Steve looks a little distracted, but really he is just concentrating on the monitor in the front row of the auditorium which shows his next slide.

*National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Chicago – June 2001.

The presentation was in the small theatre in the Pioneer building. I’d guess it could seat 175 people. The setup was relatively simple, with one G4 at a small desk and a DVD player that Steve could use to play a finished DVD created with iDVD.

The stage is set for Steve

The DVD player turned out to be a bit of a problem. We normally used Sony DVD players for Steve’s demos (because they were compact, good looking, and he liked the layout of the remote control). The crew had everything calibrated to match the component outputs of that particular player. As you might guess, using a Sony DVD player in a presentation at Pioneer’s DVD engineering facility could be embarassing for everyone, so we asked Pioneer to provide one of theirs. They happily obliged, but the units they had available had only s-video outputs. This required the crew to jump through a few technical hoops to get the image to look good on the projector. You can see the Pioneer player on the desk, next to the Evian.

This was just two days before MacWorld Tokyo, so Steve used the Japanese sample movies which had been prepared for his keynote. Otherwise it was pretty much the same demo as he had done in San Francisco a few weeks earlier. My role was to make sure the iDVD system was set up properly, to burn the sample DVDs, and as always, to be there in case there were any problems.

The room is ready

The small room with its low stage really allowed Steve to connect with the audience, even though most of them spoke no English. (The devices you see on the chairs were infrared audio receivers through which the audience could hear the Japanese translation of the presentation.) Steve was very relaxed and the demos went off without a hitch. In spite of the language barrier, the crowd was extremely enthusiastic. There were very vigorous applause at several points in the presentation, which is highly unusual for a Japanese audience. Typically applause are quite subdued. (I’ll cover this point a bit more in future segment where I talk about my presentation in the MacWorld Tokyo keynote.) I attribute this rare show of emotions to the fact that we had a room full of engineers who were being told by Steve Jobs, in person, how Apple was going to take the technology which they personally invented and spread it around the world. It was great fun to see.

The Ultimate Macintosh Collectible is Born
After the presentation Steve took questions from the audience. A young Pioneer engineer stood up and asked Steve if he would autograph his new Titanium PowerBook…Steve was totally shocked that this person actually had one, because they had just been announced a few weeks earlier, and only just started shipping. Initially Steve didn’t want to sign it, saying it would ruin the beautiful exterior of the PowerBook. But without skipping a beat, he popped out the PowerBook’s battery and signed inside the battery compartment. The crowd was greatly pleased by this gesture. I bet that TiBook would fetch a nice price on eBay!

A Glimpse of the Future
Before leaving we were given a tour of the facilty by the president of Pioneer, who was especially proud to show us the very latest thing out of their labs. It was a new kind of optical disc that used a newly developed blue laser to store 20GB on each layer. He predicted that it would become the next generation DVD (something that may actually happen any day now.)

As a parting gift, the president gave Steve another bit of new technology: a pair of 60-inch plasma displays with touch-sensitive surfaces which could communicate over a network. They functioned like a kind of remote control white board, where anything drawn on one display would be reproduced on the other.

After getting the main computer configured the way Steve wanted it, we’d use target disk mode to clone the whole thing to the backup computer. The two computers were connected to a single monitor through a KVM switch, then tucked inside the pedestal where they are powered by an uninteruptible power supply, of course. (the second monitor shown here was just for setup.)

When the CEO of Cadbury announces a new line of truffles or speaks at a conference, or Nike introduces a new kind of air-cushioned running shoe, you might expect to see it covered on page 47 of some specialized magazines, then quickly forgotten. But next Tuesday a chief executive will stand up and announce something, and within minutes it’ll be examined in minute detail all across the Web and on stockbrokers’ computers. It’ll be in newspapers. They’ll talk about it for months.

That chief executive is Steve Jobs, and I know why that speech makes an impact. To a casual observer these presentations appear to be just a guy in a black shirt and blue jeans talking about some new technology products. But they are in fact an incredibly complex and sophisticated blend of sales pitch, product demonstration, and corporate cheerleading, with a dash of religious revival thrown in for good measure. They represent weeks of work, precise orchestration, and intense pressure for scores of people who collectively make up the ‘man behind the curtain’. I know, because I’ve been there, first as part of the preparation team and later on stage with Steve.

Objectively, Apple Computer is a mid-sized company with a tiny share of its primary market. Apple Macintoshes are only rarely seen in corporate environments, and most software companies don’t even offer Apple-compatible versions of their products. To put it another way, Apple is just bit larger than Cadbury-Schweppes and about the same size as Nike or Marks and Spencer in terms of annual sales.

Such comparisons come up short in trying to describe Apple’s place in the world of business, because they leave out a key factor: Steve Jobs. That’s something only one other company in the world – the filmmaker Pixar – can claim. He’s the closest thing to a rock star you’ll find in the world of business.

When Apple announces something new, people pay attention. This is due, in large measure, to Steve Jobs and the way he delivers Apple’s messages to the world. His preferred method of making major product announcements is at one of his public presentations, or ‘keynotes’ as they are called inside the company.

Steve starts his preparation for a keynote many weeks in advance, personally reviewing all the products and technologies he might include. Although the development and release schedules for new products are set far in advance, he still has to satisfy himself that the chosen products are keynote-ready. For software, this can be hard to decide: the engineering work is usually still underway, so he will make a preliminary determination based on seeing unfinished software. More than once this has caused some tense moments in rehearsal when programs haven’t behaved under the harsh glare of a public demo.

Baptism by Fire
My first experience of this preparation came in the runup to the Macworld Expo keynote of January 2001, which was to include new Macs able to burn DVDs – then an amazing capability. Steve wanted to show off the new consumer-oriented software, called iDVD, that could do it. As I was the product manager for Apple’s DVD software, I had to organise everything that Steve would need for his demo.

Apple’s has a well-deserved reputation for simplifying complex things. Steve’s demos mirror that: their simple appearance belies the underlying sophistication.

In the case of iDVD, the team and I ultimately spent hundreds of hours preparing for a segment that lasted about five minutes. Several weeks earlier Steve summoned me to demo the software, and highlight what I thought were its most interesting aspects. Of course he already knew most of this, having been intimately involved with its creation, but the process was still useful to distill the message. He used the key points from these demos to mold his overall presentation and decide how much time and emphasis each product would get. But though the general content of each keynote is set weeks ahead, I have seen both small and large changes made even during the final rehearsal.

Next came the task of finding suitable sample material. My team was given the task of locating locate movies, photos and music to be used when he created his sample DVD on stage. Most companies would just choose some clipart or hire a video producer to make some simulated ‘home movies’. Steve prefers real people’s photos and home movies. He wanted material that looked great, yet did not seem impossible for an average person to achieve. We called on everyone we knew at Apple to submit their best home movies and snapshots. Before long we had an amazing collection of fun, cool and heartwarming videos and photos. My team picked the best and confidently presented them to Steve. True to his reputation as a perfectionist, he hated most of them. We repeated that process several times before he was satisfied. At the time I thought he was being unreasonable; but I ultimately had to admit the material we ended up with was much better than we had begun with.

Working on the iDVD demo

Then came the process of the demo itself: what precise steps Steve should follow, whether the program should already be running on the computer, what sample movies to play, everything. The aim, as always, was to demonstrate how powerful, yet simple it was.

With the demo set, my role was to stand by in case of technical problems with the software, or if Steve wanted to change anything. This gave me the opportunity to observe what was going on around me. The big keynotes require a very large crew with separate teams for each major task. One prepares the room to seat several thousand people. Another group builds the stage with its motorised pedestals, risers, trap doors, and so forth. A third manages the stage lighting, audio and effects.

Yet another sets up and calibrates the state-of-the-art projection systems (complete with redundant backup systems), and a huge remote video truck parked outside has its own crew handling video feeds for the webcasts and playback of any video needed during the show. Then there are the people who set up all the computers used in the keynote, each with at least one backup that can be instantly brought online with the flick of a switch.

And of course there’s the secrecy. The impact of Steve’s presentations depends on surprise; so once the rehearsals begin, security people help keep the curious out and the secrets secret. It was fascinating to watch. No detail was overlooked: for example, while rehearsing the iDVD demo, Steve found that the DVD player’s remote control didn’t work from where he wanted to stand on the stage. The crew had to make a special repeater system to make it work.

So when Steve steps out on that stage, with its stark black-on-black color scheme and does his apparently simple demos, it is the combined energy and talent of all those people and many more back in Cupertino, that he is ‘channeling’ to the audience. It made me think of a magnifying glass used to focus the power of the sun on one small spot until it bursts into flames.

Fast forward a year; much to my surprise (and delight) I was asked to actually do a demo in the keynote. And then I really learnt about demos. In mid-2001 I had been promoted to manage both the DVD products and Apple’s professional video editing software, called Final Cut Pro; a new version of which was set to be released in early 2002. Although the January keynote did not normally include such pro products, Steve felt it was exciting enough to put in the keynote.

But Steve never does the demos of the pro software himself; he always relies on someone on the product team more familiar with its features and operation. The job fell to me. It turned out to be my lowest and highest point at Apple.

Steve usually rehearses on the two days before a keynote. On the first day he works, in no particular order, on the segments he feels need the most attention. The product managers and engineering managers for each new product are in the room, waiting for their turn to work with Steve on the demos. This group also forms Steve’s impromptu test audience: He’ll often ask for their feedback on the flow of the presentations, specific sample material, or the contents of particular slides. Steve spends a lot of time on his slides. He personally writes and designs much of the content, with a little graphic design help from Apple’s design team.

As each segment of the show is refined, Steve and his producer edit the slides ‘live’ on a PowerBook (and its backup) so the revised slides can be used immediately. That day Steve was very methodical, going through every aspect of the show. He would test variations of content and flow, looking for the combinations with the most impact. When introducing a major new product, he also liked to show the TV commercial or video that Apple would be using to promote it. Often these had been finished just hours (or minutes) before rehearsals began. Steve would sometimes preview alternate versions of the commercial for the assembled team to gauge our reaction before deciding which to actually use.

Crunch Time
On the day before ’showtime’, things get much more structured, with at least one and sometimes two complete dress rehearsals. If there were to be any non-Apple presenters in the keynote, they would take part on the second day (although they could not be in the room while the ’secret’ parts – like the unveiling of new hardwware – were being rehearsed.) Throughout it all Steve maintains his characteristic demeanor: extremely focused and single-minded. While we were in that room, all his energy was directed at making this keynote the perfect embodiment of Apple’s messages. Steve doesn’t give up much of his personality even in rehearsals. He is strictly business, most of the time.

I had worked on my five-minute Final Cut Pro demo for weeks, selecting just the right sample material and honing (I thought) my delivery to a fine edge. My boss and his boss were there for moral support. Steve, as was his custom, sat in the audience. I was very nervous, and having Steve’s laser-like attention concentrated on me didn’t help. About a minute into the demo, Steve stopped me, saying impatiently, “You gotta get this together or we’re going to have to pull this demo from the keynote.” And he moved on to the next demo.

I was devastated. I didn’t even know how to respond, or if I should respond. Mercifully my boss and Phil Schiller (Apple’s head of Marketing, and frequent keynote presenter) came to my rescue. Over the next few hours, as others ran through their respective demos, they worked with me to polish my demo. More importantly, Phil gave me some great advice. “Those 6,000 Mac fans out there in the hall aren’t against you, they’re the best friends you can have.” The next day at final rehearsal, Steve watched me do the demo again. This time he gave it his nod of approval. It felt great; but the real work was yet to be done.

The next morning, as I sat in the front row waiting for my turn on the stage, the full weight of the event hit me. There were several thousand people in the room, and approximately 50,000 watching the webcast. It was the very definition of pressure. Steve started the segment which I knew preceded mine, and my heart started pounding. I felt those hundred thousand eyes all about to be focused on me and feared I would crumble. I had done quite a bit of public speaking before, but nothing like this.

The assistant producer came over to me to guide me to the stairs at the side of the stage. I stood in the dark, watching Steve put up the slide that introduced me. Just then a wonderful thought hit me; in five minutes the whole thing would be over. If I could only keep going for five minutes I would be fine. I bounced up the stairs and onto the stage, and everything was suddenly OK. The demo worked perfectly, the audience seemed to love the product, and their applause was an incredible adrenaline rush.

My first keynote appearance

When it was over I received many compliments on how well it went, including the one I prize the most, from Steve himself.

In the months that followed I was on stage for two more keynotes, and each time I was incredibly grateful for the apparently harsh treatment Steve had dished out the first time. He forced me to work harder and in the end I did a much better job than I would have otherwise. I believe it is one of the most important aspects of Steve Jobs’s impact on Apple. He has little or no patience for anything but excellence from himself or others.

Of course all the demo material we had used then was re-evalutated and in many cases replaced with videos and photos produced in Japan. I ended up with some interesting footage from a music video from a Japanese group called ‘Love Psychedelico’ to use in my demo. Thankfully the setup and rehearsals went smoothly; not totally surprising as the show was largely a repeat of the San Francisco keynote.

Beyond the changes to the demo material, there were two notable changes from the January show. First, Steve introduced the Flower Power and Dalmation iMacs during this keynote. The reception was lukewarm, but it was hard to tell if that was the typical Japanese reserve, or something else. Second, and much more shocking, was Steve’s wardrobe.
I don’t think anyone in the Apple team knew about this in advance, so when he came out on stage we were all just as surprised as the audience. Steve was wearing a suit!

In case you’ve only ever seen Steve in his ‘uniform’, here’s a short clip from that unusual day (QuickTime-Sorenson format).

UPDATE – high demand for this little clip was clobbering my server, so I changed the format and moved it to a different host. Hopefully that will help.

In hindsight, I think Steve looking all ‘businesslike’ in that tailored suit made the iMacs look even more ridiculous.

Apple has posted a QuickTime stream of Steve’s keynote.

You’ll find it here: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf06/

See for yourself – Secrets of the Keynote

Thanks to Josey for the tip!

How can the most successful technology company in history, run by the richest man in the universe, stand in front of the world with such incredibly lame slides in their presentation? They look like something put together by a high school kid who just discovered clip art and shaded backgrounds.

Is it just me? You be the judge
Here’s one of Bill’s slides…

and another…

Makes me want to scream! Geez…the two headings aren’t even lined up vertically!

And what the hell are those four double-headed-arrow things?

For contrast, here’s one of Steve’s slides from a few years back (his current images are even better, but couldn’t find any good shots of those)

Here’s a link to all of Niall’s photos. Be warned, they are not for the faint of heart (or anyone with any aesthetic sense.)

My actual title at the time was ‘Director of Product Marketing – Professional Applications’. To keep it simple, Steve introduced me as the Director of Product Marketing at Apple, implying a broader role. But the slide he put up was the real killer; it said ‘Director of Marketing, Apple’. In the hierarchy of titles in most big companies, that’s a very large promotion.

That’s me coming on stage at the right

When I spoke to my boss later, I asked him if I was getting a raise to go with the new title.

Steve rehearses, sans turtleneck

And nearly every article must make reference to the RDF (reality distortion field) that Steve’s deploys to great effect. I have some personal experience with Steve, so feel at least slightly qualified to comment on some of these things.

What Makes Steve Steve?
In some ways Steve is not that hard to figure out. You just have to understand a few key points, all of which I have observed first hand.

• He is extremely demanding of all those around him and has a very low tolerance for anything but excellence. Because he can be shockingly blunt in his dealings with others, he is often portrayed as abusive, but this is dead wrong. He simply demands/expects great things from everyone around him. I honestly believe he can’t understand why anyone would want to waste their time doing anything less than great.

Once during keynote rehearsal, he told me my presentation was terrible and that if I couldn’t get it together it would have to be scratched. Obviously this was quite upsetting to me, but as I continued to work on it I realized two things: first, he was absolutely right; this was my first keynote and I was very nervous that day. Consequently my delivery was not nearly up to the standard of the rest of the presentations. Second, he had made his comments knowing full well that it would motivate me to bring my work up to Apple’s level. When it was over I received many compliments on how well it went, including one from Steve. To a casual observer it might have appeared that Steve had been very hard on me, but I feel just the opposite. He made me see that I could do much better, and I did. This aspect of Steve’s style contributes immeasurably to the Apple’s almost magical ability to do things that no other company can do.

• The so-called ‘reality distortion field’ is not magic and it’s not an accident; it’s planning, and tuning, and focus, and practice. Steve is an expert presenter, but that’s only the beginning. Steve’s keynotes are the culmination of thousands of hours of work by hundreds of people behind the scenes, with Steve serving as the conductor and the conduit. And even though he could probably do it in his sleep, he rehearses and rehearses and refines and rehearses again, and makes all the other guest presenters do the same, so when we all tune into the webcast it all seems so simple.

Preparing the Reality Distortion Field – MacWorld Keynote 2001

• Probably more important than the RDF is Steve’s LFD (logical flaw detector). That’s my name for his uncanny ability to see thru any BS and to instantly zero in on the weak point(s) of any argument. When you have to pitch something to Steve, you better know what you’re talking about, or the results won’t be pretty.

Once I had to demonstrate an early alpha version DVD Studio Pro for Steve. It was a complex application with many windows on the screen, each containing many interrelated elements. As I ran through the demo I was careful (I thought) to navigate smoothly thru this clutter, trying to focus on the overall functionality. But Steve would have none of it. He came right out and said, “why do you keep moving those objects around like that? why are there so many windows?” I had some lame excuse about how complex the task was and that this was the best we could come up with to deal with it. “Well it’s brain-dead stupid. We’d better get some engineers on it who know what they’re doing. There are plenty of existing applications which deal with similarly complex abstractions in much simpler ways.” I was sure he was bluffing, but then he mentioned a couple really obscure applications which on investigation completely proved his point.

• He knows what people want because it’s what he wants. Although he’s not a power user, he has an instinctive grasp of what users want.

In mid-2000 Apple was preparing to introduce DVD recorders (aka SuperDrives) in the forthcoming G4 computers. Up until that time DVD recorders sold for thousands of dollars and blank DVDs sold for $30-40 each. Apple was going to build the recorder into the high-end G4 and the manufacturers were just beginning to deliver a new type of blank discs which could sell for about $15 each. We all felt this was going to be a major homerun. But Steve knew immediately that the whole idea of making your own DVDs would never take off unless the discs could be sold for less than $10 each; psychologically $15 per disc was still too high. So he gave us the task to convince the disc manufacturers that unless they adjusted their pricing to get below this invisible barrier, the whole thing would fall apart. At first the manufacturers were appalled by this idea, as they had hoped to milk the high-priced discs for a while longer. But a couple companies saw the wisdom of the strategy and we were able to debut the SuperDrive with blank discs priced at $50 for a five-pack. They were very glad they did; they sold millions of blank discs through Apple in the months that followed. (Although I was not involved, I’m sure the exact same thing happened to make sure that songs costs 99¢ on the iTunes Music Store.)

In the early stages of development of both iTunes and iPhoto, Steve continually pushed the engineers to improve the speed at which things ‘happened’ in the interface. In particular the scrolling through long lists of songs or photos and the zoom function. He knew that users want/expect immediate gratification in these areas, and if they didn’t get it they would conclude that the programs were inadequate. At first this might sound superficial, but this push for faster scrolling and zooming had a profound impact on the overall performance of the applications because it caused the engineers to dig deeper to find ways to optimize their whole structures.

• He has impeccable taste and a brilliant design sense which impacts nearly everything he does. If you happen to use iDVD, you’ve experienced a perfect example: the menu ‘themes’. These dozen or so seemingly simple templates were painstakingly crafted and chosen from literally hundreds of completed designs which were prepared by one of the world’s leading menu design firms. It was almost painful to watch each week as Steve would take a huge stack of proposed designs and reject all but one or two. Even those that survived the ‘cut’ invariably needed additional work to make them great.

• He’s not a micro-manager, but he knows which details are the most important and focuses intensely on them. Further, he empowers his teams to make sure they are done right. Anyone who’s ever unpacked an Apple product knows what I’m talking about.

• This should be obvious, but apparently some writers can’t figure it out: Steve is a really smart guy who does not suffer fools lightly. He grasps the salient points of any situation faster than anyone I’ve met, and if you can’t keep up that’s not his problem. (I often felt I couldn’t keep up, but it was a thrill to try.)

Black Turtlenecks
The black turtleneck thing is mostly true, although I have seen him in t-shirts and once in suit (during a Tokyo MacWorld keynote). Frankly I don’t get why everyone makes such a big deal about what he wears.

In my dealings with him I’ve seen one thing vividly: Steve Jobs is the real deal. This is not some sort of act; he simply loves creating wonderful things. Whether it’s a translucent all-in-one computer, or software that actually makes it easy to edit your home movies, or an animated movie about insects, if it can’t be great, he wouldn’t bother doing it.

This is an excerpt from my new book, to be called ‘Jobs I’ve Known’ which will be written online on this site. Copyright 2005 by Mike Evangelist. All rights reserved. May not be used without permission.