By Steve Jobs lived 56 years, years in which he managed to accomplish so much, yet it still feels like it wasn’t enough. Apple, NeXT and Pixar are just the major names that come up in his career. All his ideas, and all his innovations brought us some of the most exciting gadgets and devices of all times. Without his products, there would probably still be years until we would’ve seen technological wonders like iPads and iPods.
His interest for computers and electronics comes from a very young age, having grown in Silicon Valley, the center of technology. There he met Stephen Wozniak, a computer wiz from whom Jobs wanted to learn. All these happened back in 1969, when he was only 14. But only after a few years later, Apple was born.
After Steve Jobs left Silicon Valley at age of 19, he returned to follow his passion for computers and work with Wozniak, who had the inspiration of designing a simple computer, which at the time had only one board. And with that, Apple was born. With Steve’s garage as their base of operations, they were trying to build and sell their device, and in 1977 the Apple II computer was created, much more advanced than anything you could find in stores at that time.
Upon receiving an investment of $250,000 from Mike Markkula, they managed to turn the Apple II into a symbol of personal computers worldwide. Therefore, only after four years the company became public, and Steve Jobs reached a net worth of over $200 million, at only the age of 25. One year later, as IBM was rising, they managed to create Apple III. In 1982 he was Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year”, year in which he was already working on a new computer called Lisa, which was supposed to be revolutionary.
After he was thrown out of the Lisa project, Steve started to work on Macintosh, whose GUI was supposed to be so innovate, only to outsell Lisa. This latest project had great sales charts in the beginning, but soon it become another failed product. Because there was fear Apple would be put out of business, Steve Jobs was appointed chairman of the board with no managerial decisions. This was done by none other than John Sculley, who Jobs himself hired as CEO of the company in early 80′s.
After he was fired, he was soon determined to start his own rival company, called NeXT. Upon threatening Apple that he would take their best engineers, Apple dropped a lawsuit. In that time he was also working on another company, Pixar, which he invested in as convinced by George Lucas, with the dream of making movies with computer graphics. Both NeXT and Pixar were doing bad. After hard work and many failed tries of building a computer that would trash Macintosh in sales, in the end he was forced to give up developing hardware and focus on building software, which wasn’t even close to Apple’s standards.
At Pixar, things weren’t going great either. He stopped producing hardware and started focusing on perfecting a 3D language called RenderMan. His only hope was to obtain a contract with Disney to make a full featured film, which was canceled two years later, in 1993. At this point Pixar’s only revue was from commercials.
Reaching his low point in the career, Jobs started a family with Laurene. They got married in 1991 and by this time he spent most of his time at home, with his wife and his child, Reed.
However, his luck was about to get better, as Disney’s John Lasseter came up with another script for Toy Story, whose graphics were entirely computer generated. This was the first one of many movies to come, but with the success it had upon its release in 1995, only Pixar success’ was bigger.
Unlike Pixar, Apple wasn’t doing as well after Jobs left. Moreover, as Windows 95 was released, Apple was highly threatened. Therefore, their newly appointed CEO decided to buy NeXT and rehire Steve Jobs as “informal adviser to the CEO”. Due to Apple’s frightening losses of over $700 million in the first quarter of 1997, Steve Jobs was appointed CEO. After reviewing the entire company, he cut the number of projects down to dozens, having only four hardware products. He also surprisingly allied with Microsoft to end uncountable patent disputes.
Six months after his return, Steve Jobs turned profit once more with the revolutionary Power Mac 3G and PowerBook. In 1998 the first iMac was unveiled, and in 2001 NeXT’s technology was brought to the Mac platform with Mac OS X. Around that time he was unveiling the digital hub strategy, which would promise Macs to become the digital center for our lives in the new millennium. This led to the development of all these applications like iMovie, iTunes, iDVD, iPhoto, iCal and iSync, GarageBand, and iWeb. This campaign would promise Mac users to have everything they needed and wanted, while PC users would have to turn elsewhere for everything more than a computer and an operating system.
Soon realizing that digital music was increasing in popularity, he developed the iPod, with a stunning design that was going to revolutionize the music players industry. Straight from the beginning, the iPod would easily sync with iTunes, and to increase its popularity even further, by 2003 it was also Windows compatible. iPod Mini, iPod Shuffle and iPod Nano were then produced and, along with iTunes, entirely changed the concept of music, making Apple one of the strongest players on the digital music scene.
As Apple was gaining in the music industry, Pixar eventually merged with Disney in 2006. This happened 1 year after Jobs renewed his cooperation with Disney’s new CEO, making him the biggest shareholder, owning 7% of the company’s stock.
By 2006 Apple started using Intel processors, to increase Mac’s popularity and attract Windows users who could now use it on the new Macs. However, probably his biggest achievement was when he released the first iPhone, back in 2007. At that time the iPhone virtually had no competition. It was beatifully designed, with high-end graphics, ran on OS X, and had a touchscreen, but most important it was a smartphone. It was after the first device that would combine a computer, an iPod and a phone in your pocket when the company changed its name from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc.
2010 was yet another milestone for Apple as they built the iPad, yet another revolutionary device that in Steve Jobs’ opinion would begin the era of post-PC, and personal computers would soon be entirely replaced.
On the downside, Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. He refused surgery, which would have helped him and decided to try some unconventional diets. Despite thinking he was “cured”, his problems were soon to get worse. After temporally stepping down as CEO twice, he eventually resigned in August 2011.
On 5th October, only one day after the release of iPhone 4S, Steve Jobs passed away and left behind all these wonders. But now that he is gone who would even take his place and constantly revolutionize an industry that can’t possibly reach an ending?
