Steve Jobs was well-known for his perfectionist bent, but it often showed up in unexpected ways.
Steve Jobs once made Oracle founder Larry Ellison watch “73 different versions” of Pixar’s movie Toy Story. Ellison and Steve Jobs were neighbours in California for over 25 years. It was around 1995, and Pixar — then led by Steve Jobs — was working on the animated movie Toy Story.
“(Steve Jobs) would call me up and say, Larry, let’s get together,” Ellison said in an interview in 2012. “And I said, see, I’m not coming over if you make me watch Toy Story again. I’ve watched 73 different versions of Toy Story. Now I know the new version of render is 4 percent better than the one I saw last week. But I’m not watching this thing again,” Ellison remembered saying.
But Steve Jobs wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Larry, you gotta see! You, you won’t believe how different the shadows look!” Jobs would tell him. Jobs worked on dozens of versions of Toy Story until it was exactly how he wanted it to be. The movie released on 19th November 1995, and was a hit — it had a production budget of $30 million, but made nearly $400 million at the box office.
“That was Steve until it was perfect,” Ellison said, remembering how his friend had pestered him to watch in-production versions of the movie. “And then once it was perfect, then he moved on to the next problem. If you want to know you’re like Steve Jobs, it’s very simple. You are unable to think about anything other than these serious problems at work. That’s all you can do. And you obsess about it until you solve it. And then you move on to the next thing. And you obsess about that until you solve it,” Ellison says.
“If you have that kind of obsession, combined with Picasso’s aesthetic and Edison’s inventiveness, then you are the next Steve Jobs. That’s the test,” Ellison said.
“Apple became the most valuable company on earth. And it wasn’t even one of Steve’s goals. He wasn’t trying to be rich. He wasn’t trying to be famous. He wasn’t trying to be powerful. He was obsessed with the creative process and building something that was beautiful,” Ellison says.