iJames If you expect to sit across from James Higa and extract memories about his long relationship with Steve Jobs, you’ll leave with an empty notebook. But if you ask him to write a poem on the subject, you’ll get every answer you were hoping for. By Darren Gluckman Photography by Jessica Lifland
“I
don’t know” was his first English phrase. Now he knows a lot, but still speaks with great circumspection. James Higa, former senior director in the office of the CEO at Apple Inc., spent most of his career reporting to Steve Jobs, Apple’s legendary co-founder, who passed away in 2011. Among the signature achievements Higa cites in his public CV (at least the one trumpeted by Philanthropic Ventures Foundation, where he has recently landed as executive director) is his involvement in negotiating the licensing agreements with the major record labels that were a necessary precondition to launching iTunes in 2001. Back then, the major labels were famously leery of digital media, having
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moved aggressively against Napster and publicly threatening (and following through on those threats) to sue individual illegal downloaders. Like a cluster of besieged fiefdoms, they were lashing out defensively, desperately clinging to their crumbling domains, and appearing bereft of a longterm survival strategy. The last thing they seemed capable of was rallying around a model for the digital distribution of their product—getting them to sign on to Apple’s gamechanging platform was, to put it mildly, a pretty big deal. So, James: What was that like, how did it come about, and what was your role in getting them on board? There’s a long pause where one wonders if perhaps the phone connection has been lost. Then, at last: “I’m a little uncomfortable in this territory because it’s something that Apple doesn’t talk about much, and I’m a bit sensitive to people taking advantage of Steve’s death