Steve Jobs: Glimpses of his early days

BANGALORE, INDIA: Steve Jobs was different. As they say, he was made out of a different mold. He refused to take regular classes in college because the time-table was too restrictive. He attended classes, which fancied him: calligraphy, physics, literature and electronics.

Jobs recognized the genius in his friend Steve Wozniak (Woz). Together they shaped much of the current world of computing. Jobs' genius was not in doing things himself but rather in bringing things together and understanding what makes people buy.

The two tango together on various things. Woz builds a Blue Box which makes free phone calls hooking up to the telephone company signals. Jobs insists on making it into a product. When Woz builds Apple I, the first to feature a central processing unit as we see it today; an easy mechanism to hook a keyboard and  a television set, Jobs insists that it be converted into a commodity circuit board.

Woz joins Jobs into building Apple the company, but quits Apple soon after its initial public offering to pursue his own interests.

Here are early glimpses from Jobs's business life excerpted from various books.

Where does good taste come from?

Jobs is searching for an answer to a most enigmatic question. How to take Apple II from a hobbyist market to the mass market? He comes across Intel's path-breaking print advertisement which for a change does not talk technical specs but focuses on poker chips, hamburgers and race cars — appealing to the young mass. Jobs thinks it is the single most important lesson he has learnt in his quest.

Jobs tracks down the creative agency that helped Intel's campaign. Jobs convinces an unwilling Regis McKenna by threatening to not leave the latter's office until McKenna accepts Apple as a client. The rest is history

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