Images - Steve Jobs in Boston
My Teacher Steve Jobs explores inexplicable mysteries and wild journeys. It begins with the unlikely way that I came to meet—and connect with—my childhood hero. Each time I got together with Steve, strange things happened that seemed hard to explain rationally. Every mystery drew me deeper into exploring how Steve saw his own life and what he was awakening in me. These are images from some of the times I spent with Steve in Boston.
My first connection with Steve was through this series of full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal in late 1980. In these ads, Steve described in detail his vision of the personal computer as a revolutionary new kind of tool that could amplify human potential.
On a steamy June afternoon at Applefest '81 in Boston, Steve Jobs stands next to the Apple exhibit in Boston's Park Plaza Castle. Earlier that day, Steve made an off-handed remark to me in which he prophesied a major crisis that would happen to me. The prophecy happened exactly as he predicted it would, 15 years later.
This is Steve sitting on his meditation cushion (a 'zafu' and 'zabuton'). The day I met Steve in Boston, he disappeared minutes before he was supposed to be on stage. I found him off in a corner, sitting on the floor in a half-lotus position. It was strange and oddly compelling. That day, Steve Jobs introduced me to meditation and Buddhism.
Steve and Woz returned to Boston to keynote Applefest '82. A few hours after their speech, we had a press dinner at the most expensive restaurant in Boston. In the middle of dinner, Steve Jobs suddenly stood up and announced to the entire restaurant: "Jonathan is 19. He's single and we need to find him a girlfriend!" From a nearby table a well-healed couple yelled out: "Oh, oh, our daughter is available!"
Steve made the first public showing of Macintosh at The Boston Computer Society's January '84 General Meeting. That night may have been the beginning of Steve's romance with Hollywood. He spent $60,000 to hire a top Hollywood production company to orchestrate the multimedia effects.
Steve returned again to Boston in 1987 to introduce the NeXT Cube to Boston Computer Society members at Boston's Symphony Hall. Working with NeXT on the event was one of the worst experiences of my life. When I told Steve about some of the disgraceful things his people had done, he replied in a biting, caustic voice: "You know, Jonathan, you can be an ANAL RETENTIVE JERK sometimes!"
See also: Vignettes