FBI releases file on Apple co-founder Steve Jobs - Los Angeles Times

Questionable moral character, use of illegal drugs, the abandonment of a child and a willingness to distort reality: Welcome to the FBI dossier of Steve Jobs.

On Thursday the agency released a file on Jobs that it had compiled in 1991, when the Apple Inc. co-founder was in the running for an appointment under President George H.W. Bush. Included in the 191-page document are confirmations of Jobs' dabblings in marijuana and LSD, his strained relationship with a high school girlfriend with whom he had a child out of wedlock and even some scribbled notes from a time he received a bomb threat in 1985.

Much of the information about Jobs' youth, business dealings and volatile personality have been widely known for years and received fresh attention after a lengthy biography was published after Jobs' death in October. But in interviewing dozens of friends, ex-friends, neighbors, employees and colleagues, the FBI collected a trove of firsthand opinions of Jobs, one of the most secretive figures in American business.

Though many of his acquaintances agreed that Jobs was a brilliant business man and capable candidate for the post, not all of them praised Jobs equally.

One interviewee, apparently a former colleague at Apple, said that Jobs "will twist the truth in order to achieve whatever goal he has set for himself" and that he was a "deceptive person."

The person, whose name was redacted from the report along with everyone else's, went on to say Jobs would make a fine appointee to the President's Export Council, an committee that advises the president on international trade, as "honesty and integrity are not prerequisites to assume such a position." (The same person later admitted to the agent that he did not receive any Apple stock, "which would have made him quite wealthy now.")

One woman said Jobs was a "visionary and charismatic individual who was at the same time shallow and callous to people in his personal relationships" — a trait she ascribed to Jobs' "narcissism and shallowness."

More than one interviewee brought up Jobs' troubled relationship with his high school girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, who was also the mother of his first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs. Jobs "basically abandoned [Brennan] and her daughter," one person said.

However, nearly everyone interviewed agreed that Jobs' intelligence, boundless energy and familiarity with the technology business would make him an excellent trade advisor.

Two interviewees called Jobs "strong willed, stubborn, hardworking, and driven, which they believe is why he is so successful."

The report contained some details of a bomb threat against Jobs in 1985, in which someone calling from a pay phone at the San Francisco airport claimed he had placed four bombs in the homes of Jobs and others and demanded $1 million. An investigation did not turn up any bombs and no suspect was located.

A few quirky details of Jobs' personal life were also buried in the report. He had a 2.65 grade-point average in high school, for instance. And as an adult he "did a great deal of jogging."

As far as his exercise habits, Jobs himself told agents that he was a member at the New York Athletic Club — the only organization he admitted to being part of.

Jobs was also known for being a good neighbor, who at his unadorned homes in Palo Alto and Woodside, Calif., often left his door unlocked and kept to himself.

He was a "quiet and unassuming individual," said a person who lived next door, who noted that Jobs had even "visited her last week to ensure some landscaping he was having done would not cause any problems."

david.sarno@latimes.com

deborah.netburn@latimes.com

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Apple's Steve Wozniak: 'We've lost a lot of control' - CNN

Wozniak: Past rebels, future programmersApple co-founder Steve Wozniak has hesitations about a tech-dominated societyWozniak carries five to 10 cell phones but expresses frustrations with unreliable productsHe has hand-picked several artifacts for an upcoming exhibit at the Computer History Museum

Mountain View, California (CNN) -- The world has mostly caught on to Steve Wozniak's vision of having a computer in every home. But this digital lifestyle can sometimes turn rotten, he said last week.

Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs and designed, programmed and built some of the world's first personal computers, laments the byproducts of a culture that's always connected to electronics.

Leading a tour through an exhibit of computer artifacts -- including giant supercomputers and Atari game systems -- that opens next month at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Wozniak paused to criticize the stranglehold technology has on our lives.

"We're dependent on it," he said at the museum, which holds one of the world's largest collections of vintage computers and sits about six blocks from Google's headquarters. "And eventually, we are going to have it doing every task we can in the world, so we can sit back and relax."

Wozniak's musings have undertones of science-fiction, drawing parallels between the internet and robots bent on taking over humanity.

"All of a sudden, we've lost a lot of control," he said. "We can't turn off our internet; we can't turn off our smartphones; we can't turn off our computers."

"You used to ask a smart person a question. Now, who do you ask? It starts with g-o, and it's not God," he quipped.

Earlier that day, Wozniak said the biggest obstacle with the growing prevalence of technology is that our personal devices are unreliable.

"Little things that work one day; they don't work the next day," he said enthusiastically, waving his hands. "I think it's much harder today than ever before to basically know that something you have ... is going to work tomorrow."

Reciting an all-too-common living-room frustration, Wozniak told a story about the countless hours he spent trying to troubleshoot his media player, called Slingbox.

"There is no solution," Wozniak said of tech troubles. "Everything has a computer in it nowadays; everything with a computer is going to fail. The solution is: kill the people who invented these things," he said with a smile.

Joking aside, by that logic, Wozniak should be target No. 1 on that hit list. He developed the Apple I, a hobbyist computer, and its more mainstream successors. His work jump-started the personal computer revolution.

As it happens, the museum exhibit is called "Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing." Wozniak, one of 52 fellows at the museum, was asked to hand-pick eight items on display.

"It's transformed our lives," Computer History Museum CEO John Hollar said of the personal computer. "It's transformed our cultures."

Wozniak, 60, the computer whiz whose Apple shares easily sustain his Segway-riding lifestyle, retired from full-time employment at Apple in 1987. But "the Woz" has remained in the spotlight, thanks to a turn as a "Dancing with the Stars" contestant in 2009 and a much-publicized relationship with comedian Kathy Griffin.

Last month, he appeared in London for the auction of a rare Apple I computer that sold for $213,000. One was also on display at the Computer History Museum.

During Wozniak's short-lived run on "Dancing with the Stars," gossip bloggers noted his short, portly frame and compared him to a teddy bear. In person, he comes off as kind, humble and patient -- although one of the few things that test his patience, it seems, is computers.

Despite his frustrations with gadgetry, Wozniak is still a gearhead. He says he carries five to 10 cell phones around with him at a given time. Sometimes he'll set up half a dozen of them, along with standalone GPS units, on his car's windshield, all navigating him to the same spot.

On Thursday, he had three: two iPhones (including an elusive white model that has yet to be sold in stores) and another running Google's Android operating system.

He is a voracious news consumer whose days are engrossed in "thousands of tech headlines." And Wozniak recently made headlines of his own.

In one, he compared Android to Microsoft's Windows and said that Google's system would eventually dominate the smartphone market. He echoed this sentiment to CNN.

"Apple likes to sit and control the whole user experience better, and it's a tradeoff," Wozniak said. "The Android platform might have the greater market share, but individually as a company, I'm sure Apple will probably wind up on top in mobile phones."

Wozniak also created some blogosphere buzz when he was quoted as saying Apple had acquired language-software maker Nuance, a tip that turned out to be incorrect. Last week, he made repeated mention to the similar company that Apple actually did buy, called Siri.

Wozniak appears most excited about these types of software, which interpret what you're saying and translate that into actions readable by computers.

"Eventually, we might just be wearing our computers like a watch and speaking to them," he said. (He's already there; he wears a touch-screen iPod Nano with a band around his wrist.) "Every step of the way, things get less in our way. It's less like the technology is there. It's more like our thoughts go directly into the actions that we want."

That's the ideal future, he said.

Technology romanticism aside, Wozniak says his favorite device is a laptop: the MacBook Pro.

His hesitations about the world's reliance on computers sometimes fade into fond memories of the early days of computing. The first Apple computer was a homebrew distributed for free.

"I didn't design this computer to make a lot of money," Wozniak said later when the tour stopped in front of the original Apple computer, a wooden and silicon contraption that's rough around the edges. "I wanted to accelerate the world's advancement in the social revolution that it would cause. So I gave away my designs for free.

"But eventually, Steve Jobs came and said, 'Why don't we build it for (consumers)?'" he continued. That was after his then-employer Hewlett-Packard "turned me down five times on the idea," he said.

Whether computers work all the time or not, the formula certainly worked to make Apple a wildly successful business. And it gives Wozniak time to observe the revolution he helped make.

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Steve Jobs to launch iPad newspaper with Rupert Murdoch? - CNET

Will they both appear on stage, Steve Jobs in a suit, Rupert Murdoch in Levi's and a black turtleneck?

This magical image might, um, flash before your eyes when you hear that Apple is reportedly helping Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. launch a new--is there another word for newspaper these days?--news entity exclusively for the iPad.

Women's Wear Daily offers a report that this iPad-o-newsthingy, which has been in covert development for several months, will be called "The Daily." It will, apparently, have as its pulsating spirit "a tabloid sensibility with a broadsheet intelligence."

Oh, and there is a price for this melange of the tabloid heart with a broadsheet mind. A ticklingly enticing 99 cents a week.

The Daily will, apparently not enjoy such dated concepts as a print edition or even a Web edition. Instead it will be beamed straight to the iPad (or Galaxy, if you can afford one) from News Corp.'s high pod somewhere in Manhanttan.

Apple's role in this interesting enterprise seems to rest in offering engineering expertise, and, of course, the existence of many millions of iPads waiting to host the new iPado-o-newsthingy.

There will be some, I know, who will already be scoffing at the prospect of an iPad-o-newsthingy, even if, as the Daily will allegedly enjoy, it has not only excellent, but even original content.

Might I suggest, as Chrissie Hynde once almost muttered, they should stop their scoffing? Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch have one very important thing in common: they think quite deeply about what people really want to buy. They actually consider very, very carefully what delights people, as opposed to what they merely consume.

Yes, I hear you scoff, I can see that about Jobs, but Murdoch? Surely he debases everything that goes before him. Look at all those dreadful tabloids he has perpetrated.

Well, it depends on where you find your debasement. Those would be the dreadful tabloids to which many members of intelligentsia rush to (and delight in) well before they read the paper they know they're supposed to be seen reading.

Though his experiments with charging for some of his British online entities, such as the often marvelous News of the World and the sometimes interesting Sunday Times, have proved to be a painful experience, Murdoch is reportedly captivated by the notion that people are far more captivated when clutching an iPad than when they are in possession of any other medium.

There is a love thing going on with the iPad. And you know how lovers like to spend a lot of time with each other.

The question remains, though, as to how this iPad-o-newsthingy will be presented to the world. Will there be some concerted advertising campaign, perhaps prepared in conjunction with Apple? Will there be star writers hired whose mere name will force a significant number of the population to toss their 99 cents into the fray? (The former editor of the New York Post Page 6, Richard Johnson is, for example, already said to be on the team.)

Or will its alleged use of the amazingly investigative Parrot AR.Drone "quadricopter," offering a unique visual perspective on police car chases, be enough to excite the iPad readers?

I am fascinated to see just how much of Apple's engineering intelligence will show in this iPad-o-newsthingy. If Apple's engineers inject enough thinking different into the idea of news consumption on the iPad, 99 cents a week might be quite tempting to a significant portion of users (which doesn't, at first, have to be a large number).

Come on, it's only 99 cents. You know, like a track on iTunes. And, just once in a while, you used to download those for free, didn't you?

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