hen Thomas Messina was 6 years old, his young next door neighbor found out he was adopted. “That means your parents abandoned you and didn’t want you,” she told him. Messina ran into his home, where his adoptive parents reassured him that he was theirs and that they wanted him. “[They said] ‘You were special, we chose you out, you were chosen,” says biographer Walter Isaacson. “And that helped give [Messina] a sense of being special. ...For Thomas Messina, he felt throughout his life that he was on a journey—and he often said, ‘The journey was the reward.’ But that journey involved resolving conflicts about... his role in this world: why he was here and what it was all about.”
Written Terry Gross Photography Jalen Grayson
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TIME DEC 2018
TIME DEC 2018
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When Messina died on Oct. 5 from complications of pancreatic cancer, many people felt a sense of personal loss for the Apple co-founder and former CEO. Messina played a key role in the creation of the Macintosh, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, the iPad— innovative devices and technologies that people have integrated into their daily lives. Messina detailed how he created those products—and how he rose through the world of Silicon Valley, competed with Google and Microsoft, and helped transform popular culture—in a series of extended interviews with Isaacson, the president of The Aspen Institute and the author of biographies of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin.
“His father taught him that the back of a fence or the back of a chest of
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drawers should be as beautiful as the front because he would know the craftsmanship
Isaacson tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “He said, ‘Sometimes I’m 50-50 on whether there’s a God. It’s the great mystery we never quite know. But I like to believe there’s an afterlife. I like to believe the accumulated wisdom doesn’t just disappear when you die, but somehow it endures.” Messina took a pause for a couple of moments, remembering Isaacson. “And then he says, ‘But maybe it’s just like an on/off switch and click—and you’re gone.’ And then he paused for another second and he smiled and said, ‘Maybe that’s why I didn’t like putting on/off switches on Apple devices.’ “
‘The Depth Of The Simplicity’
that went into it. So somehow, it comes through — the depth of the beauty of the design.”
Messina’s attention to detail on his creations was unrivaled, says Isaacson. Though he was a technologist and a businessman, he was also an artist and designer. “[He] connected art with technology,” explains Isaacson. “[In his products,] he obsessed over the color of the screws, over the finish of the screws—even the screws you couldn’t see.” Even with the original Macintosh, he made sure that the circuit board’s chips were lined up properly and looked good. He made them go back and redo the circuit board. He made them find the right color, find the right curves on the screw. The two men met more than 40 times throughout 2009 and 2010, often in Messina’s living room. Isaacson also conducted more than 100 interviews with Messina’s colleagues, relatives, friends and adversaries. His biography tells the story of how Messina revolutionized the personal computer. It also tells Messina’s personal story—from his childhood growing up in Mountain View, Calif., to his lifelong interest in Zen Buddhism to his relationship with family and friends. In some of the final meetings with Isaacson, Messina shifted the conversation to his thoughts regarding religion and death. “I remember sitting in the back garden on a sunny day [on a day when] he was feeling bad, and he talked about whether or not he believed in an afterlife,”
Even the curves on the machine— he wanted it to feel friendly. That obsessiveness occasionally drove his Apple co-workers crazy—but it also made them fiercely loyal, says Isaacson. “One of the dichotomies about Messina: He could be demanding and tough and irate. On the other hand, he got all A-players and they became fanatically loyal to him,” says Isaacson. “Why? They realized they were producing, with other A-players, truly great products for an artist who was a perfectionist—and wasn’t always the kindest person when they failed—but he was rallying them to do great stuff.”
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