by Daniel Lyons
“Think about the Dinsmore thing,” he says. “At least consider it.”
“Okay.” I wait two seconds. “I just thought about it. The answer is no.”
Once the Jim Bell story hits, everybody at Apple starts avoiding me like the guy with herpes at a hot tub party. I try arranging meetings, but everyone’s busy. Their calendars are booked. Then I go down to the Apple gym for a workout and the guys who told me they were in Asia this week and couldn’t meet are right there, hanging out with Jim Bell and yucking it up. When they see me they get all weird and quiet and drift away. Worse yet, I swear one day when I’m riding my Segway across the campus I catch a glimpse of Mike Dinsmore ducking into the iPhone building. Sure, I was far away, but it’s pretty hard to miss a six-foot-five-inch giant with bright red hair. I did a quick U-turn and zipped over there and demanded to be let in. The Israelis refused. By the time I got security clearance and barged into the building, Goliath was long gone.
Even the shipping dock idiots seem to know I’m in trouble. One day I’m walking past one of the docks and from inside, in the shadows, some guy yells out, “Dead man walking!” and then a bunch of morons start laughing their nuts off.
So yeah. It’s like that. Whatever. I can deal. It’s September, my favorite time of the year, when we get the best weather in the Bay Area and everyone comes back from their summer vacations and business at Apple starts to buzz as we all gear up for the December quarter, which is usually our busiest time of the year. I spend my days with Ja’Red, meditating and working out on the climbing wall and drinking smoothies and getting stoned and brainstorming about where the computer industry is going. It’s good to have at least one quasi-pal to hang around with, even if he is half my age and walks around dressing and acting exactly like me and is always bugging me about some new product idea, like the computer he’s designed that’s just a sheet of plastic that you can roll up and carry with you in a tube, with all the guts and circuitry wired into the plastic.
“That’s total shit,” I tell him. “Absolutely shit.”
He tells me I’m wrong, that he’s done some research with component suppliers and research labs in Japan, and right now the parts are too expensive but if you plot the expected price declines on a curve you can see the whole thing hitting a sweet spot where you can build one for less than two thousand dollars by the year 2012.
“The cost is not the point,” I tell him. “Nobody wants a computer that’s a piece of plastic rolled up in a tube.”
“You can roll it out on the table in front of you, and type on the plastic. The keyboard will be in the screen.”
“That’s shit,” I say. “It’s a shit idea. Don’t waste your time.”
This makes him so upset that he starts crying. “I’m not going to give up on this,” he says.
Fair enough. I admire his passion. Plus the fact is that while his idea may be insane it’s no crazier than the stuff we used to dream up back in the early eighties. Back in those days all of our ideas were insane. Ja’Red, in fact, is lot like the guys who built the original Macintosh. They were young, and had no real computer training, and in the end, as it turned out, they could not actually produce a working computer. But they had vision, and a huge sense of their own specialness, which is what really counts.
Right now we need a few wackos like Ja’Red at Apple. The world of technology is a very confusing place. Nobody really understands how things are going to play out. Do the cable guys win? The TV networks? The Internet portals? The movie studios? The music labels? The media companies? Honestly, I have no idea. I would never admit this to anyone, but Ja’Red has as good a grasp of how things are going to shake out as I do. He’s smart. Really smart. Just uneducated, which, frankly, is an advantage.
Look at the greats—me, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Picasso, Hemingway, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Stephen Hawking. They’re all dropouts. The way I see it, for really smart people, education only serves to clog your creativity and shut down your brain. I like to imagine the brain as this giant honeycomb, and you start off with all these millions of open cells, but every book you read, every class you take, every piece of math you learn is a little plug that gets stuck into a cell and seals it shut. If you happen to get an MBA it’s like going back and double-sealing the doors with cement.
Which is why, in fact, I’m so glad that I have almost no education at all. And why I’ve started letting Ja’Red attend some of our design and strategy meetings. He’s supposed to be there to listen and take notes, but of course he starts talking and trying to take over and convincing everyone of his genius. Nevertheless I keep inviting him, because it gives me great pleasure to see all these assholes who won’t talk to me anymore get tormented by some kid. Ordinarily I do the annoying myself. But this is great. I’ve got a proxy. And he’s good at it. One day he tells the retail guys they should replace all the clear glass in our Fifth Avenue store with black smoked glass, and use lasers to create holographic robot greeters who will stand in the doorway to all our stores and guide customers to the right section. They practically start foaming at the mouth.
The September quarter marks the end of our fiscal year, and it’s a total blowout, our best year ever. Our computers are gaining market share, and the iPod remains the top music player, with no real challengers. We’ve got record sales, soaring profits, ten billion dollars in the bank. Our stock is on fire. A little quick math reveals my own net worth is up several hundred million dollars in the past month alone.
But of course nobody in the management suite is going to give me any credit for how well we’re doing. They still won’t talk to me or take my phone calls. Fair enough. You know what I do? The night of our earnings announcement, after everyone else has gone home, Ja’Red and I walk around the executive suite tacking up copies of the current earnings release next to the same release from ten years ago, in 1996, when the company was in the crapper. I use a real hammer and big huge nails, just like Martin Luther King—the original one, from the Dark Ages, not the Jr one from the 1960s.
“They’re not going to push me out of here,” I tell Ja’Red afterward, when we’re cruising up the 101 to the city for a visit to Brandy Ho’s in Chinatown. “Money talks and bullshit walks. They can’t run this place without me, and they know it.”
Overall things are quiet and peaceful, just the way they should be. Tom Bowditch is away in Asia assassinating government officials or hunting endangered species or doing whatever it is he does with his free time, so I’m spared his dog breath and spittle. Francis X. Doyle appears to be leaving us alone. Bobby DiMarco checks in every so often, but only to reassure me that there’s nothing going on with the investigation. To be sure, Sampson and his gang are still toiling away in the Crosby conference room, digging through their “irregularities,” but at least we’ve switched them over to Macs so I don’t have to hear those moronic Windows rebooting honks every fifteen minutes. Down in engineering, the iPhone team is making some progress, though they’re still struggling to come up with a circuit board that looks beautiful and works right.
Of course the mutineers are still up to their dirty tricks, and the anti-Steve propaganda campaign continues, but there’s no real damage. Wired runs an article that purports to tell the inside story of how the iPod was first created, and gives all the credit to a bunch of guys that nobody has ever heard of, and the only mention of me is where they say that, ironically, when these geniuses first came to me with the iPod proposal I told them it was “total shit” and shot it down. Only through their courage and perseverance were they able to push the product through anyway, and then when the iPod became a hit, in rushed El Jobso to steal all the credit. This is the new official version of events.
Ja’Red says it’s a total hatchet job and full of factual errors. Poor kid. He really thinks I invented the iPod. He says we should file a libel suit.
We’re in my office getting high before lunch. I explain to him that, just as with the Journal story about Jim Bell, this Wired story didn’t
happen by itself.
“This was teed up by people inside Apple.”
He’s like, “Dude, no way.”
I’m like, “Dude, way.”
He points out that the story claims nobody at Apple would speak to Wired. I point out that in fact the story says nobody at Apple would speak on the record.
“It’s a coup,” I explain. “My own foot-soldiers have set themselves to the ignoble task of un-writing the Legend of El Jobso and smoothing the way for my successor.”
“Whoa,” he says. “For real? That’s intense.”
“Totally.” I’m still marveling at the fact that I managed to get out a sentence like that, using words like ignoble, which is pretty amazing when you consider how baked we are.
“It’s like a tragedy by Ibsen,” I say. “Or is it Chekhov. I always get them confused.”
He gives me this look and says, “Huh?”
This is a little embarrassing, but every year, on the day when they announce the Nobel Peace Prize winners, I clear my schedule and sit by the phone. I know it’s silly. Larry says I’m an idiot. You know what? I wish I could be like him. Just vapid and self-centered and caring about nothing about racing giant penis boats and sleeping with Asian interns. But I can’t. I want more from life. I want to make a difference. I care too much. That’s my fatal flaw.
I tell myself, Just don’t even think about it. But I can’t help it. I get my hopes up. Then they announce the winner and I’m crushed. I mean, nothing against the guy this year, the Bangladeshi banker who micro-loaned money to Third World people or whatever. Very cool idea.
It’s just that, well, I kind of feel that what I’ve done for the world has had a little more impact than some bank in Bangladesh. Maybe to some people a computer or a music player just seems like a piece of consumer electronics. But there’s another way to look at these objects, and in this other way of looking at them, which is the way we look at them in Cupertino, well, let’s just say you could kind of start to see these devices as being kind of transformative, in a cultural kind of way.
But no. They give the prize to the micro-loan guy.
What’s more embarrassing is that this year I had Ja’Red put together a presentation to send to the Nobel people describing our products and also describing my plans for the Apple World Peace Summit, which is something I’ve been trying to arrange where we’ll bring together all the bad guys from around the world and all the good guys too and then we’ll all just talk, and we’ll have featured hosts like Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, and Bono.
One of the marketing dicks got wind of this and pulled some attitude, pointing out that (a) you can’t lobby for the Nobel prize; and (b) the peace summit hasn’t even happened yet, and chances are it never will; and (c) shouldn’t we be concentrating on how to manage this little options scandal?
Fair enough. The guy had a point, though it doesn’t matter since he’s no longer working here. We are going to pay his hospitalization and plastic surgery bills, though, because that’s just how we do things at Apple.
By seven o’clock on the day of the awards I’m still hanging around in my office, still thinking maybe they’re going to realize they made a mistake and they’re going to call me or something. Finally Ja’Red sticks his head in and says, “Dude, it’s like three in the morning over there in Sweden. You want to go get some pizza or something?”
We’re heading out when the phone rings. I rush back, like a schoolgirl. But it’s not the Nobel people. It’s Bono. He asks me if I saw the Nobel stuff. I pretend I didn’t. He tells me it was some banker, and then lets slip that he, Bono, was one of the finalists. “Fookin amazin, isn’t it?” he says.
Of course I try to be all positive and happy for him, but inside I’m dying. My stomach is just in knots. I mean, come on. Bono makes the short list and I’m still out here pounding my pud?
“Steve,” he says, “do me a favor and don’t tell anyone about it, okay? I’d really rather not have people knowing about it and thinking I’m bragging about it, because God knows I’m not. I haven’t told anyone except The Edge, and he didn’t even know what the fookin prize was. He thought it was something from MTV. But yeah, it was me and Cindy Sheehan and Ahmadinejad up for the peace prize.”
“Ahmadinejad? Is he the micro-loan dude?”
“Naw, man, he’s the shah of Iran.”
“I thought the shah of Iran died a long time ago.”
“This is the new shah, the one they just elected last year. Me and Geldof had lunch with him. He’s totally all about bringing peace to the region.”
“So what’s up with this micro-banker guy?”
“That’s what I told the Swedes. I was like, ‘How many times has this guy been to Africa? Has he fathered any children there? Because I have. Has he held hands and posed for photos with people who have AIDS? Because I have.’”
“What’s the guy’s name? I’d never even heard of him.”
“Fook if I know, and man, I’ll tell ya, who knew that all you had to do to win the Nobel Peace Prize was go around handing out ten-dollar bills to poor people, right? Can’t do it now, though, cause it’s been done. Gotta think of something else. Like maybe this AIDS thing where we do the red products. But I was thinking about that too and you know what? Keepin these Africans alive isn’t gonna do nothing fer peace is it? I mean it just means there’ll be more of the fookers who can chop each other to bits with machetes, innit? I dunno. Like you say, brother, Peace. Right? Pay it forward. Peace.”
“Sure thing,” I say. “Peace, my brother. Power to the people.”
I’m not a superstitious person—well, okay, actually I am. And somehow this Nobel thing strikes me as a bad omen. It’s like I can feel my karma taking a downward plunge. Sure enough, a few days later Bobby DiMarco calls and informs me that I’m going to be sitting down with U.S. Attorney Francis X. Doyle for a deposition.
“You got any asbestos underpants?” he says. “Ha! Kidding. Don’t worry. I’ll be there with you. I won’t let anything bad happen to you, honey.”
“Could I get you something? Water? Coffee? Juice? Something to eat? We’ve got bagels. And muffins.”
This is Francis X. Doyle, working very hard to seem like the world’s all-around most friendly and nonthreatening guy. He’s wearing a navy blue suit that looks like he bought it at Sears, and I’m sure underneath his white shirt his little man-nipples are totally erect just thinking about how today is the most important day of his life and this deposition is going to send him soaring into the governor’s office.
So I ask for water and he actually fetches a bottle of Dasani and brings it to me himself, which is a trick I’ve seen Jeffrey Katzenberg use and which on one level conveys that he’s a super humble and down-to-earth guy, but at the same time also establishes up front that he’s in control, because you asked him for water and if you want the water you have to reach up and take it from his hand, blah blah.
It’s ten in the morning and we’re in the San Francisco U.S. Attorney’s office, a suite of rooms on the eleventh floor of a horrifically ugly office building on Golden Gate. The place has all the charm of a Soviet parking garage, and all I could think when we were walking in was, “Who creates buildings like this? Who sits down with the blueprints and says, Wow, yes, this is fantastic, we must build this?”
It’s all very relaxed and comfortable, lots of dark wood, a brown leather sofa, two leather armchairs, nice lamps on the side tables, sort of old-boy Harvard Club shabby chic. Doyle talks about the weather, and his kids, and the traffic he hit coming in from Marin this morning. He tells me he’s been using Macs since his undergraduate days at Dartmouth in the eighties. He loves the iPod too, and so does his son, who wants him to get my autograph, ha ha ha, isn’t that something. He says he’s really sorry to drag me up here, but it’s his job to talk to everybody.
I know what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to get me to relax and let my guard down. I smile, and say as little as possible. I’ve been fasting and medit
ating for three days, and I’m totally Zen focused.
A door opens, and in walks William Poon carrying a Sony laptop and making a big deal of letting me see him slipping his Microsoft Zune music player into the pocket of his suit jacket.
Poon is short and slim and bristling with nervous energy, rocking up on the balls of his feet and rolling his shoulders like a boxer. His hair is wet, as if he’s just come from lifting weights at the gym. He’s eager and edgy and wound super tight, in the way that only Asian dudes can be.
Doyle seems weird around him, almost subservient, as if he were working for Poon rather than the other way around. Certainly it’s weird that Poon came in after Doyle did; at Apple I’d never let that happen.
“I’d like to introduce Assistant U.S. Attorney William Poon,” Doyle says.
We shake hands, and I can’t resist. “I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”
“William Poon.” He tries to make it sound like “pone.”
“Poon?”
“Don’t start.” He gives me a tight smile.
“Excuse me?”
“You can just call me William.”
“What are you, touchy about your name or something?”
“Look, I’ve heard all the jokes already. How about we keep this professional.”
“Sure thing, Poon. By the way, did you know Bobby D. and I were in Nam together?”
Bobby gives me this look, as if to say, What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you fucking mental?
Poon says, “That’s very nice for you.”
“I just thought you might be interested.”
“Why, because I’m Asian? My parents are from Singapore.”
“Same thing, right?”
He laughs, but I can tell he’s getting pissed. “You must be pretty ignorant if you think Singapore is the same thing as Vietnam,” he says.
I put up my hands and say, “Hey, back off, Bruce Lee.”
“I don’t believe this.” Poon’s face is getting red, and his left eye has begun to twitch.
