Steve Jobs -- The untold tales
Friends and colleagues shed a light on Jobs by revealing some of their most indelible moments with the late Apple leader, via Forbes magazine.
Steve Jobs left strong impressions on the people he knew, and some of them have shared those impressions in the latest issue of Forbes.
Stories about meetings and encounters with Jobs are always intriguing owing to the multifaceted personality of the man.
This Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the death of the Apple leader, prompting the magazine to publish some of the "untold" tales about Jobs as related by friends and colleagues.
Web browser guru and now venture capitalist Marc Andreessen related a story in which Jobs showed him a prototype of the first iPhone in 2006. After playing with the phone, Andreessen asked Jobs if he thought users might have a problem typing on the screen without a physical keyboard. With a piercing look, Jobs merely said: "They'll get used to it."
Jobs and Next software engineer Randy Adams both owned Porsches at a time that Next was looking for venture capital. One day, Jobs told Adams that they had to hide the Porsches. When Adams asked why, Jobs said that Ross Perot, who was thinking of investing in the company, was stopping by for a visit. But Jobs didn't want Perot to think Next had a lot of money. Hiding the cars must have worked, according to Forbes, since Perot invested $20 million in the company in 1987.
Though often typecast as unfeeling, Jobs had a softer side and seemed to instinctively know how to help people in need.
Venture capitalist Heidi Roizen related one tale in which she was on a business trip when told that her father had passed away. As Jobs called her to discuss a deal, she informed him of her father's death. Immediately, Jobs told her to come home and said he would be right over.
According to Roizen, Jobs spent a couple of hours getting her to talk about her father and share her grief. Jobs' mother had died a few months before, so she believes he was especially "attuned to how I felt and what I needed to talk about. I will always remember and appreciate what an incredible thing he did for me in helping me grieve."
Other memories of Jobs can be found in Forbes' online edition and in the magazine's October 22 print issue.