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

Toy Story
, when 
the character of Woody had evolved into being a jerk, and on a couple of occasions with the 

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original Macintosh. “If something isn’t right, you can’t just ignore it and say you’ll fix it later,” he 
said. “That’s what other companies do.”
When the revised prototype was finally completed in January 2001, Jobs allowed the board to 
see it for the first time. He explained the theories behind the design by sketching on a whiteboard; 
then he loaded board members into a van for the two-mile trip. When they saw what Jobs and 
Johnson had built, they unanimously approved going ahead. It would, the board agreed, take the 
relationship between retailing and brand image to a new level. It would also ensure that consumers 
did not see Apple computers as merely a commodity product like Dell or Compaq.
Most outside experts disagreed. “Maybe it’s time Steve Jobs stopped thinking quite so 
differently,” 
Business Week
wrote in a story headlined “Sorry Steve, Here’s Why Apple Stores 
Won’t Work.” Apple’s former chief financial officer, Joseph Graziano, was quoted as saying, 
“Apple’s problem is it still believes the way to grow is serving caviar in a world that seems pretty 
content with cheese and crackers.” And the retail consultant David Goldstein declared, “I give 
them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake.”
Wood, Stone, Steel, Glass
On May 19, 2001, the first Apple store opened in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, with gleaming white 
counters, bleached wood floors, and a huge “Think Different” poster of John and Yoko in bed. 
The skeptics were wrong. Gateway stores had been averaging 250 visitors a week. By 2004 Apple 
stores were averaging 5,400 per week. That year the stores had $1.2 billion in revenue, setting a 
record in the retail industry for reaching the billion-dollar milestone. Sales in each store were 
tabulated every four minutes by Ellison’s software, giving instant information on how to integrate 
manufacturing, supply, and sales channels.
As the stores flourished, Jobs stayed involved in every aspect. Lee Clow recalled, “In one of 
our marketing meetings just as the stores were opening, Steve made us spend a half hour deciding 
what hue of gray the restroom signs should be.” The architectural firm of Bohlin Cywinski 
Jackson designed the signature stores, but Jobs made all of the major decisions.
Jobs particularly focused on the staircases, which echoed the one he had built at NeXT. When 
he visited a store as it was being constructed, he invariably suggested changes to the staircase. His 
name is listed as the lead inventor on two patent applications on the staircases, one for the see-
through look that features all-glass treads and glass supports melded together with titanium, the 
other for the engineering system that uses a monolithic unit of glass containing multiple glass 
sheets laminated together for supporting loads.
In 1985, as he was being ousted from his first tour at Apple, he had visited Italy and been 
impressed by the gray stone of Florence’s sidewalks. In 2002, when he came to the conclusion that 
the light wood floors in the stores were beginning to look somewhat pedestrian—a concern that it’
s hard to imagine bedeviling someone like Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer—Jobs wanted to use 
that stone instead. Some of his colleagues pushed to replicate the color and texture using concrete, 
which would have been ten times cheaper, but Jobs insisted that it had to be authentic. The gray-
blue Pietra Serena sandstone, which has a fine-grained texture, comes from a family-owned 
quarry, Il Casone, in Firenzuola outside of Florence. “We select only 3% of what comes out of the 
mountain, because it has to have the right shading and veining and purity,” said Johnson. “Steve 
felt very strongly that we had to get the color right and it had to be a material with high integrity.” 
So designers in Florence picked out just the right quarried stone, oversaw cutting it into the proper 
tiles, and made sure each tile was marked with a sticker to ensure that it was laid out next to its 
companion tiles. “Knowing that it’s the same stone that Florence uses for its sidewalks assures 
you that it can stand the test of time,” said Johnson.
Another notable feature of the stores was the Genius Bar. Johnson came up with the idea on a 
two-day retreat with his team. He had asked them all to describe the best service they’d ever 
enjoyed. Almost everyone mentioned some nice experience at a Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton 
hotel. So Johnson sent his first five store managers through the Ritz-Carlton training program and 
came up with the idea of replicating something between a concierge desk and a bar. “What if we 
staffed the bar with the smartest Mac people,” he said to Jobs. “We could call it the Genius Bar.”

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Jobs called the idea crazy. He even objected to the name. “You can’t call them geniuses,” he 
said. “They’re geeks. They don’t have the people skills to deliver on something called the genius 
bar.” Johnson thought he had lost, but the next day he ran into Apple’s general counsel, who said, 
“By the way, Steve just told me to trademark the name ‘genius bar.’”
Many of Jobs’s passions came together for Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue store, which opened in 
2006: a cube, a signature staircase, glass, and making a maximum statement through minimalism. 
“It was really Steve’s store,” said Johnson. Open 24/7, it vindicated the strategy of finding 
signature high-traffic locations by attracting fifty thousand visitors a week during its first year. 
(Remember Gateway’s draw: 250 visitors a week.) “This store grosses more per square foot than 
any store in the world,” Jobs proudly noted in 2010. “It also grosses more in total—absolute 
dollars, not just per square foot—than any store in New York. That includes Saks and 
Bloomingdale’s.”
Jobs was able to drum up excitement for store openings with the same flair he used for product 
releases. People began to travel to store openings and spend the night outside so they could be 
among the first in. “My then 14-year-old son suggested my first overnighter at Palo Alto, and the 
experience turned into an interesting social event,” wrote Gary Allen, who started a website that 
caters to Apple store fans. “He and I have done several overnighters, including five in other 
countries, and have met so many great people.”
In July 2011, a decade after the first ones opened, there were 326 Apple stores. The biggest was 
in London’s Covent Garden, the tallest in Tokyo’s Ginza. The average annual revenue per store 
was $34 million, and the total net sales in fiscal 2010 were $9.8 billion. But the stores did even 
more. They directly accounted for only 15% of Apple’s revenue, but by creating buzz and brand 
awareness they indirectly helped boost everything the company did.
Even as he was fighting the effects of cancer in 2011, Jobs spent time envisioning future store 
projects, such as the one he wanted to build in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal. One 
afternoon he showed me a picture of the Fifth Avenue store and pointed to the eighteen pieces of 
glass on each side. “This was state of the art in glass technology at the time,” he said. “We had to 
build our own autoclaves to make the glass.” Then he pulled out a drawing in which the eighteen 
panes were replaced by four huge panes. That is what he wanted to do next, he said. Once again, it 
was a challenge at the intersection of aesthetics and technology. “If we wanted to do it with our 
current technology, we would have to make the cube a foot shorter,” he said. “And I didn’t want 
to do that. So we have to build some new autoclaves in China.”
Ron Johnson was not thrilled by the idea. He thought the eighteen panes actually looked better 
than four panes would. “The proportions we have today work magically with the colonnade of the 
GM Building,” he said. “It glitters like a jewel box. I think if we get the glass too transparent, it 
will almost go away to a fault.” He debated the point with Jobs, but to no avail. “When technology 
enables something new, he wants to take advantage of that,” said Johnson. “Plus, for Steve, less is 
always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer 
elements, it’s better, it’s simpler, and it’s at the forefront of technology. That’s where Steve likes 
to be, in both his products and his stores.”

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