Newsweek: When did you really step up your involvement in Apple?
Jobs: Well, golly, after Apple acquired NeXT, I tried to help in any way I could, and one of the things I became aware of was that the senior lieutenants Gil [Amelio] had surrounded himself with were not the people Apple should have. And the organization was pretty wacky. I suggested to Gil the company would be much better served if he dramatically simplified the organization and picked some new lieutenants. Gil took some of those recommendations and didn’t take others.
Did the board ask you to consider becoming chairman and/or CEO?
Yeah, they did. I thought about it a great deal. I considered it a great honor that they would ask me that, but I have another life right now. I love the work we’re doing here at Pixar. Pixar is also a company I helped cofound and I have deep feelings about. So I felt I was pretty committed to it and couldn’t go do something else, didn’t want to.
And you will absolutely not be the CEO?
My name is not in the hat to be CEO.
What is your strategy for the Apple reinvention?
One of the things Apple will do is be focusing on two markets where it’s still incredibly relevant. Those two markets are education and what I call creative content. Creative content is publishing, design, Web creation and a little bit of entertainment. Eighty percent of all the computers used in advertising and design and prepress and printing are Macs. Sixty-four percent of Web sites are created on Macs. The other market is education. Apple has almost $2.5 billion worth of revenues from education. And that market is growing at 23 percent a year.
When you came on the stage at Macworld last January, people were on the edge of their seats. Did you catch the bug again?
I was very moved. What I do is team sports. It takes a lot of people. It took a lot of people to build Apple. But people like symbols, and I think to these people I’m a symbol for a lot of the spirit of Apple that they love, and I was very moved by that. And I think Apple can return to some of that once its values are in the right place again.
Will the deal enable Apple to make investments you wouldn’t have otherwise made?
Absolutely. And we welcome Microsoft to the family of Apple investors. But more important than any of that, I think our goal was to normalize the relationships with Microsoft so we could get on with doing business together. As I said at Macworld, Apple plus Microsoft equals 100 percent of the desktop markets. There are no other players. So Apple and Microsoft have an incredibly strong opportunity to do some really nice things together to make it easier for the customers to use these things in mixed environments, to set new standards. It’s not that Apple is going to become like Microsoft; they’re obviously going to continue to compete. But it’s crazy for the only two players on the desktop market not to be working together. It’s a little like Nixon going to China. It’s the right thing to do.
In the past you’ve been up and down on Microsoft. Does this collaboration and partnership mean you’ll have to shift your thinking? Do you think they’ve changed?
I think sometimes a crisis helps you bring things into focus, and I think Apple’s having difficult times has definitely caused people to think, ““What would the world be like without Apple?’’ It would be a very different place. And I think Microsoft realized they think the world’s a better place with Apple in it, too.
What went through your mind when you heard the boos during your speech at Macworld?
I thought it was juvenile. I thought that some of these people are demanding that Microsoft Office be on the Mac on one hand, and they’re booing the CEO of the company that produces it on the other. It doesn’t make sense.
Despite Apple’s overall market share of only 4 percent, the Mac still rules among loyal graphics pros and teachers. A look at these two bastions of strength:
