Silicon Valley has some of the most intriguing stories about the lengths founders go to achieve success, but a lesser-known story about Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, is now gaining attention. In 1978, Jobs denied being the father of his newborn daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, while Apple secretly developed a computer that would later carry the same name. Decades later, Lisa’s memoir, Small Fry, reveals her complex relationship with her father, showing how his denial and eventual admission affected her life.
Steve Jobs and the Lisa computer
According to an excerpt of the memoir published by Vanity Fair, on May 17, 1978, Chrisann Brennan gave birth to Lisa in a small farmhouse in Oregon. Jobs was in a long-term relationship with Chrisann at the time and was not present at the time of Lisa’s birth. He visited a few days later, helped pick her name from a baby book, and left. At the same time, Apple engineers were designing the Lisa computer in a garage near Silicon Valley.
The Lisa computer was a major project for Apple. It had a graphical interface, icons, a mouse, and software that was easy to use. It cost around $50 million to make and sold for $9,995 (retail price) when it launched. Publicly, the name Lisa stood for Local Integrated System Architecture, but a few knew it was named after Jobs’ daughter.
Despite naming the computer after her, Jobs for years denied being Lisa’s father, Lisa wrote in her memoir. He claimed he was sterile and even suggested another man might be her father. Chrisann later filed a paternity suit, and a DNA test confirmed Jobs was the father. He was ordered to pay child support of $385 a month.
Lisa grew up seeing her father only as a tech icon on stage, the absent visitor in rented rooms, and a man who never accepted her publicly. Even when she got into Harvard, Jobs initially refused to pay her tuition. She recalls small moments of cruelty, like him saying, “You smell like a toilet.”
When Steve Jobs admitted the truth
Years later, Jobs admitted the truth. During lunch with U2’s Bono, he finally said, “Yeah, it was” when asked if the computer was named after Lisa. During interviews, Steve Jobs kept admitting to his biographer Walter Isaacson that the Lisa computer was “obviously” named after his daughter. But this admission did not erase the many years he had publicly denied it. Lisa Brennan-Jobs recalls one of the last things her father said before he died: “I really owe you one.”
The Lisa computer, however, did not succeed. It flopped in the market and was discontinued after a few years. Yet the name lived on in Lisa’s memoir, where it finally belonged to the person who carried it.
