One of the first trips I took after becoming editor of TIME was to see Steve Jobs in Silicon Valley. We talked about technology and media, about which he was deeply interested and very opinionated. He also lectured me on how I should do my job. He pretty much thought he could do everyone’s job better than they could, and he was probably right. He had definite views about our covers, and I like to think we made the right call with the classic black-and-white image of him that graces this issue. Steve loved simplicity.
TIME managing editor Rick Stengel shares his experience meeting Apple’s Steve Jobs in this week’s letter from the editor.
In January 2010, the world watched Steve Jobs unveil a product that would change the magazine industry forever. As he showed off his “magical” iPad, TIME flashed across Apple’s big screen, and we went a little wobbly in the knees.
“One of my proudest career moments was seeing Steve Jobs checking out TIME.com during his very first demo of the iPad,” says former digital design director Sean Villafranca. “Yep, I designed that site on a Mac.”
We liked how we looked on that tablet screen so much we now work to produce a special iPad version of our issue each week. Jobs just knew it before we did.
“We were just sitting, talking about creativity and everyday stuff. I was beginning to build a level of intimacy with him, and then he rushed off, and came back in and plopped down in that pose. He spontaneously sat down with a Macintosh in his lap. I got the shot the first time. We did do a few more shots later on, and he even did a few yoga poses—he lifted his leg and put it over his shoulder—and I just thought we were two guys hanging out, chatting away, and enjoying the relationship. It wasn’t like there was a conceptualization here—this was completely off the cuff, spontaneity that we never thought would become a magazine image.”
- Photographer Norman Seeff reflects on his iconic image of Steve Jobs, now featured on the cover of our special edition issue commemorating the life of the late Apple CEO.
News is never a 9 to 5 job.
Wednesday evening, with the news that Apple visionary Steve Jobs had passed away from pancreatic cancer, TIME managing editor Rick Stengel (center) decided to stop the presses on the issue the staff had just finished earlier that afternoon. Staff members poured back into the TIME offices for an emergency edit meeting, which left us just over three hours to produce a new issue, many of us working on the very Apple devices that Jobs created.
Thursday, we’ll announce our latest issue featuring Jobs on the cover for the eighth time.
