Steve Jobs: 40 years of the Macintosh

Steve's friend Jean Pigozzi, who calls himself a "serious amateur photographer," took the image and told me the story behind it. Although Jean did not work in tech, Steve invited him along to a software conference in New Orleans. One evening after the event, as they were walking down O'Keefe Avenue looking for dinner, Steve—a notoriously fast walker—pulled to a halt. Someone in a store window was working on a Macintosh.

He had to take a closer look. How was this person using the Mac? Steve is so curious, so lasered in on trying to understand, that he is bent nearly double.

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Leslie Berlin, from the Steve Jobs Archive, shares a favourite photo from 1984. It shows Steve Jobs, aged almost 29, bent over to watch a stranger use a Macintosh through a shop window in New Orleans.

The picture captures pure curiosity and joy. Steve had no idea that soon he would be forced out of Apple, spend years building Pixar and NeXT, then return to save Apple and make it the world's most valuable company.

In that moment, all that mattered was seeing someone actually using the machine he had poured his heart into. It stopped him in his tracks.