital hub had moved from the computer to the cloud,” Isaacson said. Over the years, Jobs changed as a manager in a way that “he didn’t become sweeter or kinder, he learned to channel his energy and passion.”

Walter Isaacson signing books in Times Square | Photo: Tanner Curtis

Expand
Expanding
Close

Ron Johnson, Apple’s former vice president of retail and the creator of the Apple Store, left for J.C. Penney November 1 and already he is picking industry veterans to join his leadership team at the Plano, Texas-headquartered department store chain. The Wall Street Journal reports that Johnson is tapping former Apple talent, including former chief financial office of Apple Retail Michael Kramer and Apple’s chief talent officer Daniel Walker.

Interestingly, it was Walker who helped Steve Jobs hire Ron Johnson to head Apple’s retail efforts. Both men served at Apple from 2000 to 2005. Granted, Walker and Kramer are both long-exited Apple people, but the temptation for current Apple talent to somehow make its way to Penney will always linger.

Sure, you might say who would  rather work at J.C. Penney rather than the most powerful, cool technology company in the world. But on a granular level, there might be high paying jobs with Johnson that Apple won’t match that could draw some top Apple talent.  Johnson himself is probably the best example of that.

There is also likely a non-compete clause in Ron Johnson’s severance agreement barring him from poaching Apple employees, but those are easily circumvented.  Just as Steve Jobs poached a bunch of his top Apple engineers to build out NeXT…

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KQlPCflWP9k]

Last month, after the passing of Steve Jobs, the media exploded with stories and interviews of the former CEO of Apple. In the 60 Minutes interview with Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs had some rough things to say about his competitors Google and Microsoft. However, in an outtake that didn’t make the televised segment, Steve Jobs expressed some respect for Mark Zuckerberg and his social networking giant Facebook.

“We talk about social networks in the plural,” Jobs said to Isaacson, “but I don’t see anybody other than Facebook out there. Just Facebook, They are dominating this. I admire Mark Zuckerberg . . . for not selling out, for wanting to make a company.  I admire that a lot.”

In an interview with Charlie Rose that’s airing later today, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerbeg reveals that Steve Jobs didn’t just respect Zuckerberg, but coached him on how to build the right management team and focus his company.  “I had a lot of questions for him,” Zuckerberg says. The topics include, “how to build a team around you that’s focused on building as high quality and good things as you are.” 
Expand
Expanding
Close