Apple’s former CEO Steve Jobs would change the way television works if he was still alive because the current medium is “brain dead.”
“I should be able to walk into a room, ignore the remote controls, and say, ‘OK TV. Put on Morning Joe.’ And I should be able to get it when I want it, easily. I think that’s what Steve Jobs would have done if he were still alive,” Walter Isaacson, biographer of Steve Jobs, said Thursday during an Afternoon Mo Joe web-exclusive interview.
Wearing computers as watches or glasses is another advancement in technology that will prevail in the coming years, he said. Google has already led the way with Google Glass, which allows users to view the world through an interactive lens on their face.
Jobs co-founded Apple, was forced to leave, made a comeback at the company, and ultimately stepped down as CEO in August 2011 before dying weeks later. He has been called one of this century’s greatest entrepreneurs.
“These are people who look at the world the way they are and then can make a creative leap,” said Isaacson, a New York Times bestselling author. “Sometimes it’s for something that doesn’t seem all that huge.”
Jobs introduced new gadgets, which changed the way the world receives information. For example, the company’s iPad has impacted education by becoming a teaching tool in many classrooms around the country. Jobs even cared about the design of the tablet’s packaging.
“Nobody thought we needed a tablet computer…but when Steve did it, all of a sudden it transformed…everything,” Isaacson said.
His biography depicts the “rough boss” side of Jobs that he often exhibited in the workplace. But through the successes and failures, Jobs was able to surround himself with a talented, loyal management team in Silicon Valley.
Isaacson is also the author of biographies about Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Kissinger.
The first movie about the CEO’s life, Jobs, was released last month with Ashton Kutcher in the lead role. Aaron Sorkin is screenwriting a second movie about the entrepreneur—set for release in 2014. The film is adapted from Isaacson’s book, which was published in 2011 and will be sold in paperback beginning this month.
Be sure to watch other web-exclusive interviews and roundtable discussions right here in the Afternoon Mo Joe section of the website.
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Michele Richinick