Steve Jobs at 44

MARK RICHARDS--CONTACT FOR TIME
Steve Jobs

(6 of 6)

His Typical Day, Again
I've proably had 25 emails with Pixar people. So far. And I've made probably 10 Pixar-related phone calls. So I multi-task wherever I am. There's not a day that goes by that I don't do stuff on Pixar, even if I'm not physically there. And there's not a day that I'm at Pixar that I don't do stuff on Apple.

His Role At Pixar, Again
I don't direct the movies. What I do do is worry about the studio. I'm the primary manager of our relationship with Disney, which is a phenomonally good relationship. I've had two great business relationships in my career. One is the one that Apple had with Adobe in the early days, and the second is the one that Pixar has with Disney. Any relationship takes a lot of time and attention. The marketing of our films. The planning for the studio. I have dinner this week with a very promising young director we're trying to recruit. I do a lot of mentoring. We've got a lot of super-talented young people at the studio who are doing great but need a little bit of mentoring from time to time.

Answering Apple Email
Today's a slow day; I'll probably just have about 100 emails, Apple related. All these customers email me all these complaints and questions, which I actually have grown to like. It's like having a thermometer on practically any issue. If somebody doesn't flush a toilet around here, I get an email from Kansas about it. Sometimes I can get about 100 or more of those a day from people I will never meet. But I zing 'em around, and it's good to keep us all in touch.

Hollywood and Silicon Valley
Hollywood's really different than Silicon Valley. And neither understands the other at all. People up here think being creative is some guys in their late 20s and early 30s sitting around old couches drinking beer thinking up jokes. It couldn't be further from the truth. The creative process is just as disciplined as the technical process; it requires just as much talent. And yet people in Hollywood think technology is only as deep as something you buy. There's no technical culture in Hollywood, they couldn't attract and retain good engineers to save their life, because they're second class citizens down there. Just like creative people are second class citizens in Silicon Valley.