Jonathan and Steve Jobs: a good base friend, a lifetime

At Apple, he has more control over everyone except me, and no one can instruct him or intervene in him to do anything. That's what I'm saying.

--Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs underwent surgery for pancreatic tumors in July 2004. When he had just finished his first round of fighting cancer, he asked to see two men, one his wife Laurene and the other Jonathan Aif.

After 8 years of working day and night, Jonathan and jobs built a special and intimate relationship. The two of them were almost inseparable, attending various meetings, having lunch together, and, for many afternoons, studying future projects together in the studio.

After the first operation, Jobs failed to recover, and in May 2009 he left for a second operation in the Memphis of Tennessee State to undergo a liver transplant. When Jobs and his wife flew home in a private jet, Jonathan and Tim Cook waited for them at San Jose Airport. During the period of his absence, many media speculated that the company was not finished and that Apple's future development was pending. The public seems to agree that Apple's fortunes are entirely in the hands of Mr. Jobs.

Jonathan drove jobs home. On his way back from the airport, he confessed to jobs that the news report said Apple's survival depended on jobs, which made him nervous.

"I really feel miserable," Jonathan told Jobs. "He is worried about jobs ' health and the situation of the companies they love so much," he said. Jonathan Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs, said that jobs was like Apple's engine for innovation, but that view was dangerous. "As a company, that view makes us vulnerable," he said. ”

It is not surprising that Jonathan is not always noble to sacrifice himself for jobs or Apple. On another occasion, Jonathan complained that jobs often embezzled his ideas. Jonathan told Isaacson: "He's going to look at my thoughts again and say, ' That's a bad idea, it's not good, I like that idea. ' Then I'll be an audience and listen to him talk like it's his idea. I will be fanatical about where an idea originates, and even the whole computer is filled with all my ideas. So when he was praised for one of my designs, I was really miserable. ”

Still, Jonathan admits he can't have everything now without jobs. "In many other companies, great ideas and designs are often lost in the creation process," he said. If Steve Jobs had been there to support us, to work with us, to break through the layers of resistance and to turn our ideas into products, the idea of me and the whole team would have been meaningless and useless. ”

In 2011, during Jobs ' vacation (which turned out to be his last holiday), a flood of news reports claimed that Jonathan had threatened to leave Apple at the end of the 3-year stock exchange. Jonathan and his wife are reportedly trying to get their twin sons back to Britain for education. The Guardian of Britain published a news report on Jonathan's departure, titled "Apple's Worst nightmare"; The Sunday Times in London, 4, also published an article saying that Jonathan wanted to return from Cupertino to Britain's Somerset home because of a disagreement with Apple. A report suggests that Jonathan often commutes between Britain and California State.

The word "threat" was used precisely because Jonathan did not really resign. According to an unnamed friend quoted in the British news report, Jonathan "is too important for Apple to tell him clearly that the company will not keep his position for him if he returns to the UK." "It is reported that in order to consolidate the link between Jonathan and Apple, the company gave him 3 0 dollars in bonuses, and gave him a market value of 2 5 million dollars in shares." It is estimated that Jonathan's personal assets at that time were about 130 million dollars.

In retrospect, Jonathan had no intention of leaving Apple. He sold a villa in Somerset, which, although close to his parents ' house, seldom lived. Jonathan has behaved more loyal to Apple than ever. Jonathan often receives calls from other companies and headhunters, offering him a tempting opportunity to design products from cars to shoes. But he flatly denies the question of his leaving Apple. "The problem is that even if you can move me and the entire design team to another place, we're not working properly," he said. ”

August 24, 2011, Apple announced Steve Jobs resigned as CEO, but will continue to be chairman of the company. Tim Cook formally takes over the day-to-day operations of the company.

The news should not have been an accident, but people were surprised. Since January, jobs has been on sick leave and apparently very ill, and in the only few public appearances of the year he looked particularly gaunt. But even with this grim reality, it's hard to imagine what Apple would look like without Steve Jobs.

Many pundits weigh it, and they think it's better for Jonathan to take over the company's CEO position. Because he has a good public image (and cook does not): this is because he often appears in various promotional videos, on the other hand, because he won the various design awards. But few Apple watchers would think he would be the company's next nerdy even he never thought of it that way. As a former member of Jonathan's design team said about Jonathan taking over as CEO, "Jonathan doesn't care about how to run a company." He explained that Jonathan was not interested in Apple's business activities, just as he hated business activities in the same way as the Orange design company. "He just wants to focus on industrial design," the designer concludes. ”

"What I've always wanted to do is design and build, and that's what I really like to do," Jonathan told an interviewer. It's great to be able to find something you like. But it's a different thing to find something you like and be able to concentrate on practicing. ”

Indeed, as Apple's global supply chain leader, Tim Cook deserves to be a successor to the company. In just 13 years, Mr. Cook has built up a complex organization for the company, allowing it to produce extremely good products at unprecedented speed, scale and efficiency (though the product was designed by Jonathan) and make it a huge profit. Mr Cook may not have the extraordinary leadership of Mr. Jobs, but he is definitely a logistical management genius who kept the company running efficiently when jobs left Apple because of his illness. Cook also has a lot of experience in the 2004 and 2009 when Jobs was absent, he was a temporary CEO. According to Apple insiders interviewed, Mr. Cook is generally an amiable person who listens to dissent and wants to be understood by everyone, making it easier for employees to work with him because he is not as stubborn as Steve Jobs.

October 5, 2011, Jobs died, this distance he resigned only one months. "Death may be the only best invention of life," he said in a speech at Stanford University. He was 56 years old and was blown up by the people. Two days later, his funeral was held at Alta Mesa Memorial Park, with only 4 colleagues from Apple, including Vice Chairman Eddy Keyu (Eddy Cue, software Department), Keti Kotton (Katie Cotton, communication systems), Cook (CEO) and Jonathan. 10 days later, Stanford University held the Jobs memorial, though it was a private memorial service that attracted former US president Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, Bill Gates, Google CEO Larry Page, U2 lead singer Bono and News Corp CEO Rupert Celebrities, including Rupert Murdoch, came to attend. Three weeks after Mr. Jobs's death, Jonathan finally had the opportunity to mourn his mentor and friend openly. At the employee's memorial service at Apple's Cupertino Park, Jonathan delivered his most sincere (and easiest) speech for 8 minutes, paying tribute to his "best and most loyal friend", Steve Jobs, through personal anecdotes. Jonathan tells of Steve Jobs ' passion and enthusiasm, his sense of humour, and the great pleasure he shows when he does the best he can. Lectures are humorous, sometimes touching, and sometimes thought-provoking.

Jonathan's eulogy began with a narration, and he said: "Steve told me most of all, ' Hey, Jonathan, you're such a stupid idea! ' Sometimes those ideas are really stupid; sometimes those thoughts are just awful; but sometimes these words seem to take the air out of the room and make us speechless. ”

Jonathan remembers Steve Jobs ' often questioning his work, ' Is that good enough? ' he sees Jobs ' victory as "celebrating the great product of the entire human race and enjoying the thrill of defeating cynicism ..." Reject people saying hundreds of ' you can't do ' negative evaluations.

At the end of his speech, he said to the Apple employee who attended the memorial service: "We've been working together for nearly 15 years, and he still laughs at my pronunciation when I say ' aluminum '." In the last two weeks, we've been trying to find the right way to say goodbye. Finally, I just want to say, ' Thank you, Steve. Thank you for your extraordinary imagination, for uniting and inspiring all members of our illustrious community, for all that we have learned from you and for what we will learn from each other. Thank you, Steve. ’”