It sounded like something Jobs would say (and had said), but the press dubbed it “the Cook doctrine.” Jobs was rankled and deeply depressed, especially about the last line. He didn’t know whether to be proud or hurt that it might be true. There was talk that he might step aside and become chairman rather than CEO. That made him all the more motivated to get out of his bed, overcome the pain, and start taking his restorative long walks again.
A board meeting was scheduled a few days after he returned, and Jobs surprised everyone by making an appearance. He ambled in and was able to stay for most of the meeting. By early June he was holding daily meetings at his house, and by the end of the month he was back at work.
Would he now, after facing death, be more mellow? His colleagues quickly got an answer. On his first day back, he startled his top team by throwing a series of tantrums. He ripped apart people he had not seen for six months, tore up some marketing plans, and chewed out a couple of people whose work he found shoddy. But what was truly telling was the pronouncement he made to a couple of friends late that afternoon. “I had the greatest time being back today,” he said. “I can’t believe how creative I’m feeling, and how the whole team is.” Tim Cook took it in stride. “I’ve never seen Steve hold back from expressing his view or passion,” he later said. “But that was good.”
Friends noted that Jobs had retained his feistiness. During his recuperation he signed up for Comcast’s high-definition cable service, and one day he called Brian Roberts, who ran the company. “I thought he was calling to say something nice about it,” Roberts recalled. “Instead, he told me ‘It sucks.’” But Andy Hertzfeld noticed that, beneath the gruffness, Jobs had become more honest. “Before, if you asked Steve for a favor, he might do the exact opposite,” Hertzfeld said. “That was the perversity in his nature. Now he actually tries to be helpful.”
His public return came on September 9, when he took the stage at the company’s regular fall music event. He got a standing ovation that lasted almost a minute, then he opened on an unusually personal note by mentioning that he was the recipient of a liver donation. “I wouldn’t be here without such generosity,” he said, “so I hope all of us can be as generous and elect to become organ donors.” After a moment of exultation—“I’m vertical, I’m back at Apple, and I’m loving every day of it”—he unveiled the new line of iPod Nanos, with video cameras, in nine different colors of anodized aluminum.
By the beginning of 2010 he had recovered most of his strength, and he threw himself back into work for what would be one of his, and Apple’s, most productive years. He had hit two consecutive home runs since launching Apple’s digital hub strategy: the iPod and the iPhone. Now he was going to swing for another.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THE iPAD
Into the Post-PC Era
Back in 2002, Jobs had been annoyed by the Microsoft engineer who kept proselytizing about the tablet computer software he had developed, which allowed users to input information on the screen with a stylus or pen. A few manufacturers released tablet PCs that year using the software, but none made a dent in the universe. Jobs had been eager to show how it should be done right—no stylus!—but when he saw the multi-touch technology that Apple was developing, he had decided to use it first to make an iPhone.
In the meantime, the tablet idea was percolating within the Macintosh hardware group. “We have no plans to make a tablet,” Jobs declared in an interview with Walt Mossberg in May 2003. “It turns out people want keyboards. Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already.” Like his statement about having a “hormone imbalance,” that was misleading; at most of his annual Top 100 retreats, the tablet was among the future projects discussed. “We showed the idea off at many of these retreats, because Steve never lost his desire to do a tablet,” Phil Schiller recalled.
The tablet project got a boost in 2007 when Jobs was considering ideas for a low-cost netbook computer. At an executive team brainstorming session one Monday, Ive asked why it needed a keyboard hinged to the screen; that was expensive and bulky. Put the keyboard on the screen using a multi-touch interface, he suggested. Jobs agreed. So the resources were directed to revving up the tablet project rather than designing a netbook.
The process began with Jobs and Ive figuring out the right screen size. They had twenty models made—all rounded rectangles, of course—in slightly varying sizes and aspect ratios. Ive laid them out on a table in the design studio, and in the afternoon they would lift the velvet cloth hiding them and play with them. “That’s how we nailed what the screen size was,” Ive said.