Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
As I was about to graduate from Stanford business school in the spring of 1990, Steve Jobs invited me to visit him at NeXT, the company he had founded after being forced out of Apple a few years before.
Showing me into his office, Steve, dressed in a black turtleneck and faded jeans, plopped into his desk chair, then motioned to a pile of chopsticks on his desk. He picked up a set, opening and closing the chopsticks as he spoke. “Aren’t these just beautiful? Look how clean and simple the lines are.”
He had just been in Japan, Steve explained, and at dinner one night he found himself using the best chopsticks he had ever tried. “They’re nothing but inexpensive wood, just like any other chopsticks,” he said. “But just look at them. Beautiful. I had them ship me a bunch. Here, have one.” He tossed me a set.
As we talked in his office, then drove down 101 to Palo Alto, where we had dinner together, Steve mentioned that he’d like me to consider becoming his chief of staff—I was only two years out of the Reagan White House, and Steve figured that someone who had worked for Reagan might meet his own standards—then told me about himself. Not about his life since he had become famous. About his early life. About what it had been like to grow up as an adopted kid. About what it had been like to be raised by a repo man. “If somebody got behind in his car payments,” Steve, driving a sleek black Porsche, told me, “the bank would hire my father to get the car back. My father would tail the guy. When he pulled into a McDonalds, my father would pull in behind him. And when he got out to go in and get his hamburger, my father would jump into the car and steal it. What a way to make a living.” The sheer raw mercilessness of the market. Steve experienced it early. Yet he also spoke that evening about sheer beauty, describing the Santa Clara Valley before it became Silicon Valley. “Orchards—when I was a boy there were still orchards all around here. You should have seen it when they were flowering in the spring. Clouds of blossoms.”
I declined Steve’s offer—he made it clear that he wanted me to protect him from the demands of the NeXT executives, but his executives, with whom I spent a day, made it clear that they wanted me to get Steve to give them more of his time—but we remained in touch. Steve married a friend of mine from business school. Both of us sent our kids to the same nursery school. From time to time we would run into each other at parties or in Palo Alto. The last time I saw him, we were both at a Fourth of July block party in his neighborhood a few years ago. As neighborhood kids competed in the balloon toss and pie eating contests, Steve and I talked.
We discussed both politics (Steve defended Al Gore, who had joined the Apple board, predicting that Gore would win a Nobel Prize, which he did just months later) and business (Steve gave me his analysis of Disney, explaining why he considered Michael Eisner inadequate, detailing the inferiority of Disney’s animated motion pictures to Pixar’s, and lauding Disney’s theme parks, which he considered underrated as both artistic and commercial achievements. “The way to turn around Mexico?” Steve said. “Let Disney run the country.”) When I mentioned that I had begun reading up on the Cold War, he described his friendship with Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, who had helped to develop photographic techniques for U. S. intelligence.
“Hey, Steve!” a neighborhood kid said, interrupting. “My iPhone isn’t working.”
I expected Steve to brush the young man off. Instead he took the iPhone, then spent five minutes examining the device while talking to the kid about the problems he had been having with it. Steve finally figured out what was wrong. “You’re not going to like hearing this,” he said, “but it’s not an Apple problem. It’s a problem with AT&T.” Before returning the iPhone, Steve held it up to me, pointing out the metal bezel into which the glass cover or window was set. Then he described the technical challenge involved in manufacturing it.
Intensity, ambition, a profound understanding of markets, a broad and fascinating mind—even if (and I say nothing here I failed to tell him to his face) his politics never made any sense—and a determinaton to get it right so obsessive that he felt compelled to fix a teenager’s iPhone at a block party. You can almost see how Steve earned his place. You can almost grasp how he became as important as Edison or Carnegie or Stanford or Rockefeller or Ford.
Yet one characteristic distinguished Steve Jobs from the others. It’s the characteristic that led him to toss me the chopsticks that I've kept on my desk ever since.
Only Steve insisted on beauty.
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Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Outstanding memoir, Peter. Thank you so very much.
Nov '10
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Beautiful reflections.
And regarding this...
"(and I say nothing here I failed to tell him to his face)"
I can only say: :-)
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
This was a pleasure to read.
Dec '10
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Thanks for sharing Mr. Robinson, you managed to humanize a man I never felt much appreciation for. No ire either, I just felt a bit indifferent.
I think you may have answered to your lasting confusion about his politics. I think a primary difference between conservatives and liberals, especially among the young, is where they land on the question of Truth vs. beauty. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, but I believe at some point the pursuit of one must come at the cost of the other. While Steve Jobs was unquestionably the master of splitting the difference almost transcending the conflict the rest of us take a side.
When the world presents a conflict, conservatives tend to engage the ugly things of the world, sometimes even embracing them, not because they are ugly but because the Truth should not be contrived. Liberals have a tendency to gravitate toward the beautiful lies. I think this leads inevitably to the regulation of individual unsightliness in the name of coerced, ordered beauty; the pursuit of utopia. And Steve Jobs is a wonderful example of what it is to have mastered beauty. I'm grateful he did it with such class and an appreciation of the choice.
Edited on October 6, 2011 at 9:37amDec '10
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
My family was an Apple/Mac family from the very beginning.
My dad owned at least one and likely two of every single computer model that Apple produced up until around 2003 or 2004.
He even had a Lisa, one of only a handful to make it to Missouri when they were first released.
Hell, we still have most all of them too, and I bet that if plugged in, they'd every one of them boot right up when you switched them on. Nobody builds desktops like Apple (and the price reflects this). Their OS irritates me sometimes, but their hardware is always a thing of beauty.
The saddest thing about Jobs dying is that we so rarely see his kind anymore, and now there is one less.
It makes the loss that much more profound.
May '10
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
I had never considered it before, but upon reading these words the comparison struck me as obviously true.
Oct '10
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Peter, thank very much for sharing your personal interaction with Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs designed and brought to market products which consumers did not know that they could not live without. He revolutionized the way that we work, communicate, and relax. It’s a tragedy that he died so young. America has lost a innovative giant as it struggles to remain competitive in a changing world economy.
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Lovely.
Jul '11
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Wow. Thanks for sharing, Peter.
Sep '10
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Beauty will save the world. -- Dostoevsky
Beautifully written Peter.
Sep '10
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Wonderful piece. As you might say, "Just wonderful." And in one of those quirky coincidences, just this past weekend I got my first Apple product, an iPod shuffle, and though, while downloading my favorite songs from all my favorite CDs I did not immediately understand what all the fuss has been about, once I was taking a long early fall walk with the headphones on, the "beauty" of it became obvious: I was simply and utterly pleased to be in the moment.
Mar '11
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Beasley: When the world presents a conflict, conservatives tend to engage the ugly things of the world, sometimes even embracing them, not because they are ugly but because the Truth should not be contrived. Liberals have a tendency to gravitate toward the beautiful lies. I think this leads inevitably to the regulation of individual unsightliness in the name of coerced, ordered beauty; the pursuit of utopia. And Steve Jobs is a wonderful example of what it is to have mastered beauty. I'm grateful he did it with such class and an appreciation of the choice. · Oct 6 at 12:26am
Edited on Oct 06 at 12:37 am
Technological folks have always seemed to fall into 3 broad categories: apolitical, politically incoherent (maybe unfocused is a better word -- I mean the difference between a light beam and a laser beam) and conservative. When idealogues can't make the numbers work for an ideology, they ignore the numbers. When techies can't make the numbers work for an ideology, they ignore the ideology, or at least the parts they can't make fit.
Oct '10
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
I haven't read anything on Steve Jobs as affecting as this and I don't expect I will.
Dec '10
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Very nice.
I would quibble that he was referring to a "bezel". ;-]
May '10
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Check out this post at The Corner by Kevin Williamson. It was posted just minutes after the announcement of Jobs' death and was pecked out almost as in a rage. You'll find no better defense of the morality of capitalism and ambition.
Economics is not zero sum, and good grief the world would be a better place if the masses could grasp that one point.
Mar '11
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Thanks, Peter, for some insights into a man who we only knew through his products.
It explains the perfection of the Iphone 4 case, and why he didn't change it in the 4s. Rather poignant that he passed away the day after it's launch.
It brings back memories of the Santa Clara fields, before they turned into monuments to capitalism, now crumbling around us.
He leaves us at the tipping point.
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
I'm glad you mentioned Disney because it is with Walt that I equate Jobs, in terms of impact on our culture and daily life. No one else comes close to these two. However, here is one difference between the two enterprises today:
In 1994 I took my fiance to meet my mother in Orlando and we took in the new Twilight Zone Tower Of Terror at one of Disney's new theme parks. I considered it a monumental achievement in thrill rides from a company that, like Apple, demanded beauty along with their technology. This is what separates Disney from, say Six Flaggs.
However, fast forward to 2004 and my wife and I are excited to experience the new Tower Of Terror at Disney's California Adventure in Anaheim near our home. We were somewhat disappointed to discover it was the same exact ride. All I kept thinking about was what would Steve Jobs have been able to accomplish with this beauty and technology in 10 years? Would it have been exactly the same? He wouldn't even consider that option. I hope Apple does better without Steve than Disneyland does without Walt.
May '10
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
How incredibly cool. And how amazing to see yet another brilliant mind that is so perceptive about markets yet supports the collective mediocrity of governments controlling most of life.
If you put Steve Jobs in charge of health care, diagnostics and prescriptions for therapeutics would all run through the iPhone and cost at least 30% less, with costs declining every year.
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
CJRun: Very nice.
I would quibble that he was referring to a "bezel". ;-] · Oct 6 at 5:25am
Thanks for the catch, now corrected. (I wrote the piece late at night. Which, since I'm so prone to typos, hardly matters anyway.)
Mar '11
Re: Steve Jobs's Chopsticks
Thank you, Peter, for those anecdotes and the insights they lend into an extraordinary, complicated man. I'm glad to learn Steve had the wisdom to attempt to recruit you!
This culture of ours should get to work producing more like Steve, but we don't know how, and seem to manage it in spite of ourselves. They are, perhaps by nature, those who aren't content to fit into conventional roles or follow the usual paths. (Remember, Steve dropped out of college to found a company with a mere $1,300 in startup capital. Would many among us feel comfortable advising a student today to do the same?) They're people who see things that others don't and have the temerity and persistence to realize their creative ambitions so that others may see, too.
Thank you, Steve, for bringing out the best in those you worked with, and for all you have made possible. We're sure to feel the ripple effects for decades to come.