Xerox
The first time I met Steve Jobs
August 28, 2011: 10:41 AM ET... he lied to me. Although to be fair, it was more a lie of omission than a barefaced lie
Photo by Ted Thai for TIME
Pardon me if this feels like ancient history. But this is a story I've never put into print (or pixels) before, and I figured if not now, when?
It was December 1982 and a crowd of journalists had gathered in a meeting room at The Pierre, a luxury hotel one block north of the site Steve Jobs would later choose for the Fifth Avenue Apple Store's big glass cube.
Jobs, then 26, was there to introduce the media to the wonders of the Lisa. He was selling it hard, even though (we later learned) he'd already been forced off the Lisa team and had seized control of a second, top-secret project.
I was a reporter-researcher at Time magazine on a 12-month probationary writer's trial. I'd heard that the Lisa had something to do with work done at Xerox's (XRX) Palo Alto Research Center, and to prep for the meeting I had read and re-read the only substantive story I could find about Xerox PARC -- a long article in Byte magazine on Smalltalk.
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How Apple made the mouse
Malcom Gladwell deconstructs the Mac's creation myth in the current New Yorker
The myth -- repeated ad nauseam by Apple (AAPL) naysayers -- is that Steve Jobs stole the ideas behind the Macintosh from Xerox's (XRX) Palo Alto Research Center.
The truth is that he paid for them -- with 100,000 shares of his company a year before its initial public offering.
The deeper truth, which Malcom ("The Tipping Point") Gladwell explores at MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 9, 2011 8:04 AM ETPosted in: Apple, Bill Atkinson, Macintosh, Malcom Gladwell, PCs, Steve Jobs, The New Yorker, Xerox, Xerox PARC -
What to watch for at Brainstorm Tech
From tablets to conflicts, business models to investment opportunities -- what we are hoping to hear.
By Shelley DuBois, reporter
Fortune's 2010 Brainstorm Tech conference kicks off tomorrow in Aspen. Here's a preview of some of the questions our moderators will be asking top tech execs.
-Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn are courting online ad money. Group M CEO Irwin Gotleib has a ton of it - his company is a major media-buyer. Group MORE
Jul 21, 2010 3:31 PM ET -
Is Lexmark the printing world's most eligible bachelor?
Hollywood has George Clooney. New York has Derek Jeter. Lexington, Kentucky has Lexmark.
Lexmark (LXK), for the uninitiated, is a printer company; pretty much the one that isn't based in the New York area, California or Japan. And recently investors have been buzzing again that the printer-maker would make a fine target to get hitched – either taken private or acquired. Bank of America Merrill Lynch ranked it number one on a MORE
Jon Fortt - May 7, 2010 8:00 AM ET -
The death of a (printer) salesman
In the near future, most big businesses won't actually buy printers. The shocker: HP is looking forward to that.
Bruce Dahlgren's job at Hewlett-Packard is to sell printers to big customers. Well, sort of. During a recent huddle in a conference room at Hewlett-Packard headquarters in Palo Alto, he was talking about what will happen when big customers stop actually buying printers.
Sound unthinkable? It's not. Rather than purchase equipment that gets MORE
Jon Fortt - Mar 30, 2010 7:00 AM ET -
The office copier turns the big 5-0!
Lessons from one of the earliest information technologies.
Long before digital tools such as listservs, e-mail blasts, and even Facebook enabled us to easily broadcast messages, photocopies were the most efficient way to distribute information to groups of all sizes.
If the boss needed to discuss a new company policy, workers got memos in their (physical) in-boxes or slipped under their office doors. Community newsletters, fliers for parties, and the oft-maligned Christmas MORE
Stephanie N. Mehta, Deputy Managing Editor - Jan 22, 2010 10:16 AM ET -
Xerox CEO defends ACS deal
Xerox's new CEO bets big on services. Can she convince investors she made the right move?
Ursula Burns calls less than 30 minutes after the markets close on the most tumultuous trading day in Xerox (XRX) history, and she sounds, well, energized. Not quite 100 days into the CEO job, on Monday she launched the biggest acquisition bid in the company's history and survived a 15% drop in its stock price MORE
Jon Fortt - Sep 29, 2009 6:30 AM ET -
Remember Lexmark? The printer underdog is still fighting
In this era of Kindle books, text messages and Facebook photos, printed information is taking it on the chin – and perhaps no company has been hit harder than Lexmark. The Kentucky-based printer company is one of the worst performing stocks in the hardware sector this year, down about 30%.
But Lexmark (LXK) CEO Paul Curlander hopes a new line of printers will help him climb off the canvas.
The eight new MORE
Jon Fortt - Sep 1, 2009 9:00 AM ET -
Apple tops Fortune's "most admired" list -- again
For the second time in as many years, Apple Inc. (AAPL) is No. 1 on Fortune Magazine's list of the World's Most Admired Companies.
"It's been a rocky year for Apple," writes Alyssa Abkowitz. "CEO Steve Jobs' health made headlines, and critics said Cupertino wasn't being open enough about it. But customers remained loyal to the brand that made white ear buds cool. As much of the computer industry struggled, Apple MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Mar 2, 2009 1:22 PM ET -
Tech chiefs ponder the Internet's future
By Jon Fortt, Fortune senior writer
HALF MOON Bay, Calif. - Sustainability will influence the next generation of Internet technology, according to Cisco (CSCO) chief technology office Padmasree Warrior.
At Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference on Tuesday, Warrior and technology visionaries from Nokia and Xerox sat down with Strategic News Service's Mark Anderson Tuesday to talk about dealing with information overload, mobile innovation, and the major tech transitions ahead.
One idea that's likely to MORE
Jon Fortt - Jul 22, 2008 2:55 PM ET
