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Apple

Fortune: What Apple’s Steve Jobs brought to Bob Iger’s Disney

By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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December 30, 2014, 7:13 AM ET
Apple Unveils Video Games For I-Tunes And Two New I-Pod Models
SAN FRANCISCO - SEPTEMBER 12: Apple CEO Steve Jobs (R) shares a laugh with Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger during an Apple media event September 12, 2006 in San Francisco. Jobs announced new iPods and video downloads from iTunes as well as a sneak peek at a device tenatively called iTV which allows you to channel iTunes to your television and is expected out in early 2007. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)Photograph by Justin Sullivan — Getty Images

One of the highlights of Michal Lev-Ram’s cover story in the current issue of Fortune is the section about Bob Iger’s relationship with Steve Jobs, who brought Pixar’s hit-making machine to Disney (DIS) and became, in return, Disney’s largest shareholder and a key advisor.

In a second piece posted Tuesday, Lev-Ram fleshes out that section with new details from her notebook. Among them:

  • Their paths crossed early; Jobs had dated Iger’s wife’s college roommate.
  • When Iger got the CEO job at Disney, he called his family, his former boss and Steve Jobs, in that order — even though, Iger confesses, he didn’t know Jobs very well.
  • “Every once in a while he’d come to me thinking the sky’s falling apart and that our business [the entertainment industry] was screwed.”
  • “The whole app world, that happened much faster and in more profound ways than he ever anticipated,” says Iger. “He never envisioned an app industry.”

.

More here: When Disney’s Bob Iger met Apple’s Steve Jobs

Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.

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By Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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