7 Steve Jobs stories we learned this month

A few little known stories have emerged concerning iconic Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs in recent weeks. I thought some readers may want to take a look:

He was a responsible parent

Apple may make the world’s most in-demand Christmas presents, but Steve Jobs was not a complete technology evangelist — he strictly limited the amount of time his children got to use tech. Asked in 2010 if his own children loved the iPad, he said: “They haven’t used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” Children in the Jobs house were required to sit down at dinner and talk with the family.

His office remains

Speaking to Charlie Rose this last weekend, Apple CEO, Tim Cook said: “I literally think about him every day. His office is still left as it was,” Cook says. “His name is still on the door.”

“He stood for innovation. He stood for the simple not the complex. He knew Apple should only enter areas in which it could control the primary technology.”

His words are in your Mac

Apple has hidden the full text of Steve Jobs’ famous Stanford University commencement speech inside every Mac. Just press Command + Shift + G while in Finder to open the Go To Folder box, and paste the following:/Applications/Pages.app/Contents/Resources/

Open the file called Apple.txt and read the speech.

He was a teacher

Cook also told Charlie Rose he doesn’t think anything written so far about Steve Jobs fully captures him. “He was one of the best mentors in the world,” said Cook. “He was a great teacher. This is something that’s never written about him,” he added, explaining Jobs would work hard to try to ensure people understood what he was trying to teach them.

He was amazed by Xerox

A little-known video clip offers an eye-witness account of what happened when Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC in winter 1979 where he was first shown the graphical user interface and computer mouse. The speaker is ex-PARC scientist, Larry Tesler who says: “Steve got very excited. He was pacing around the room, occasionally looking at the screen… He was mostly taking it all in, trying to process it.”

Jobs also said: “What is going on here? You’re sitting on a gold mine! Why aren’t you doing something with this technology? You could change the world!”

The clip makes it crystal clear Apple did not “steal” the Xerox technology, instead a mutually profitable deal was reached.

He needed to be convinced to run Apple again

Jobs wasn’t going to become CEO of Apple after he rejoined the company in ’96. Instead he spoke with potential hires, including Joe Costello, now CEO of Enlightened and formerly the boss of Cadence Design Systems. Costello says that after a few hours discussing the Apple CEO position Jobs wanted him to fill, he realized Jobs had more passion for the company than anyone else. So he asked him: “Look Steve, the best way to find a person for any job is to think of the absolute best guy on the planet for that job. Who do you think is the best person in the world?”

Jobs went silent and looked to Costello and said, “I am”.

Costello pointed out that Jobs should not be recruiting for a CEO when he wanted to be CEO himself. Apple eventually gave Jobs the job and the rest is history.

The Apple watch

Work on Apple Watch development began after Jobs died, said Cook in an interview last week: “You know we started working on it after his passing, but his DNA runs through all of us,” Cook said.

I hope you have enjoyed this short collection. I believe it is possible to build a better picture of the man than we have so far.

Also read:

6 Steve Jobs stories we learned this month (July edition)