[] Jobs usually had little interest in public self-analysis, but every so often he壇 drop a clue to what made him tick. Once he recalled for me some of the long summers of his youth. I知 a big believer in boredom, he told me. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, he explained, and 登ut of curiosity comes everything. The man who popularized personal computers and smartphones machines that would draw our attention like a flame attracts gnats worried about the future of boredom. 鄭ll the stuff is wonderful, but having nothing to do can be wonderful, too. The turmoil in those sixties was also part of his make-up. 展e wanted to more richly experience why were we were alive, he said of his generation, 渡ot just make a better life, and so people went in search of things. The great thing that came from those that time was to realize that there was definitely more to life than the materialism of the late 50痴 and early sixties. We were going in search of something deeper.
[] But Steve Jobs was that talented, visionary and determined. He combined an innate understanding of technology with an almost supernatural sense of what customers would respond to. His conviction that design should be central to his products not only produced successes in the marketplace but elevated design in general, not just in consumer electronics but everything that aspires to the high end. It had taken a while for the world to realize what an amazing treasure Steve Jobs was. But Jobs knew it all along. That was part of what was so unusual about him. From at least the time he was a teenager, Jobs had a freakish chutzpah. At age 13, he called up the head of HP and cajoled him into giving Jobs free computer chips. It was part of a lifelong pattern of setting and fulfilling astronomical standards.