Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs

by Yukari Iwatani Kane

  At Apple, he was involved in fewer projects. He paid attention to most things related to the iPhone or the iPad, but he was barely involved in the Mac business. One matter he insisted on controlling was the plan for a new corporate campus. Apple had purchased land that had previously belonged to Hewlett-Packard about a mile away from its current location, and Jobs had been working on the layout and design with the famed architect Norman Foster’s firm. After many iterations, they had finally come up with a design that he thought expressed the company’s values for generations to come.

  One day in late 2010, Jobs called an impromptu meeting with the city’s two top officials to float the idea of the new corporate headquarters. When Gilbert Wong, the mayor-elect, and Kris Wang, the outgoing mayor, arrived at Apple, they were led to the CEO’s conference room. “Hi, my name is Steve,” Jobs said as he greeted the starstruck council members, shaking their hands firmly. The officials hadn’t known they were meeting with him until a few minutes prior. Jobs had probably orchestrated it that way, so he could catch them off guard and dazzle them into fast-tracking approvals for the new offices.

  Recounting the days when he worked with the Emeryville City Council to build Pixar’s campus, Jobs tried to persuade Wong and Wang to grant him an exception. He was even willing to pay an in-lieu fee. The two tried to show respect by addressing the CEO as “Mr. Jobs.” But the answer they gave him was no. It was naïve of Jobs to even try. Democracy didn’t work that way. In addition to requiring approval from three out of five council members, Apple would need to complete an environmental impact report, and the plans would need to be discussed in a public hearing. “He was trying to negotiate as if we were the decision makers,” Wong recalled. “He was just selling, selling, selling, saying ‘I want this,’ ‘I want that.’ ”

  Jobs wouldn’t give up. “I want to show you something,” he said, suggesting they walk over to another room. When they got there, he made a show of taking out his key and inserting it into the locked door.

  Inside stood a beautiful model of the new campus, with an abundance of windows and green, open spaces. One of its distinctive features, Jobs pointed out proudly, was that everyone would be treated equally and there would be no special CEO office. The city officials were impressed but stood firm. Jobs had to follow the process like everyone else. If it struck Wong as ironic that Jobs was touting his egalitarian layout to seek special dispensation from the city, he didn’t mention it.

  Jobs didn’t get what he wanted that day, but he did succeed in making it an unforgettable visit for Wong. “I had an opportunity to meet with President Obama through the U.S. Mayors Conference and I got to personally meet with the president of Taiwan as well as U.S. senators, congressmen, and other government officials. I’ve been to the People’s Republic of China and India, and I’ve met other corporate people in Silicon Valley, but the highlight would have to be my meeting Mr. Jobs,” he said later. “How often does someone from the public have a one-on-one conversation with a CEO about a two-point-eight-million square-foot campus?”

  Wong may have been awed by Jobs’s presence, but he still had the wherewithal to notice how sick Jobs had looked. By then, Jobs was working more from home again. The official company line was that he was fine now that he had a new liver. Employees, who saw him in the cafeteria, knew better. By Christmas, Jobs was down to 115 pounds, fifty pounds below his normal weight. Every inch of his body, he told friends, felt like it had been punched.

  In January, doctors detected new tumors. Jobs didn’t want to go on medical leave but had no choice. On January 17, 2011, he sent out an email to all employees:

  Team,

  At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.

  I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.

  I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.

  Steve

  As before, the note was scarce on details. But it was different from the last one because Jobs didn’t give a time frame for his return. The carefully selected wording implied that there was a chance he might not be back at all.

  In retrospect, there had been warning signs. When Apple announced a new partnership with Verizon Wireless the week before, it was Cook, not Jobs, who showed up at the press event. A News Corporation press event where Jobs was slated to appear had been abruptly postponed. Nevertheless, the announcement of another medical leave took many people by surprise. The fact that he sent the notice on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day led some to speculate about whether the company had deliberately picked a day when the U.S. stock markets were closed. Apple shares fell 8 percent in Europe.

  In an earnings conference call the day after the email, Wall Street refrained out of courtesy from asking about Jobs’s health, but Cook seemed to detect the anxiety. When an analyst asked about Apple’s long-term business planning, he assured him that Apple was doing its best work ever.

  “We are all very happy with the product pipeline,” he said. “The team here has an unparalleled breadth and depth of talent and culture of innovation that Steve has driven in the company. Excellence has become a habit, and so we feel very, very confident about the future of the company.”

  Eventually, the concern ebbed. It helped that Apple had reported a 78 percent surge in profit and record sales during the previous quarter. For the moment, Apple still revolved around Jobs. Even though he had formally removed himself from the responsibilities of running the company and wasn’t as available as he used to be, his deputies, including Cook, were reluctant to make decisions without his approval. It was especially true on matters that they knew he would have wanted to be involved in. Halving the minimum spending for iAd campaigns from $1 million to $500,000 was one of them.

  The plan had been in the works for weeks, but no one wanted to make a decision on his behalf. Everyone held their breath, hoping he would return.

  That February, Jobs was preoccupied with the passage of time. His twentieth wedding anniversary was coming up the following month. He hadn’t always paid attention to occasions like this in the past, but this year was different. Deciding to enlist some help, he called Tom Suiter, an old friend and a veteran designer.

  “You remember how you helped me out with our wedding invitation?” he asked. “I want to do something really special for Laurene and the kids.” When Suiter asked what he had in mind, Jobs responded, “I don’t know yet. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Something that could provide them with wonderful memories.”

  Suiter had worked for Jobs as a creative director in the early 1980s and had been part of the team that launched the “1984” ad campaign. He helped name NeXT, the company Jobs had founded after he was booted out of Apple in 1985. Jobs had originally wanted to call it “Two” because it was his second company. Suiter convinced him that it was a bad idea because everyone would want to know what happened to “One.” After cofounding the ad agency CKS Partners, Suiter continued to work for Jobs. He had been involved in the famous “Think Different” ad campaign and the initial designs for the Apple Stores. Even after they stopped working together, the two stayed in touch.

  On the day of their first meeting, Suiter arrived at Jobs’s house with some watercolor paper and a set of Conté crayons. Suiter’s idea was a handmade white linen box that would open up to a black linen container with twenty photographs. He envisioned that the box would have some kind of logo on it. Suiter was hoping to convince Jobs to design that himself. When he suggested it, Jobs refused to consider it.

  “Steve, you could hire anybody on the face of the planet to do this for you. I’m so appreciative that you asked me to do it, but I just
think it would be so cool if you could do something,” ventured Suiter as they sat in Jobs’s atrium. “What if it was just this really nice little heart with a two and a zero on it?”

  For a moment Jobs was silent.

  “I’ll give it a shot,” he said slowly. “But will you draw it first and I’ll copy it?”

  After Suiter did a few hearts, Jobs picked up a crayon. He very carefully drew one side and then the other. And then he drew a 2. The crayons provided beautiful texture, but Jobs didn’t like what he saw and tried to discard them.

  “Don’t worry about it. Do a few and then I’ll be able to Photoshop it and put them together,” Suiter told him.

  As they got together over the next several weeks, they talked about life and compared notes about their children. Sometimes, the conversation was lighthearted. They would talk about funny moments or their kids’ Halloween costumes. Suiter used to make Superman and werewolf costumes for his sons.

  Jobs expressed regret that he hadn’t been a better father. He wished he better understood his daughters.

  One time as Suiter was walking out, Jobs told him goodbye. The formality of the farewell frightened Suiter so much that he began praying as soon as he reached his car. “Come on,” he told himself. “No, this can’t be the end.”

  He was immensely relieved when he saw Jobs again two weeks later. The two never talked directly about Jobs’s legacy. Suiter didn’t want to consider a future without his friend, and it was clear Jobs intended to be around for a while.

  “Is it a month? Is it a year?” Jobs would speculate. “I don’t know. It could be ten years.”

  Suiter caught him in a reflective mood once.

  “Steve, I think about the life I led and I’m so happy,” Suiter opened by saying. Like Jobs, Suiter had struggled with cancer a few years back. “You must feel the same way because you’ve lived a life of twenty men.”

  “I know,” Jobs said. “I know. I have.”

  Suiter asked him about the coolest thing he’d done in his life. Jobs admitted that he hadn’t thought about that kind of thing until recently.

  “You know, I sort of feel like we don’t step back and think about those kinds of things. Jony and I were talking about that,” Jobs said, referring to Apple’s designer Jonathan Ive, with whom he spent a lot of time. “For me, it would be a tie. Without a doubt the first Macintosh was so much fun to do, and I truly believe the first-generation iPhone was so similar in that it was just so different, so unique, and so far beyond what anybody else was expecting.”

  When Jobs finished designing the logo of the heart, Suiter found someone who made exquisitely crafted linen boxes. Then he located a museum quality printer. Suiter also persuaded Jobs to write a letter to his family that was letter-pressed and enclosed under a sheet of vellum paper. As before, Jobs was initially resistant.

  “Aw man. Aw God.”

  “No, come on! You can write that,” Suiter said to coax him. “Think about it. The first time you saw her she swept you off your feet, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  The result was a sweet and melancholy note. When the gift was finally finished, Jobs had tears in his eyes.

  “It’s perfect.”

  Jobs kept the details of his health out of the public eye again. But this time, the world was better informed, based on what they knew of his medical history: If he was ill again so soon after his liver transplant, it was highly likely that the cancer had come back. This barest of information was enough cause for concern when his sickly image appeared online.

  When Apple sent out invitations to the media for an event on March 2, 2011, it displayed a partial image of an iPad, hinting that the event would concern a new model. Fans were eager to know what it would look like, but the bigger question was, would Jobs be there?

  Reporters braved the cold San Francisco rain to arrive early that morning at the Yerba Buena Center. When the doors to the auditorium opened, the media rushed in. The scanning to find Jobs began immediately. Reporters identified Cook, Schiller, Ive, and other executives standing near the front. If they were already in the room, who was going to be the master of ceremonies?

  Anticipation mounted when the lights dimmed and George Harrison’s voice purred from the loudspeakers, singing “Here Comes the Sun.” Then Jobs walked out.

  “We’ve been working on this product for a while and I just didn’t want to miss today,” he said somewhat bashfully to cheers and applause.

  As word got around that Jobs did not have much time left, dignitaries made a pilgrimage to see him one last time. Google’s cofounder Larry Page dropped by for advice on how to be a good CEO. Bill Clinton visited and talked about American politics and the Middle East. Bill Gates spent more than three hours with him in May, during which they reminisced and discussed the future of education. Sony CEO Howard Stringer called him with information about a possible drug treatment that he thought might be helpful.

  Jobs had finally accepted the seriousness of his diagnosis. He would tell people that he was just trying to manage his cancer. He had been one of the first twenty people in the world to have all of his genes sequenced, so doctors could formulate specific drugs that could provide targeted therapy.

  “These drugs work great, and then they stop,” he explained to one friend. “Then it takes a while to find another drug.”

  Jobs had good and bad days. For his friends, the swings in his health were frightening. Ive was openly distraught, lingering as much as possible at Jobs’s house. He fretted over his illness so much that dealing with him left Jobs exhausted. Cook visited often, but he was stoic, sticking to business, betraying little emotion. iTunes head Eddy Cue would go see the Boss—he was the only one who referred to Jobs that way—and come back shaken up. Jobs had picked him out when he was nobody and had entrusted him with enormous responsibility. Cue genuinely loved the man and didn’t try to hide it.

  “I just came back from seeing the Boss,” he said after one visit. “He’s not good.”

  “But he came back from this, he came back from this, he came back from this,” he repeated, as if he were trying to convince himself. It sounded as though he’d had this conversation a number of times in his head. “The guy’s a cat. He’s got nine lives. We’ve got a few more to go. We can never count out the Boss.”

  When Apple held its WWDC conference in early June, it announced ahead of time that Jobs would attend. Apple fans entered the auditorium to the carefully vetted song of choice—James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good).” For an instant, some audience members became hopeful. Would they see a healthier Jobs? As the music died down, he finally came out onstage to a lengthy standing ovation.

  “I love you!” somebody called out.

  “Thank you,” he responded as he smiled. He raised his eyebrows and pointed at those he recognized in the audience. “It always helps and I appreciate it very much.”

  He looked delighted to be there, but his presence onstage was noticeably short. He also appeared frightfully thin. The audience didn’t even know that Jobs was wearing two shirts and thermal underwear.

  The next evening, Jobs made an appearance at the Cupertino City Council. He had been scheduled to go to a U2 concert in Oakland but decided instead to unveil his plans for the new corporate campus. Failing to circumvent the government process the previous winter, Jobs wanted to announce the project formally before the public. He had already canceled plans to attend a council meeting once earlier that spring, and he didn’t want to put it off again. He needed to be the one to sell the idea. The new office celebrated his success. Even its location—the former grounds of Hewitt-Packard, a company he had admired when he was young—was symbolic.

  “Apple’s grown like a weed,” Jobs began, explaining how the company’s current headquarters only held about a quarter of the twelve thousand employees it had in the area. Jobs then wove a spell as he talked about Apple’s roots in Cupertino and what the area meant to him. He showed a rendering of the new campus with an enormous
round building.

  “It’s a little like a spaceship landed, but there it is. And it’s got this gorgeous courtyard in the middle, but a lot more,” he said, boasting about the curve of the building. “There’s not a straight piece of glass on this building.”

  Jobs wanted to make 80 percent of the property landscaping. A big parking lot would be installed underground. He would almost double the number of trees. “We’ve hired one of the senior arborists from Stanford actually who’s very good with indigenous trees around this area,” he told them. In a nod to Cupertino’s beginnings as a place filled with vineyards and orchards, he wanted to plant fruit trees with apricots, apples, and plums. There would also be a three-thousand-person café, an auditorium, fitness center, and R&D buildings. Jobs painted a picture of the campus as an environmentally friendly facility, where they would generate their own power with the grid as a backup.

  “I think the overall feeling is going to be a zillion times better than it is now with all the asphalt,” Jobs said. “We do have a shot of building the best office building in the world. I really do think architecture students will come here to see this. I think it could be that good.”

  It was a dazzling performance that made one almost forget he was dying. There was one tense moment when Kris Wang, the former mayor who was now a council member, asked Jobs if Apple would give the city free Wi-Fi connectivity in return for approving his plans. The response was vintage Jobs.

  “See, I’m a simpleton. I’ve always had this view that we pay taxes and the city should do those things,” he said, condescendingly polite. “If we can get out of paying taxes, I’d be glad to put up a Wi-Fi network.”

  He reminded the council that Apple was the largest taxpayer in Cupertino. “If we can’t build it,” Jobs said referring to the new campus, “we have to go somewhere like Mountain View, and we’d take our current people with us and we give up and over the years sell the land here.”