10 Unusual things I did not know about Steve Jobs

10 Unusual things I did not know about Steve Jobs


I stood next to Steve Jobs in 1989 and it was close to that thing I ever felt to being gay . The guy was incredibly wealthy , good looking enough to make any girl , a nerd super- rockstar who had just convinced my school , a number of NeXT machines (which , incidentally, is in fact the best machines were programmed to get buy at the time) , and I just wanted him to be . I wanted him to be , since I had the Apple II + as a kid. Since I stole Ultima II , Castle Wolfenstein , and half a dozen other games that my friends and I then tear each other and pretend to be sick so we could stay home and play all day .

I do not care about Apple stock . (Well, I do not think this is the first trillion ) . Or his business success . This is boring . The only thing that matters to me is how Steve Jobs the greatest artist who ever lived. You only get an artist to be so by the head by horrible , ugly, mistakes, by different, so that the people will never be able to understand all the things in your life . By default, fraud , lies, with every hate you, and come out the other side with a little more wisdom than others.



Thus , 10 of the unusual things I do not know about Steve Jobs .

1) Nature versus nurture . His sister is Mona Simpson but he did not until he was an adult . Mona Simpson was one of my favorite writers from the late 80s. His first novel , Anywhere But Here , was about her relationship with her ​​parents. Which , ironically, was Steve Jobs parents. But since Steve Jobs was adopted (see below) , they did not know they were brother and sister until the 90s when it was found. This is proof ( to some extent ) the nature versus nurture argument. Two kids , without knowing they were brother and sister , both . A unique sensibility of life on this planet , become completely different approaches to the best artists in the world And for me it was great that I was a fan of both without realizing ( even before they realized) that they were related.



2) The name of his father, Abdulfattah Jandali . If you ask me what was the name of the father of Steve Jobs, that I never in a year tens would have thought that and that Steve Jobs biologically was half Syrian Muslim . For some reason I thought he was a Jew. Maybe because I wanted to be him so I projected my own background onto him. His parents were two students who I guess did not know if they are ready for a child were so put the adoption and then a few years later had another kid ( see above). So I did not know he was adopted . The only requirement for the biological parents were adopted by two college educated people . But the couple that adopted him lied at first and turned out not to be college educated ( the mom was not the high school diploma ) if the agreement almost fell through until they promised to send Steve to college . A promise they could not keep ( see below). So despite many layers of lies and broken promises , all went well in the end. People can have a lot of trouble to have such expectations and concerns too ambitious in the first place .

3) He made the "Breakout " do If there's one thing that I loved on the Apple II + was almost as much as the games are playing Breakout on my first-generation Atari ( I do not remember the Atari 2600 ? ) And then in small groups on every version of my Blackberry since 2000. If he had never done anything else in life and I met him and he told me : "I'm the guy who made ​​Breakout" , I would have said , "You are the greatest genius of the last 100 years . " It's funny , how things happen . He went from Atari to form Apple d . Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari , went to form the largest restaurant chain in the history of mankind : Chuck E. Cheese .



4) He denied paternity of his first child , claiming he was sterile . The other was to increase the child 's first use of welfare checks. I have no judgment at all . The education of children is difficult. And if you feel a child like this enormous energy and creativity that you will have for the world to be in a misguided ... little baby ( parents Steve Jobs must have felt so . Like father, like son ) . Heck, I originally wanted my first child to be abandoned . But people change , mature, grow . Eventually Jobs became a good father. And that's what counts in the end . Much worse if it was the opposite. I did not know this either , that the Lisa computer (the " Apple III " ) was named after this first child.

5 ) This is a pescetarian . In other words , he eats fish but no other meat. And he eats anything else a vegetarian eats ( including eggs and dairy) . It turns out that if you compare with regular meat eaters pescetarians a 34 % less chance of dying from heart disease. And if you compare vegetarians with meat eaters , they only have 20 % less chance of dying from heart disease. I think that from now on I will be a pescetarian , just because Steve Jobs is . Except when I was in Argentina. In Argentina , you have to eat steak. Ted Danson and Mary Tyler Moore consider pescetarians . Somehow even the world " pescetarian " seems like it was invented in California.

6) There is no money for charitable purposes. And when he became CEO of Apple , he stopped all of their philanthropic programs. He said : .. " Wait until we are profitable " Now they are profitable and sitting on $ 40bb cash and philanthropy but I actually think Jobs is probably the most charitable guy the planet . Rather than kill the mosquitoes in Africa ( Bill Gates is already clear that up) , Jobs has put his energy into massively improving quality of life with all its inventions. People think contractors need one days " to give back. " That's not true. They were already in the office. Check out the entire ecosystem iPod / Mac / iPhone / Disney and ask how many lives have directly benefited ( because they were hired ) or indirectly ( because they use products to improve their quality of life. ) As far as I know , has not Jobs never commented about his thoughts on love . Good for him . as the CEO of a Fortune 10 company (now) told me one day when I had my hand for a charitable website , " Screw charity! "

7) He lied to Steve Wozniak . If they were made Breakout for Atari Wozniak and Jobs would split the pay 50-50. Atari gave Jobs $ 5000 to do the job. He told Wozniak he got $ 700 for winning $ Wozniak 350th Again, no judgment . Young people do things. Show me someone who he was honest from the day he was born, and I 'll show you a liar says. His . Caused by errors, struggles with finding out where your real limits of life are that you can really know where the boundaries are

8) There is a Zen Buddhist. He even thought become joining a monastery and a monk. His guru , a Zen monk , he and his wife married . When I go through some of my hardest times my only relief was sitting with a Zen group. Trying to calm the mind in order to break with the onslaught of non-stop pain that was there trying to cope . The interesting thing about Jobs being aa Zen Buddhist is that most people think that serious Buddhism and one of the richest people in the world are in conflict . Is not Buddhism about non-attachment ? You do not Buddha himself leave his riches and family behind?

But the answer is "no." To pursue its normal passions and the results, but just not very attached to these results . To be happy , regardless of the outcome . A great story is the Zen master and his student walking by a river. A prostitute was there and needed to be focused on the river. The Zen master picked her up and carried her across the river and then put it down . Then the master and student is continued. A few hours later the student was so agitated he finally had to ask , "Master, how can you touch and help that prostitute This is against what we believe ! " And the Lord said : "I left the river Why have you always wear . " ?



9) He did not want to go to college . In fact , I did not know this departure. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are the famous college dropouts that I knew . But apparently Steve Jobs went to Reed College for one semester , and then abandoned. I guess you do not need college to program computers, make computers build businesses , make movies , manage people, etc. (Of course you can see all my other topic , why kids should not go to college )

10) psychedelics. Steve Jobs used LSD at least once when he was younger. In fact, he said about the experience, he " was one of the two or three most important things that I've done things in my life . " Apple's slogan for many years was "Think Different . " Maybe with a drug that the normal reference snapped taught him to look at the problems of such a unique perspective. I do not think LSD is for everyone, but if you had to combine it with the innate genius of the man, in addition to the many adventures he experienced more Zen Buddhism and all other things, especially is quite possible , in addition to the many inventions it is able to produce .



The story of Steve Jobs is filled with nuance and ambiguity. People learn from Steve Jobs, its easy commercial success. Yes , he started Apple in a garage. Yes , he started Pixar and almost went bankrupt with him. Yes , he started and sold Next and he was fired as CEO of Apple , and blah blah blah . But none of this can ever explain the man behind the genius. None of this will explain all the products he invented that we use today . None of this is to talk about the iPad , Toy Story, the Mac Air , Apple II +, etc. Success of a man be truly understood only if we count his tears. And unfortunately, in the case of Steve Jobs, it is a task that is impossible.