Steve Jobs Listened to Vinyl, According to Book
The man behind iTunes had an appreciation for the old school
August 23, 2016
Though vinyl hounds have received some lousy press as of late, Gary Dell’abate will be glad to hear that one of America’s greatest pioneers, Steve Jobs, was also a record user. He may have changed the way we listen to our music, but Jobs never changed how he listened to his.
According to biography “Becoming Steve Jobs,” the Apple pioneer took a huge interest in well-crafted turntables, particularly his Linn Sondek audiophile turntable. The high-quality manufacturing also heavily influenced Jobs during the design of his NeXT computer, aka “the cube.” For the paint job, Jobs requested the same quality “as a titanium tone arm he’d seen on a four-thousand-dollar turntable.” The close attention-to-detail cost the manufacturers $50 a unit to properly create.
Jobs’ affection for the world of vinyl has been echoed before, most notably in a 2012 technology conference with Neil Young, who stated, “Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music. His legacy is tremendous – but when he went home, he listened to vinyl.”
