Ken Segall:
Like many, I have a habit of idealizing the “good old days” with Steve Jobs. Keep in mind that I’m an ad guy. It’s incredibly rare that people like me get to work directly with the CEO, and even more rare that the CEO is so passionate about doing great work.
So when I look back, I tend to romanticize even the difficult times, even though I know darn well that the tense moments were … well, tense. Especially with Steve.
Return with me now to the thrilling days of yesteryear, as the color iMacs were about to be unveiled.
I love Segall’s reminisces about his time at Apple. I was privy to one of these outbursts many years ago when I was in the room as Jobs called a well-known tech columnist and chewed his ass off for a good five minutes. It was a magnificent example of barely controlled fury, peppered with some remarkable curse words.
LOL I shared as much as I could in public. If you ever meet me in person, I’ll give more details. 🙂
Isn’t there a Youtube video of that chewing out? I seem to remember him doing something like that on Youtube.
Not the one I’m describing.
Hi Shawn, what year was this?
I actually spoke with him on the phone and he was quite pissed that no one was there to answer the call. He picked up the phone because he happened to be there. I think it was 1984 or so, I was calling about an Apple IIe that kept crashing. He apologized that he couldn’t help but promised someone would call back right away. Literally seconds later someone called. I was shocked at how quickly I received the call back. But now that I think back, not too surprised considering how frustrated he sounded. I could almost hear him swearing, even though he didn’t.
Amazing to think that at the time, I had no idea who he was really.
Mid 2000’s.