Steve Jobs

Isaacson contrasts the stories of two sets of parents: Jobs’s birth parents, Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, who gave him up for adoption, and Clara and Paul Jobs, the adoptive parents who raised him. Joanne and Abdulfattah were not married at the time, largely because Joanne’s father strongly disapproved of their relationship. When Joanne became pregnant, the only feasible option was to arrange for a closed adoption, with the caveat that the adoptive parents must be college graduates.

While Clara and Paul were not college graduates, they were hard workers who were invested in providing the best life possible for their adopted son. All throughout Job’s childhood, Clara and Paul were honest with him about being adopted, telling him that he was a special child because they had chosen him. Throughout elementary school, Jobs struggled with behavior and getting bored by a lack of challenges, which continued to characterize the remainder of most of his formal education. Growing up in Silicon Valley, however, he found his interests outside of school, in electronics and mechanics with his father, Paul, who fixed up cars, then eventually in the nearby Hewlett-Packard Explorers Club. He grew up in an age when computers were being created and developed all around him.

In this chapter, Isaacson explores the relationship between Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who was five years Jobs’s senior. Drawn to each other initially by shared interests, they first met in a mutual friend’s garage while Jobs was in high school, and Wozniak was already in college. One of their initial collaborations was a project known as the “Blue Box,” which allowed people to make long-distance calls for free. Initially started as a prank, eventually they began selling the “Blue Boxes” for $150 apiece, which marked the beginning of their business relationship. Late one night, at a Sunnyvale pizza parlor, they had a “Blue Box” stolen from them at gunpoint. Despite the scare of this experience, Wozniak and Jobs would continue working together for years to come. Isaacson quotes Jobs himself, as Jobs remembered this early chapter of his relationship with Wozniak: “If it hadn’t been for Blue Boxes, there wouldn’t have been an Apple” (30).

As Jobs transitioned from high school to college, the eccentricities of his personality became increasingly apparent, “oscillating between charismatic and creepy” (31). Prior to going to Reed College, fulfilling his biological mother’s hope for him, Jobs became involved with Chrisann Brennan, an attractive girl who painted and joined Jobs in his early forays into dropping acid. Jobs and Brennan even shared a cabin the summer after high school graduation.

Jobs then attended Reed College, where he eventually grew bored. Along the way, he met Robert Friedland, who initially mesmerized Jobs with his interest in Eastern spirituality but who Jobs later would dismiss as a self-centered con man. After only a year, Jobs dropped out of Reed but was allowed to audit the courses that interested him, such as calligraphy. 

Jobs returned to Silicon Valley to his parents’ home in Los Altos, only a year and a half after dropping out of Reed. Just as soon as he had begun his job search, he walked into the office of video game manufacturer Atari, where he said he would not leave until he had a job. Intrigued by his audacity, chief engineer Al Alcorn offered him a job as technician, which made Jobs one of the first fifty employees at Atari. However, many of his coworkers were put off by his demeanor and hygiene.

After only a few months at Atari, Jobs left California to go to India, where he would go to find spiritual enlightenment alongside his friend, Daniel Kottke. A few months later, Jobs returned to Atari after his hiatus in India. The head of Atari, Nolan Bushnell, soon challenged Jobs to develop a one-player version of Pong, even offering him a bonus if he was able to minimize the computer chips being used.

At the time, Steve Wozniak was working at nearby Hewlett Packard, so Jobs recruited Wozniak to help him. They finished the game in only four days. Once the bonus was paid out, Jobs paid Wozniak only half of the base fee, as Wozniak recollects: “I wish he had just been honest. If he had told me he needed the money, he should have known I would have just given it to him” (53).

Isaacson tells the story of the birth of Apple. As the computer craze was exploding all across Silicon Valley, Wozniak was inspired by seeing a microprocessor for the first time at a gathering for people building their own computers. According to Wozniak, that night became one of the most significant moments of his life: “this whole vision of a personal computer just popped into my head” (60).

This idea would eventually become the Apple I. Wozniak built the computer with the intention of giving the designs away for free, an extension of the hacker ethic, but Jobs eventually convinced Wozniak to sell them. This was the beginning of Apple Computers, named after Jobs had returned from an apple farm. After selling over a hundred computers, Apple was profitable within just thirty days, a sign of things to come.

As the exhilaration of the initial success met the pragmatism of running a newly formed company, Jobs soon realized that the next computer they would release, the Apple II, would “need to be packaged into a fully integrated consumer product” (73). Jobs hired Markkula to help with finance and distribution. This move ended up being highly successful for Apple, as the Apple II sold over six million units.

According to Isaacson, “more than any other machine, it [the Apple II] launched the personal computer industry” (84). With Wozniak providing the wizardry and expertise behind the tech, Jobs was able to create a company, bringing in his own ideas about the consumer experience and product design.

When Chrisann was living with Jobs in a house with their friend Daniel Kottke, she became pregnant with Jobs’s child. As Apple was starting to gain traction as a company, Jobs refused to acknowledge that he was the father, even hinting that Chrisann must have slept with someone else. After Chrisann announced her pregnancy to Jobs, their relationship fell apart. Eventually, after taking a paternity test, Jobs reluctantly began paying child support to Chrisann and Lisa. Later, Jobs expressed remorse at the way he had behaved during this time.