Who was the real Steve Jobs?

I just watched Jobs, a new film about Apple founder Steve Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher. I had been deliberating the whole week whether to watch it or not. My kids refused to watch because the reviews were poor — it had a 25 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a rating of 5 percent on IMDB so they didn’t want to waste their time.

I talked to my friends who had watched it and they were neutral.

Coming back from Laguna I had a window of time to watch because the iPad is a key part of my life; since I have an iPhone, and my kids have a Power Mac each, I decided I would watch it alone. I actually really liked it.

I found the film entertaining. I thought Kutcher did a great job as an actor — his facial expressions, his posture. It was so different from all his other roles.

I liked the opening of the film, where he introduces the IPod: that was emotional.

The man, Steve Jobs, I’ve always found intriguing. He was so intense and deeply steeped in whatever he wanted to accomplish. But I feel he went off-tangent at times. It was almost like he was consumed by his vision — to the point where the vision took over the person. When you lose compassion, or don’t give credence to people that helped you in the beginning, to the point where you lose basic decency in dealing with others — I would say you go off-tangent at that point.

So I found the film educational in that it teaches basic life lessons in what not to do, and in what happens when you lose touch with principles.

For me, as a person, alignment with principles is important. That’s why I found the film intriguing. It validated basic precepts I believe in.

For Jobs, his principle was his vision. Nothing else mattered. But even in the beginning of the movie I already noted tendencies to go off-tangent. For example he was offered a job for $5,000. The job was actually completed by his friend Steve Wozniak (“Woz”) — and Jobs paid him only $350! That’s totally off. Shrewd, but way off.

Then when Apple gets big — big enough where shares are offered to the public — and Steve Jobs is asked whom he would give shares to, he coldly refuses to give shares to the people who helped him when he was starting up the company in his garage. Woz goes to Jobs afterwards and asks him why, and Jobs says, “Because they are not capable. They are not worth it.”

Maybe they were not up there in the capability classification but that’s not the point. They helped Jobs start his company. Doesn’t he owe them? It’s like his mental processes gave no value to non-material things — no value to basic decency. For me, there seems to be a misalignment of the basic principles of decency and fair play.

Then, according to the film, the Apple founder was so consumed by what he wanted to accomplish that he refused to recognize his own daughter? That’s off-tangent.

When he goes back to running Apple — and he lets go of the guy who brought him back — that’s off-tangent. He wants to hit back because this same guy decided not to support him previously. Hitting back is not right.

If you lack the humility to see yourself and just hit back — doing the very same thing that others did to you —  that’s off-tangent.

Then you have to wonder: Jobs gets Apple — his company — back. He launches these amazing products, and changes the world — and then he gets pancreatic cancer. Cancer is not just a physical thing. It’s emotional, it’s spiritual.

There are many life lessons here.

So yes, Apple was the work of a genius. But I wonder, could it have been done better if he had been more “aligned”?

I wonder if Jobs had been more centered, would he have built Apple differently? Years ago I met these I.T. people and during a discussion they were complaining that Apple is so exclusive. Apple just wants to make money. You go Apple and everything has to be Apple. It doesn’t allow for much integration. It is a closed system. This way they make a lot more money.

I wonder, after watching Jobs, if the Apple genius had been more “aligned” would he have used his skills and built the company differently?

He was clearly searching. In the beginning of the movie, he had his eyes wide open to the sky, out in the field. He was a searcher.

As Woz says in the movie, “In the beginning I was in because I thought Jobs seemed so cool and intelligent. What they were doing was fun. But things have changed. It’s not the same. It’s become all about him.” So he ended up quitting.

Jobs had a genius for conceptualizing things, which is key to modern life. His intensity ultimately caused him his health. I think it’s great that he had this passion to do things that everyone could use, and was incessant about discovering designs that could make life even better.

Passion. That’s what’s important to make things happen. Without passion and will, things will fall flat.

There are many lessons to learn from Jobs’ life. We can learn from them and navigate our own.

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Later, after I wrote this article, my son told me that Steve Wozniak had been interviewed on Pierce Morgan recently, totally debunking the movie. Still, I decided to go ahead with this article, because of the things I felt from watching the movie: that it’s important not to get consumed by a vision; that it’s important to always be aligned to principle; and that will and passion can make things happen. As with everything in life, you have take Jobs’ lessons with a grain of salt.

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I can be reached at regina_lopez@abs-cbn.com.