San Francisco.- La primera vez que Steve Jobs intimidó a alguien fue en tercer grado. "Junto a unos compañeros básicamente destrozamos a la maestra", reconoció una vez.
Durante el siguiente medio siglo, Jobs no dejó de hacerlo nunca. Se comía vivos a sus subordinados y socios que no cumplían con su trabajo, hacía morder el polvo a los competidores que no estaban a su altura y mandó a los sabelotodos de paseo. Tenía un sueño de grandeza, que empuñaba como un arma para cambiar la cara de la industria informática, telefónica y del entretenimiento, y no estaba dispuesto a ceder un ápice.
Tal vez sea sólo por la desesperación que siente la gente por el estancamiento de la economía norteamericana, pero el anuncio de la muerte del cofundador de Apple pareció marcar el fin de algo: en una era de límites, Jobs fue el último gran tirano.
Hasta en Silicon Valley, donde los caciques corporativos suelen tener estatura sobrehumana, no había otro como él. Usaba sus poderes para desarrollar dispositivos que despiertan en sus dueños un tipo de adoración que muy pocos productos consiguen entre los norteamericanos, especialmente en nuestros días.
"En medio de océanos de una mediocridad impuesta, en esta insulsa y desabrida cultura de las corporaciones titánicas manejadas por asambleas, Jobs mostró que el verdadero camino de la excelencia era la excelencia; que uno puede hacer grandes cosas con inteligencia y gusto impecable y sin conformarse nunca con nada que no sea lo mejor", escribió el emprendedor Perry Metzger en su página de Google.
Cuando su muerte se hizo pública, Twitter y la blogósfera se inundaron de emoción. Sus seguidores se congregaron en las puertas de su casa de Palo Alto, California, y dejaron ofrendas florales y velas frente a cada negocio de Apple, en todas partes del mundo. Su casa se encuentra en el centro de la ciudad, es fácil de ubicar y relativamente modesta para un hombre con una fortuna valuada en 6500 millones de dólares. Estaba planeando construir otra casa, pero hasta eso parecía limitado para el amo de Silicon Valley.
Dónde no tenía límites era en su trabajo. Abundan las historias que lo describen diciéndoles con vehemencia a los empleados de Apple que un producto no era suficientemente bueno. ("Hiciste una torta preciosa", le dijo una vez a un ingeniero, antes de aclararle al pobre tipo que lamentablemente la había decorado con excremento de perro. "Hazla más pequeña y mejor", le ordenó).
No había elemento del diseño, por minúsculo que fuese, que escapara a su atención. "Hicimos que los botones que aparecen en la pantalla sean tan lindos que tendrán ganas de chuparlos", dijo sobre la interfase de Mac.
COMPETIDORES
Jobs también castigaba a sus competidores, en particular a Microsoft. La empresa de Bill Gates , que durante las décadas de 1980 y 1990 hacía parecer a Apple del tamaño de un enano, no era según Jobs de segunda, sino de cuarta categoría. Peor aún: ni siquiera competía.
"El único problema con Microsoft es que no tienen gusto alguno", dijo Jobs en una de sus típicas salidas. "No tienen el menor gusto. Y no me refiero a lo chico, sino a lo grande, en el sentido de que no se les cae una idea, que sus productos no tienen cultura".
Este tipo de comentarios despiadados no es lo que se escucha públicamente de la boca de los fundadores de Google acerca de Mark Zuckerberg, fundador de Facebook, o viceversa.
"Estamos de duelo por Steve porque no hay mucha gente apasionada y decidida como él en el mundo corporativo de hoy", dijo Jay Elliot, ex ejecutivo de Apple que ha escrito un libro sobre las lecciones que pueden aprenderse del estilo de liderazgo de Jobs. "A Jobs no lo motivaba el precio de las acciones".
Al igual que muchas de las grandes empresas tecnológicas, Apple tiene un formidable staff de relaciones públicas, pero a Jobs esto tampoco parecía limitarlo.
La gente conocía su dirección de e-mail (sjobs@apple.com) y le enviaba sus dudas y sus quejas. Los insistentes esfuerzos de una estudiante universitaria que se quejaba de no obtener respuesta de parte del personal de Relaciones Públicas de Apple, famoso por su reticencia, finalmente mereció un iracundo "Por favor, déjenos en paz".
La confianza de Jobs en sí mismo a veces podía resultar difícil de distinguir de la arrogancia o la omnipotencia. Durante una fiesta de Halloween en Apple, en los primeros años locos de la empresa, se presentó vestido de Jesús. Pero se trataba de una arrogancia templada por la fe en el poder de la tecnología para mejorar la vida de la gente.
El diario satírico The Onion supo entender con inteligencia este rasgo en su cobertura de la muerte de Jobs. El encabezado, modificado aquí para evitar una grosería, decía: "Muere el último norteamericano que sabía qué carajo estaba haciendo".
Es gracioso, pero desafiar esos sentimientos forma parte de la naturaleza profunda de Silicon Valley.
"No pretendo restarle ningún mérito, era un tipo brillante, maravilloso, que no se dejaba comprar, pero existen niveles de adulación que van más allá de sus logros", dijo Tim O'Reilly, jefe ejecutivo de Reilly Media, una editora tecnológica. "Ya vendrán nuevas revoluciones y nuevos revolucionarios".
EL IPHONE 4S, UN ÉXITO PÓSTUM
A pesar de que había cosechado críticas en su presentación, la preventa del iPhone 4S, que comenzó un día antes de la muerte de Steve Jobs, y que se rumorea que es un juego de palabras que significa "For Steve", se agotó ayer en Estados Unidos en apenas horas.
CUPERTINO, EEUU — Steve Jobs mantuvo un férreo control de Apple tras resucitar al muribundo grupo informático y conducirlo a la cima, dejando que pocos se interpusieran en el camino de su incesante búsqueda de la perfección.
La conmoción por su muerte el miércoles a los 56 años tras una batalla con el cáncer sigue resonando en todo el mundo.
Pero mientras Jobs es alabado como un genio que cambió la vida y la cultura moderna con creaciones como el iPhone y el iPad, también es recordado por ser el más duro de los empresarios, con una personalidad que también incluía un lado oscuro.
"Era como una estrella de rock, de una manera en el escenario y de otra cuando tenía un mal día", dijo Jay Elliot, vicepresidente de recursos humanos que trabajó para Jobs durante cinco años en los primeros tiempos de la compañía con sede en Cupertino, California.
"Steve era un tipo fuerte", dijo Elliot, cuyo libro "The Steve Jobs Way" fue publicado a principios de este año. "Uno tenía que estar listo para tomar su opinión y dar marcha atrás".
Jobs era conocido en el Silicon Valley como un ejecutivo despiadado que estaba en todos los detalles, tanto que la revista Forbes lo incluyó en su "Salón de la Fama de los Jefes Pendencieros".
"Tuvo una racha de crueldad", dijo el analista de Silicon Valley, Rob Enderle, al hablar de Jobs.
"Teniendo en cuenta todo el éxito, tenía un complejo de inferioridad que no se podía creer y no respondía bien al sentirse amenazado", contó.
Su reputación fue forjada con cuentos de empleados despedidos ante la menor ofensa y de nuevos contratados intimidados para probar su valía.
Según trascendidos, una vez se le pidió a Jobs que diera una charla a un equipo de Apple de bajo rendimiento, y para inspirarlos les dio un pronóstico oscuro sobre el futuro de su empleo si las cosas no cambiaban. El equipo mejoró.
Las críticas sobre su estilo de gestión suelen sacarse de contexto y se forja la leyenda, según Elliot, quien dijo que Jobs no despidió a nadie de Apple mientras él trabajó allí en recursos humanos.
Su manera categórica de enfrentar a la gente y su inclinación a seguir de cerca los proyectos buscaba lograr los mejores productos y no eran temas personales, según Elliot.
"Él sólo estaba tratando de hacer lo mejor que podía para mejorar el producto y la empresa", dijo Elliott sobre Jobs, señalando que Apple tiene una de las más bajas tasas de rotación de empleados de las empresas de tecnología.
Steve Jobs dirigió Apple con mano de hierro Por Glenn Chapman (AFP)
"Lo que pasa con Steve y su dualidad es que su lado positivo por cambiar el mundo con increíbles productos supera la negatividad que algunos encontraron".
Suele decirse que Jobs contrató a John Sculley para proporcionar "supervisión adulta" como director ejecutivo de Apple sólo para urdir un golpe en las altas esferas de la firma, que fracasó y dio lugar a que Jobs fuera expulsado de la empresa en 1985.
"Steve lloraba porque Sculley estaba arruinando a la empresa, y tenía razón", recordó Elliot, para quien la decisión de Jobs de contratar al nuevo director ejecutivo se debió a que Jobs era joven e inmaduro.
Jobs se reivindicó cuando Apple lo convocó en 1996 para liderar la empresa, lo cual le dio la oportunidad de crear el iPod, el iPhone y el iPad, y convertirla en una de las empresas más valiosas del mundo.
Aunque Jobs era un gran impulsor de Apple, era notoriamente reservado respecto a su vida personal. Algunos consideran que esta tendencia se reflejaba en la forma en que Apple difundía poco de lo que sucedía internamente.
Jobs tuvo una hija cuando apenas tenía 23 años y la dejó en la pobreza. Pasaron años antes de que la reconociera.
Steve Wozniak cuenta que lloró tras enterarse, años más tarde, de que Jobs lo había estafado en un negocio antes de que ambos fundaran Apple en un garaje de California.
Atari los había contratado a ambos para reducir el número de fichas de un juego y el ingeniero Wozniak eliminó tantas que la empresa pagó a Jobs 5.000 dólares extra por el trabajo.
Jobs le dijo a Wozniak que Atari les había pagado sólo 750 dólares, y los socios dividieron el dinero, según la historia.
"Al final del día, Steve Jobs fue una gran persona", dijo Enderle. "Muchas veces son los defectos de un diamante los que lo hacen especial".
Además de perder un visionario de carácter fuerte, el mundo ha perdido a uno de los últimos jefes categóricos de las empresas tecnológicas, dijo Elliot.
"En la industria hoy los directores ejecutivos no dicen nada... Steve decía exactamente lo que pensaba", precisó.
Focus is about saying, No. And the result of that focus is going to be some really great products where the total is much greater than the sum of the parts.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died on Wednesday at age 56. Wall Street Journal managing editor Alan Murray and editors discuss Jobs's legacy, early reactions to his death and how his showmanship changed the retail and tech landscape.
Steven P. Jobs, the Apple Inc. chairman and co-founder who pioneered the personal-computer industry and changed the way people think about technology, died Wednesday at the age of 56.
His family, in a statement released by Apple, said Mr. Jobs "died peacefully today surrounded by his family."
The company didn't specify the cause of death. Mr. Jobs had battled pancreatic cancer and several years ago received a liver transplant. In August, Mr. Jobs stepped down as chief executive, handing the reins to longtime deputy Tim Cook.
"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," Mr. Cook said in a letter to employees. "We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much."
During his more than three-decade career, Mr. Jobs transformed Silicon Valley as he helped turn the once-sleepy expanse of fruit orchards into the technology industry's innovation center. In addition to laying the groundwork for the industry alongside others like Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, Mr. Jobs proved the appeal of well-designed products over the power of technology itself and transformed the way people interact with technology.
"The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come," Mr. Gates said in a statement Wednesday.
The most productive chapter in Mr. Jobs's career occurred near the end of his life, when a nearly unbroken string of successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad changed the PC, electronics and digital-media industries. The way he marketed and sold those products through savvy advertising campaigns and Apple's retail stores helped turn the company into a pop-culture phenomenon.
At the beginning of that phase, Mr. Jobs described his philosophy as trying to make products that were at "the intersection of art and technology." In doing so, he turned Apple into the world's most valuable company with a market value of $350 billion.
Steve Jobs has been interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher a number of times over the years at the All Things D Conference. Take a look back at some of the highlights - including Jobs and Bill Gates on stage together.
After losing considerable weight in mid-2008, Mr. Jobs took a nearly six-month medical leave of absence in 2009, during which he received a liver transplant. He took another medical leave of absence in mid-January, without explanation, before stepping down as CEO.
Mr. Jobs is survived by his wife, Laurene, and four children.
Mr. Jobs turned Apple into the largest retailer of music and helped popularize computer-animated films as the financier and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which he later sold to Walt Disney Co. He was a key figure in changing the way people used the Internet and how they listened to music, watched TV shows and movies, and read books, disrupting industries in the process.
"Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started," Disney CEO Robert Iger said in a statement Wednesday.
Mr. Jobs pulled off a remarkable business comeback, returning to Apple after an 11-year absence during which he was largely written off as a has-been. He went on to revive the struggling company by introducing products such as the iMac all-in-one computer, iPod music player and iTunes digital-music store.
Beyond PCs
Apple now produces $65.2 billion a year in revenue compared with $7.1 billion in its business year ended September 1997. Apple dropped the "computer" in its name in January 2007 to underscore its expansion beyond PCs.
Although Mr. Jobs officially handed over the reins of the company to Mr. Cook, his death nevertheless raises a question for Apple of how it will sustain its success without his vision and guidance. Other companies, including Walt Disney, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., experienced some transitional woes before eventually managing to thrive after their charismatic founders passed on.
But few companies of that stature have shown such an acute dependence on their founder, or have lost the founder at the peak of his career. Several years after Mr. Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985, the company began a steady decline that saw it drift to the margins of the computer industry. That slide was reversed only after Mr. Jobs returned in 1997.
AllThingsD's Kara Swisher discusses the what the impact of Steve Jobs's death will have on Apple and whether the company will remain an innovator and market leader. Photo: Getty Images
Mr. Jobs also leaves behind many tales about his mercurial management style, such as his habit of calling employees or their ideas "dumb" when he didn't like something. He was even more combative against foes like Microsoft, Google Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. When Adobe Systems Inc. waged a campaign against Apple for not supporting Adobe's Flash video format on its iPhones and iPads in April 2010, Mr. Jobs wrote a 1,600-word essay about why the software was outdated and inadequate for mobile devices.
He maintained uncompromising standards for the company's hardware and software, demanding "insanely great" aesthetics and ease of use from the moment a shopper walked into one of Apple's stores. His attention to detail shaped some of the distinctive features of Apple's products.
Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs died on Wednesday at the age of 56. A look back at the life of an American business icon. (Photo: Getty Images)
Mr. Jobs enforced strict secrecy among employees, a strategy that he believed heightened anticipation for new products. News of his death came a day after Apple unveiled its newest device, the iPhone 4S, without him on stage.
Mr. Jobs, the adopted son of a family in California, was born on Feb. 24, 1955. A college dropout, he established his reputation early on as a tech innovator when, at 21 years old, he and friend Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Inc. in the Jobs family garage in 1976. Mr. Jobs chose the name, in part, because he was a Beatles fan and admired the group's Apple records label, according to the book "Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders" by Wall Street Journal reporter Jim Carlton.
The pair came out with the Apple II in 1977, a computer that was relatively affordable and designed for the mass market rather than for hobbyists. It went on to become one of the first commercially successful PCs, making the company $117 million in annual sales by the time of Apple's initial public offering in 1980. The IPO instantly made Mr. Jobs a multimillionaire.
Not all of Mr. Jobs's early ideas paid off. The Apple III and Lisa computers that debuted in 1980 and 1983 were flops. But the distinctive all-in-one Macintosh—foreshadowed in a TV ad inspired by George Orwell's novel "1984" that famously only aired once—would set the standard for the design of modern computer operating systems.
Even then, Mr. Jobs was a stickler for design details. Bruce Tognazzini, a former user-interface expert at Apple who joined the company in 1978, once said that Mr. Jobs was adamant that the keyboard not include "up," "down," "right," and "left" keys that allow users to move the cursor around their computer screens.
Cultivated Image
Mr. Jobs's pursuit of aesthetics sometimes bordered on the extreme. George Crow, an Apple engineer in the 1980s and again from 1998 to 2005, recalls how Mr. Jobs wanted to make even the inside of computers attractive. On the original Macintosh PC, Mr. Crow says Mr. Jobs wanted the internal wiring to be in the colors of Apple's early rainbow logo. Mr. Crow says he persuaded Mr. Jobs it was an unnecessary expense.
Even in his appearance, Mr. Jobs seemed to cultivate an image more like that of an artist than a corporate executive. In public, he rarely deviated from an outfit consisting of Levi's jeans, a black mock turtleneck and New Balance running shoes.
As Apple expanded, Mr. Jobs decided to bring in a more experienced manager to lead the company. He recruited John Sculley from PepsiCo Inc. to be Apple CEO in 1983, overcoming Mr. Sculley's initial reluctance by asking the executive if he just wanted to sell "sugar water to kids" or help change the world.
After Apple fell into a subsequent slump, a leadership struggle led to a board decision to back Mr. Sculley and fire Mr. Jobs two years later at the age of 30. "What can I say—I hired the wrong guy," Mr. Jobs brooded in a PBS documentary. "He destroyed everything I had spent 10 years working for."
Mr. Jobs then created NeXT Inc., a start-up that in 1988 introduced a black desktop computer with advanced software. The machine suffered from a high price and some key design decisions. But its operating system would eventually become a foundation for OS X, the software backbone of today's Macs, after Apple purchased NeXT for $400 million in December 1996.
In 1986, using part of his fortune from Apple, Mr. Jobs paid filmmaker George Lucas $10 million to acquire the computer-graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd. The company Mr. Jobs formed from that purchase, Pixar Animation Studios, went on to create a string of computer-animated film hits, such as "Toy Story." Mr. Jobs sold Pixar to Disney in 2006 in a $7.4 billion deal.
In Mr. Jobs's absence, Apple began foundering, and computers using Intel chips and Microsoft software became increasingly dominant. By 1997, Apple had racked up nearly $2 billion in losses in two years, its shares were at record lows and it was on its third CEO—Gil Amelio—in four years.
Eight months after the deal to buy NeXT in December 1996, Mr. Amelio was ousted and Mr. Jobs appointed interim CEO, a title that became permanent in January 2000. One former Apple employee recalls Mr. Jobs joking soon after he returned that "the lunatics have taken over the asylum and we can do anything we want."
Series of Stumbles
Mr. Jobs, who was given a salary of $1 a year along with options to Apple stock, made a series of changes. He killed the struggling Newton handheld computer and trimmed a confusing array of Mac models to a handful of systems focused on the consumer market.
In May 1998, he introduced the iMac, an unusual one-piece computer that sported a colorful translucent case. Apple launched an ad campaign featuring the phrase "Think Different," featuring photographs of creative individuals including Albert Einstein and Muppets creator Jim Henson.
While shareholders cheered the changes, Mr. Jobs flexed his power on Apple's Cupertino, Calif., campus. Within months of taking over, he replaced four of the five top executives with former NeXT underlings. He issued emails forbidding employees to bring pets to the office or to smoke, even in parking lots. He threatened to fire anyone caught leaking company documents.
Apple had stumbles during Mr. Jobs's second stint, including a cube-shaped Macintosh that failed to catch on and was scrapped in 2001. The failure was one reason Apple posted a quarterly loss and warned it would miss estimates several times in 2000 and 2001.
But big hits followed. In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod, which transformed digital music players. Apple has more than 70% market share in the market.
A key advantage was the iTunes Music Store, opened in 2003. Mr. Jobs helped persuade major record labels to sell recordings for 99 cents each. The store, which has sold more than 16 billion songs, became an incentive for people to buy iPods because, for much of its history, songs from the iTunes store could be downloaded only to Apple's music player.
Bench of Executives
At the same time, Mr. Jobs was building his bench of executives. He recruited Mr. Cook, a former Compaq Computer Corp. executive, in the late 1990s to straighten Apple's operations and promoted him over time to chief operating officer.
In 2004, Mr. Jobs had to lean on this bench when he disclosed that he had had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. Apple revealed the procedure in early August 2004, but a person familiar with the situation said Mr. Jobs first learned of the tumor during a routine abdominal scan nine months earlier. The board and Mr. Jobs said nothing to Apple shareholders as the Apple executive, during that time, dealt with the tumor through changes to his diet, the person said.
In June 2007, Mr. Jobs made another splash when Apple introduced the iPhone. Mr. Jobs was typically hands-on in the creation of the iPhone. People familiar with the matter say the former CEO was the one who made a decision to change the screen of the iPhone from plastic to glass after he unveiled the product at the Macworld trade show in 2007. The iPhone team scrambled to procure glass that would meet his standards, so the devices could be manufactured in time for the launch.
Despite skepticism about Apple's ability to enter an already competitive market dominated by the likes of Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry devices, Apple became a force in the mobile phone market, selling 92 million iPhones as of December 2010.
Last year, Mr. Jobs also unveiled the iPad tablet computer to great fanfare. Apple has sold more than 29 million iPads as buyers snapped them up. People who work closely with Mr. Jobs said the project was so important to him that he was deeply involved in its planning even while recovering from his 2009 liver transplant.
Those who knew Mr. Jobs say one reason why he was able to keep innovating was because he didn't dwell on past accomplishments and demanded that employees do the same. Hitoshi Hokamura, a former Apple employee, recalls how an old Apple I that was displayed by the company cafeteria quietly disappeared after Mr. Jobs returned in the late 1990s.
"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose," Mr. Jobs said in a commencement speech at Stanford University in June 2005, almost a year after he was diagnosed with cancer.
—Pui-Wing Tam, Don Clark and Jim Carlton contributed to this article.
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