Last night 60 Minutes devoted pretty much its entire broadcast to Walter Issacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, which is out today. Steve Kroft spoke to Issacson about the book at length, turning one of the hallmarks of great television journalism into a hour-long promotion for a book, but hey whatever.
“He was very petulant. He was very brittle. He could be very, very mean to people at times,” Issacson said about the deceased Apple CEO. “Whether it was to a waitress in a restaurant, or to a guy who had stayed up all night coding, he could just really just go at them and say, ‘You’re doin’ this all wrong. It’s horrible.’ And you’d say, ‘Why did you do that? Why weren’t you nicer?’ And he’d say, ‘I really wanna be with people who demand perfection. And this is who I am.’
The interview featured some audio clips from Issacson’s 30+ interviews with Jobs over the past few years, which was kinda creepy but powerful to hear. Here’s what he said about living modestly despite being exorbitantly wealthy.
I saw a lot of other people at Apple, and especially after we went public, how it changed them. And a lot of people thought they had to start being rich, so they– I mean, a few people went out and bought Rolls Royces and they bought homes, and their wives got plastic surgery, and they, and I saw these people who were really nice, simple people turn into these bizarro people. And I made a promise to myself. I said: “I’m not going to let this money ruin my life.”
Kroft’s full interview with Issacson is embedded after the jump in two parts.
https://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/cbsnews_player_embed.swf
https://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/cbsnews_player_embed.swf