February 15, 1982: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is on the front cover Time magazine for the first time. The long opening story makes Jobs the public face of a successful technology business.
The first of many Time cover for Jobs, the article — titled “Striking It Rich: America’s Risk Takers” — casts him as the typical young upstart profiting from the burgeoning personal computer revolution. It also identifies him as part of a surge of newly minted millionaires running their own businesses.
Time cover story calls Steve Jobs America’s new ‘risk’
Here’s how Alexander L. Taylor III’s extensive article begins:
“A new breed of risk-taker is betting on the future of high-tech.
“It’s one of the most enduring American dreams. A young man with a great idea for a new product or service decides to start his own company. He invests his family’s savings in the new business. Soon he’s working 18-hour days, but he doesn’t mind because the company is his own. Sales start off slow and he makes enough mistakes to fill a textbook. In the end, it all pays off, his biggest payoff. Hope.
“This isn’t just a Walter Mitty fantasy. New businesses are being created in the U.S. today like never before. Last year, some 587,000 companies were incorporated, 80% more than in 1975 and 53,000 more than in 1980. During the past 18 months, hundreds of people became millionaires or multi-millionaires when their new companies were sold for the first time. 53, Saxon Oil Co. ($212 million Philip Knight, 43, Nike athletic shoes ($178 million each);
Apple’s December 1980 IPO made Jobs one of those puppets, despite the fact that he wasn’t actually running Apple at the time. (His early mentor Mike Markkula held the role in 1982.)
However, Jobs often served as Apple’s spokesperson, thanks to his intelligence, public speaking skills, and good looks.
Where’s Woz?
The first Steve Jobs Time the cover came just a few years after the introduction of the Apple II, the company’s first mass-market computer (which earned Jobs and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak a write-up in their high school newspaper).
interestingly, it was Jobs – not Jobs and Woz – who did it Time cover. (Woz was on a two-year, voluntary leave of absence from Apple at the time. After surviving a plane crash, he took time off to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.)
From this point on, Jobs would take a central role in most of Apple’s media profiles.
Apple was just one of the companies profiled in Time article. However, a long sidebar written by a young reporter named Mike Moritz focused on Apple.
If this writer’s name sounds familiar, it’s because Moritz later wrote an early biography of Apple A Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer. Inspired by Apple, he later left journalism for a very lucrative career as a venture capitalist.
After Time magazine cover, Steve Jobs faces disappointment
Photo: Time
Tea Time The story, while a big advertisement for Apple, led to something that left Jobs bitter for years. The following December, a rumor spread about it Time he considered making Jobs “man of the year”. This prompted Moritz to conduct a new round of interviews with Apple employees.
However, when the problem finally came out, “The Computer” won the “prize”. Time explained his decision as follows:
“It would be possible to select as Man of the Year one of the engineers or entrepreneurs who spearheaded this technological revolution, but no one clearly dominated these turbulent events. More importantly, such a selection would obscure the main point.” Time’s The Man of 1982, who has the greatest influence for good or evil, is not a man at all. It is a machine: a computer.”
This proved disappointing enough. But the article also contained some less-than-flattering comments about Jobs.
“Something is happening to Steve that is sad and not pretty,” said one colleague. In addition, the creator of the Macintosh project said that Jobs “would be an excellent king of France”.
Apple’s relationship with the media after Time “Man of the Year” disappointment
As a result, Jobs cut Moritz, who he had previously said would become Apple’s official historian. Years later, in his officially approved biography, Jobs stated that he and Moritz “were the same age and I was very successful and I could tell he was jealous and there was something on edge. He wrote this terrible piece of ax.”
Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson claims TimeThe editors never seriously considered Jobs for the title “Man of the Year”.
however the first Time magazine cover in 1982 influenced Steve Jobs’ demand for near-total control over Apple’s story. It became a formative moment that framed Cupertino’s famously adversarial relationship with the media for years to come.
