Benjamin franklin and albert einstein, this is the exclusive biography of steve jobs

the same
, it’s think 
different
. Think a little different, 
think a lot different, think different. ‘Think 
differently
’ wouldn’t hit the meaning for me.”
In order to evoke the spirit of 
Dead Poets Society
, Clow and Jobs wanted to get Robin Williams 
to read the narration. His agent said that Williams didn’t do ads, so Jobs tried to call him directly. 
He got through to Williams’s wife, who would not let him talk to the actor because she knew how 
persuasive he could be. They also considered Maya Angelou and Tom Hanks. At a fund-raising 
dinner featuring Bill Clinton that fall, Jobs pulled the president aside and asked him to telephone 
Hanks to talk him into it, but the president pocket-vetoed the request. They ended up with Richard 
Dreyfuss, who was a dedicated Apple fan.
In addition to the television commercials, they created one of the most memorable print 
campaigns in history. Each ad featured a black-and-white portrait of an iconic historical figure 
with just the Apple logo and the words “Think Different” in the corner. Making it particularly 
engaging was that the faces were not captioned. Some of them—Einstein, Gandhi, Lennon, Dylan, 
Picasso, Edison, Chaplin, King—were easy to identify. But others caused people to pause, puzzle, 
and maybe ask a friend to put a name to the face: Martha Graham, Ansel Adams, Richard 
Feynman, Maria Callas, Frank Lloyd Wright, James Watson, Amelia Earhart.

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Most were Jobs’s personal heroes. They tended to be creative people who had taken risks, 
defied failure, and bet their career on doing things in a different way. A photography buff, he 
became involved in making sure they had the perfect iconic portraits. “This is not the right picture 
of Gandhi,” he erupted to Clow at one point. Clow explained that the famous Margaret Bourke-
White photograph of Gandhi at the spinning wheel was owned by Time-Life Pictures and was not 
available for commercial use. So Jobs called Norman Pearlstine, the editor in chief of Time Inc., 
and badgered him into making an exception. 
He called Eunice Shriver to convince her family to release a picture that he loved, of her 
brother Bobby Kennedy touring Appalachia, and he talked to Jim Henson’s children personally to 
get the right shot of the late Muppeteer.
He likewise called Yoko Ono for a picture of her late husband, John Lennon. She sent him one, 
but it was not Jobs’s favorite. “Before it ran, I was in New York, and I went to this small Japanese 
restaurant that I love, and let her know I would be there,” he recalled. When he arrived, she came 
over to his table. “This is a better one,” she said, handing him an envelope. “I thought I would see 
you, so I had this with me.” It was the classic photo of her and John in bed together, holding 
flowers, and it was the one that Apple ended up using. “I can see why John fell in love with her,” 
Jobs recalled.
The narration by Richard Dreyfuss worked well, but Lee Clow had another idea. What if Jobs 
did the voice-over himself? “You really believe this,” Clow told him. “You should do it.” So Jobs 
sat in a studio, did a few takes, and soon produced a voice track that everyone liked. The idea was 
that, if they used it, they would not tell people who was speaking the words, just as they didn’t 
caption the iconic pictures. Eventually people would figure out it was Jobs. “This will be really 
powerful to have it in your voice,” Clow argued. “It will be a way to reclaim the brand.”
Jobs couldn’t decide whether to use the version with his voice or to stick with Dreyfuss. 
Finally, the night came when they had to ship the ad; it was due to air, appropriately enough, on 
the television premiere of