Great to be here. Really nice to see all of these faces. Coauthoring your book about anyone would be a challenge but you guys are managed to produce an amazing an command amazing book about steve jobs working together command i want to ask you how you got started on this and how it all worked out. Well, we worked together back at Fortune Magazine my edited a lot of the stories about steve back in the late 90s and early 2,000s. And then i took a detour and went to Entertainment Weekly and now we became Close Friends and stayed in touch. We started working on a story for fast company. He called me up and said i have all these tapes that i just found. Transcribe them. So we did not know what they were. We went back and got them transcribe and converted to digital. It was built around what had happened to accept and take the time of you will she said, dont. And so we said, okay we started working on the article and then i was at my daughter and son softball game and i called kathy could cure the valley who had worked with us at fortune. This is the way it works. I totally forgot to do any puerto rico for this issue. It was coming out on monday. And so on monday the story went out to ten people. By wednesday vietnam and all these other source of. We wrote a book proposal in half an hour and on friday we had a contract. And it was clearly more than one publisher. I cant remember how many it was. How much did you have . How many interviews had you done . I have roughly 50 cassettes just for steve. And some of those a a couple of them to cover a single interview. Others were just one per interview. And i just these over the years. I did not record every time i talked to him. He spoke a lot of the phone spontaneously for various reasons. They were considered interviews, so i did not record the car but i have forgotten just how often we would talk at length. I i would go into his office and bring the tape recorder and plop it down. And i sort of lost track of how many of these i had. It sort of makes sense. And interesting. He did not mind me recording. Piazza know my tape recorder really well. He do with the pause button was. And so there was something he did not want me to accident where people. He would put the two have hit the pause button and start telling me a story whatever it would be that he did not want other people to here. Can i unlock the pause button to make sure he would do it himself. All clear on whether it was off the record. It was not a game, but it was something, he smiled when he did. It was one of the things. You are an archivist stream. Very proud of the fact that you that archive. It is not part of the record. Thank you for doing that. I am glad that i found them. Talk about, if you would the 1st time you encountered steve jobs, the very 1st time. The very 1st time i had any encounter with them and the night before meeting was on the job of trying to write about computers of your and they all told these were stories about this guy that was really kind of a difficult interview. Where your flak jacket. Not that absurd. I had done that before in latin america. At any rate. So i went down there. I was apprehensive younger than me by about a year. And not only did his reputation preceded them •ellipsis. Interview somebody my own age he is already had no space on Time Magazine much less the reputation he had been difficult. I was kind of nervous. A few other people around all the time. Started interviewing me. [laughter] and that took about 20 minutes before maybe a little bit about what he was talking about. It was i wont call it cordial because we did not know each other yet. He let me know what he wanted me to know and extracted from the what he wanted to know about me. And that is the opening then yet which is a wonderful way to begin. I want to ask you about the cooperation you got the before i do i want to show everyone here in the audience the picture which is a very young steve jobs. You talk about this in the book. This is an important and employee picnic in 1987. Steve was trying to in the early days. Once year he would put on a great familystyle picnic for everyone. A nice thing that he did. He hired a family circus. One of the other things they serve the dogs. Everyone knows the steve is a vegan level we had hot dogs and sack races in those kinds of things. So he really enjoyed this. I could see how this was a different kind of company he was starting. So he was doing there. We just sat there. Well, the kids played, the circus performed an allout. I like this because you both shared with us a number of photographs that you assembled, many of which are in the book but this is just emblematic of a theme that comes up again and again, your personal relationship which gets reflected throughout the narrative. You guys have the extraordinary cooperation of a very tight circle of people who really have not spoken very much to anyone but any of this. Can you talk a bit about that . How it happened and how it influenced you . When we started out apple did not want anything to do with us. We started the project about nine months after stephen died. Cooperated with one book. As far as i could tell the time they were done cooperating of books. And you know, i only met jobs twice once in a Group Setting and once he had that little barn in downtown palo alto. And the 1st thing that happened was we started interviewing around apple, of course, people who had worked for him at apple the 1st time around. And the thing that really surprised me and was sort of the beginning of my education in this process was to hear these people talking about him in the present tense two out of the three 1st people we interviewed cry during the interview. We had we had not set out to try to get everyone we interviewed to try to cry. No. And to me it was really interesting. The reason i wanted to do the project from the beginning was that he seemed like a more complicated rounded guy that have been portrayed over the years. And even when i was editing brent from far away is not a camino, on the one hand commit he would talk about what they talked about. On the other hand, you know where we get a call on my boss we get a call usually from steve complaining that the photo, complaining about some language, complaining about the timing of the publication, complaining about why we were not doing a story. And those things sort of reinforce the stereotype for me. So that was the beginning of inspiration for me. And we didnt hear and all of a sudden we get interviews in a week. And those interviews were really great. They came after our actual deadline for the manuscript had passed. Never missed a deadline a deadline ever. No, no, we are really good at meeting deadlines. We were dragging our feet a little bit on purpose just kind of hoping. Because they had told us. I think that it was october 2013 that, yeah we are considering this. Enough to each one of these people directly so i can see what you want to ask. And so i sent that, never heard word. And in april and we were supposed to be done. We talked to all for the employees who went to steves private burial service. And at that time we had really come in some ways i thought we had double we set out to do you know thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] they know that the process of creating and managing a business is as much art as science. Very creative process. Unpredictable jobs that popped up. Its kind of like playing a jazz solo. After the context. The situation is different. Have to react to that. A story to how people learn how to do that. And steve struck me as somebody whos a good and zag at unpredictable times. As he got older he seems to be doing it at just the right time. You had to have been something that he learned besides being a bully besides being golden times where he really had learned something about motivating people and making decisions on technologies, products and how to promote them. And many, many different decisions like this, very sophisticated. How this guys mind worked when it came to dealing with business challenges. And coincidentally when we did get to talk to apple this is exactly what tim cook was telling us over the last few years much more interested in letting people around him know the why of what he did. He wanted people to learn why he did these things not just how he did the decisions but why because he thought that is what needs to be replicated. It was unique and he thought that something that can be imparted to others. It turned out to be a nice coincidence. Rick and rick and i were thinking a exactly these terms. Sitting there telling us fascinated. These postmoderns are not just great decisions but mistakes. Really methodically attacked and so that confirmed to me that we were right. This guy was more sophisticated as a businessman who learned and developed than most people thought. The book unfolds a tremendously rapid pace. I am arbitrarily for the purpose of tonights conversation divided up into four chapters or four segments, if you will. The 1st is his stormy last seven years during his 1st tour of duty at apple command in the wilderness years, your phrase, from 1985 until 1997 which turns out to be a key part, the focus of the book that brief timeframe, just trying to say that was company. That explosive decade. So let me explore those. Were going to spend the least amount of time in the 1st one. That has been so well documented. It is a challenge for us has writers, what to do. Because we both i think as writers really want people to get hooked and dive into this story and to be able to read this as a story, something you can sit down and enjoy. And you know brent met steve in 1986. Eightysix. 86, right. So he missed the 1st apple years, and there has been so much written about those years going back to you know, mike morris who wrote a wonderful book. The little kingdom. The whole kingdom. So we really wrestled with that. And at one time we even begin the book in 1986 and realized and showing how he changed the more we reportedly realized you could look at decisions made at apple and what had happened with teams apple and see parallels in the later years. And so it was very useful in terms of sort of setting up you know, you had to know where he started as a manager. It was fascinating. Quite terrible in many ways. This great phrase you used, tyrant savant. [laughter] the thing that i came to understand was, you know he was really brilliant at rallying a smart people for one project for a few months, and if that project started to not pan out he would walk away. And, you know, and even with the mac you know it came out, underpowered when it came out only became a real you know, it was a brilliant debut, showmanship when he introduced it, and then making it into a product that started selling and became the mainstay. So once you dig in their it is sort of fascinating to watch. Both of us have been a long time looking at how people run companies. And he made many mistakes. We all say steve jobs was ask. Well he was asked in 1983 and why in 2005. Those early years, you can really see the failures clearly. We talked a lot about this as we were trying to lay out the book. The big question sort of a philosophical one that we talked about together what is changed . How do people really change . Do they really change . You know are they completely different . After you think about it a while, zero, no, you cannot change stripes for spots. You are who you are and you have the strength to you have. And you do have blind spots and weaknesses that you need to contend with. Change is managing how those affect your performance and make more use of what you are good at and minimize or mitigate the things that get you in the trouble if you can. That, to me, is what is what growth is. Also some people call it maturity, but we finally realize, yeah, steve changed, but it is not like he changed his hair color or he changed his shirt which he did but it was really more that you could really see how he learned how to rein in some of the overwrought tendencies and make people make it easier for people to work with it. Phrases that came up along the way. Daniel talked about charismatic leadership. Jim collins talked about jobs initially as a leader with a thousand followers. And jobs changed from that immature and matured significantly. The charismatic leadership part was always there. It it was just a question of how he adapted, how he changed how he was more effective in that way over the years. Lets talk about one of the major changes that you go through that time after he leaves apple trying to do to pretty superhuman things. Build a whole knew computer company, and the other is give birth to pixar. So what is your theory about why he insisted on trying to do both of those things at the same time. Well, some of it is circumstantial. He likes the idea of working with the team the turned and the pixar long before he left apple. By law, i mean, it was the spring of 1985 that he 1st went and took a look and talked to george lucas about it. George lucas iterate raise money for personal reasons. Was trying to figure out what parts. He didnt really need it. But he knew it was kind of special. And, you know, steve did have a good thing like that. And so after he left apple it turned out a couple of other deals the lucas and tried to drive for the group that fell through. Steve heard about it and went back again. Nothing if not a great negotiator. He managed to pry it loose. So that as if he thought he needed to do that. He did not he did not want to let it slip through his fingers. Figure out something and he often knew he would not have to manage is completely. Perfectly capable of managing themselves to some extent. Basically. Yes. He had to accept that. Well, he really learned to. Yes. Do you think he did that willingly at that time in his career . Zero, no. I think he did all sorts of things. A Business Plan when they were going to sell medical Imaging Equipment and hired a whole slew of sales guys to go into hospitals, and they had to fire them i think, two years after the hired in. Things were intertwined with the desire to serve the education mark which is what he said he wanted to do. But we wanted to create a box that no body could create and outdo everybody. And you know it was just sort of you know it was fascinating. It grew really frustrating for all of the people from apple who moved over next to him. I think everybody eventually left. I was struck, brent, by the number of interviews you quoted in that section. And how many times he is referring to apple. It seems like in almost every interview as you are talking about it he is referring back to apple or comparing something being done with something apple is doing. That is his only reference point. I dont think he was just obsessed but it is all he knew. This is the thing that people forget about steve. He got out and spent a year or half a year in college. He went to india. He worked for atar i. This was idea of it. I think by default that is what he would compare things to. The cover photo was taken by doug menu and he has this book fearless genius out with a lot of photos from that period. I noticed the caption on one of them where jobs is out in the field with a soccer ball is steve trying to be human. Steve playing human at that point which is harsh. But there is it is as if you know, the apple period happened in this intense rush. Those years were crazy. And he got to the next it was like that was where he could try out being a leader and trying out being a real leader. He was ceo of apple for two months and he kept budding up against reality. We interviewed scott mcnelly which is always fun. Who he was competing against . Who he was competing against and he said they were never worried about them because they understood the station market better than jobs. I want to talk about two pretty transformational relationships steve had. The first is with ed capnel. We have a picture with ed. He is probably one of the most amazing Business Executives in america who is so obscure. He is a fellow at the museum. I will say that. He was the ceo of pixar. And you talk about the experience that steve had with pixer and the relationship he had in with cat in particular and you write without those lessons he learned there, there would have been no second great act at apple. Can you talk about this relationship and how it shaped him . I think that is why the thing about it in this book is this is the first book we have done. I never want to work on a book that is not about someone fascinating. He finished the book and are trying to figure it out in some ways. If you look at the intersection of what happened at next and pixer. Over at pixar he is trying to be a leader and professional leader next and he talked serious nonsense during those years about what it meant to be a ceo. I look back at brents notes and stories from the time and he is talking about president noraga and what he did. And the thing is over here he is trying to do it on all his own. And over at pixar he cannot do it on his own because there was a great culture there where they survived very difficult years. They had missed out on a bunch of different possibilities for their computing. He was held at bay. He saw a manager who was patience a manager who successfully managed an incredible and creative team. Steve had an amazing team at next and an Amazing Group of creative people. But he could excite them but couldnt bring them together as a group and make steady progress. Camel knew how to do that and held them together. And then he saw the animators make toy story and that was a long project of sort of you know, all kinds of dead ends. He knows they shutdown the movie for two months at one point, burke wanted a different approach and this is again camel saying at some point all of our movies suck. And he learned how to do that. And that is what you see when he goes back. He had never ever been exposed boy any previous and mentor to that long term patience and success. There is a group per that came from the way they respected and worked together and the way the work was divided at pixar. In most industries this is a band of gypsies who come together, fight together make a movie and scatter to the wind. This was a different process all together and making an animated movie you edit it first then you make it. It is a discipline process. It really benefits from doing it over and over again. And ed was really good at keeping these people together and getting through the nightmarish process of working for four years on one of these things. And going up and down and up and down and coming out the other end. And then turning around and doing it again. This was huge epiphepiphany you saw back at apple and itunes was the beginning of it. Where they would stand on their shoulders each step of the way and it was very much like what pixar did. So camel is the patience patient self aware ceo he is learning from. And the relationship from jobs and john lasseder was a tender relationship as well. This is a 2005 oscars where pix pixar is winning the oscar for the incredibles. You can see steve photo bombings the entire group there in the back. That is not a photo we could have published in the past. I want to talk a bit about the