Leading Apple With Steve Jobs: Management Lessons From a Controversial Genius

Taking Over

When I joined Apple, a remarkable man, Jef Raskin, had until recently been leading a small team of people working on developing a next-generation breakthrough product for Apple. Jef had a fascinating background. He had won a national award from the American Rocket Society when most kids his age were still learning algebra. By the time he joined Apple, he had degrees in mathematics and physics (with minors in philosophy and music), and he had held positions as an associate professor of music, assistant professor of visual arts, and even as an assistant instructor of bicycling. He had written and scored the music for a show on PBS, conducted the San Francisco Chamber Opera Company, and had a one-man show of his paintings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Jef met the two Steves when they were introducing the Apple II at the first West Coast Computer Faire and was hired soon after. Though it was well outside his area of responsibilities (he was in charge of documentation), he wrote a stream of memos about how to make the computer into a truly convenient device. He put those ideas into motion by finagling permission to assemble a small development team to build a new kind of personal computer.

Steve tried to convince Jef that the graphical user interface and the mouse in use at Xerox PARC would become the new face of computing. Jef was just as convinced that what Steve wanted would make the machine too expensive for the masses.

Though cofounder of Apple, Steve Jobs ...