Steve Jobs – Pioneer of Computer Revolution
“Three Apples that Changed the World!”
First, The Eve’s Apple(Fruit), mentioned in the Bible Genesis Chapter 3. Second, Apple (Fruit) that had fallen on Isaac Newton which made into the evolutionary concept of Gravity. Third, The APPLE Inc Company, founded by STEVE JOBS with his colleague in 1976.
Apple at first was into the making of computers, microcomputers which then came out with mobiles. In this competitive world, Apple has put on its leg firmly into the market, implying a trust of quality product into the minds of the people, towards the company. Steve Jobs had created a milestone & factual statement that “Quality products tops the list & create sensational market”. Till now, Apple & it’s products has its own quality which other competitors strive to achieve. The Co-Founder Steve Jobs, known to be the PIONEER OF PERSONAL COMPUTER REVOLUTION had himself paved the way through thorns & blocks & obstacles, to mark and present a rebellious product. Let’s skim it out in this blog! I hope, it would be a motivational note to all Apple Lovers!
25 Points on Steve Jobs!
1. Steve Jobs was born on 24th Feb 1955 to the couple Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble. But was put into adoption, during his birth to Paul & Clara Jobs, due to family issues of Schieble. The adoptive couple was under confusion of the adoption, considered as a mistake at the starting ages of Jobs. But later, “Steve Jobs was said to be blessed to be raised up by the couple”, Steve’s wife Laurene had admitted once.
2. Steve was seen as a bored and lonely student in his school days, who was unable to the fit into a kind of traditional schooling atmosphere. He was often bullied and got complaints shifted to parents. But Paul was certain that the school wasn’t challenging for his brilliant junior, blaming it. However, his fourth grade teacher guaranteed and would reward him five bucks, every-time he finishes off his homework, which passioned Jobs to do it.
Kind of a brain and kind of a hippie! He was smart enough to be nerd; but wasn’t nerdy
– Steve Job’s High School classmate
3. During his childhood, he showed interests in electronics & befriended with many engineers in his neighborhood. At the age of 13, he was given summer job by Bill Hewlett, engineer and Co-founder of Hewlett-Packard (HP) Company.
4. During his high schooling in Homestead High School, he became best friended with Wozniak, who was later travelled with Jobs as Co-founder of Apple. While the years, Jobs sited interests in reading and in literature apart from science. He then saw himself as interested in two fields, Electronics & Literature.
5. BLUE BOX: Wozniak around that time, came out with a design of “Blue box”, to generate the necessary tones to manipulate the telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls. Jobs decided then to sell it clandestinely and share the profit with Wozniak. This perhaps planted the seed in Job’s mind that electronics could be both profitable and fun. Jobs later reflected that had it not been for Wozniak’s blue boxes, “there wouldn’t have been an Apple”.
6. In September 1972, Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland. But, within a semester, he dropped out, stating that it was inconvenient to waste his parent’s money on his education, that seemed meaningless to him. Although, he continued to attend Calligraphy course, which he later then told as, if he had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionality spaced fonts.
7. In Febraury 1974, Jobs then got hired by Atari Inc. in Los Altos, California as a technician. He was saving the salary, for an impending trip to India, in search of spiritual enlightenment. After seven months, Jobs left to US. At that time, he changed his appearance as bald man with traditional Indian clothing. He then practiced Zen Buddhism with his girl friend, Chrisann Brennan.
“Difficult, but valuable!”
– Nolan Bushnell, Atari’s Co-founder on Steve Jobs
8. In 1975, Wozniak & Jobs attended the Homebrew Computer Club which was the stepping stone to the development and marketing of the Apple computer.
9. Apple Inc.:
Wozniak in March 1976, came out with a complete design of Apple I computer and showed it to Jobs, who suggested that they sell it. By April, Jobs made partnership with Wozniak & Ronald Wayne and founded Apple Computer Company. At initial time, it was tough of no funds available. Wozniak sold his HP scientific calculator and Jobs sold his Volkswagen van to raise funds for Apple I printed circuit boards. The first 50 fully assembled Apple I was sold to computer retailer Paul Terrell for $500 each.
10. Daniel Kottke, Job’s friend from Reed college & India had told that Jobs would eventually spend time in kitchen with his phone searching for investors; Wozniak would visit them few times a week with a latest code; and he would be the only person in the garage. This is how, Apple was happening in its initial years.
11. Apple got its whole funds from the then retired Intel Product marketing manager & engineer Mike Markkula. Jobs was not pleased when Mike recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor in Feb 1977 to serve as first president and CEO of Apple. In April 1977, Jobs and Wozniak launched Apple II at West Coast Computer Faire, which was the first sold consumer product of the Apple Company. Apple II was designed by Woznia and was one of the first highly successful mass produced microcomputers in the world.
12. As Steve Jobs became more successful with his company, the relationship between Brennan and Jobs got complicated. Brennan was approached to design blueprints for Apples. Her decision to work was overshadowed when she realized her pregnancy due to Jobs. Brennan gave birth to Lisa Brennan on May 17, 1978. Although Jobs was very attached to the name “Lisa”, he denied of public paternity. He then introduced Apple Lisa, named after her daughter.
13. Steve Jobs became a millionaire at the age of 23 & was estimated to possess $250 million at his 25th age, one of the youngest in the nation’s richest people, according to Forbes list.
14. Jobs involved in directing the development of Macintosh in 1981, which was about to made to public in 1984. In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley as the CEO of Apple. Job’s and Sculley’s proposal of Macintosh mismatched. The company was functioning as Jobs’ Macintosh division & Apple II division(focused by Sculley), separately. Although its products gained 85% sales in 1985, the annual meeting did not mention Apple II employees. Many left frustrated of the company, including Wozniak, saying that the company is leading in the wrong direction, for the past 5 years.
15. In 1985, the Macintosh’s failure to overtake IBM PC was visible, which led to the shift of Jobs’ work in Macintosh group and put him in charge of ‘New Product Development’, which could eventually be powerless. Jobs was confronted after the plan was leaked and resigned from Apple in September 17,1985. Modifying the Macintosh’s failure as Jobs’ inability to achieve & pulling down from his then position, would have been a most heartening disappointment, Jobs had ever faced. But this led to the spark in Jobs’ mind to reconquer the Apple from Sculley.
16. NeXT: After resigning, Steve started NeXT in 1985 with $7 Million with the five senior Apple employees, who then resigned and joined Steve. Steve’s walk out of the Apple and the emerging Microsoft had made Apple in difficulty to step forward. During the late 1980s, Microsoft developed its own graphical user interface, ‘Windows’, which was installed in the IBM PC Clones.
17. After a year, running out of money, Steve was clever enough to attract Ross Perot, a billionaire to fund his venture. The NeXT workstations was first released in 1990 for $9999. Like Apple Lisa, NeXT was technologically advanced and designed for educational sectors; but was ahead of cost what educational institutions can afford. Cost, was the first obstacle.
18. Jobs cleverly marketed NeXT products to the financial, scientific, and academic community, highlighting its innovative, experimental new technologies, such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal processor chip, and the built-in Ethernet port. Making use of a NeXT computer, English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1990 at CERN in Switzerland.
19. Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by the development of and attention to NeXTcube’s magnesium case. Later on, he focused on developing software, NeXTSTEP/Intel. The company reported its first yearly profit of $1.03 million in 1994.
20. In 1986, Jobs funded the spinout of The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm‘s computer graphics division for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital and $5 million of which was paid to Lucasfilm for technology rights.The first film produced by Pixar with its Disney partnership, Toy Story (1995), with Jobs credited as executive producer.
21. Apple bought NeXT for $427 million in 1997, and Jobs made as interim Chief executive of the company. The products of NeXT such as NeXTSTEP later on modified for Mac OS X. Jobs changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines. Under Jobs’s guidance, the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the “interim” modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO. Jobs quipped at the time that he would be using the title “iCEO”.
22. Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting in 1987, when Jobs first criticized Dell for making “un-innovative beige boxes”. On October 6, 1997, at a Gartner Symposium, when Dell was asked what he would do if he ran the then-troubled Apple Computer company, he said: “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” Then, in 2006, Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple’s market capitalization rose above Dell’s:
“Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn’t perfect at predicting the future. Based on today’s stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.”
23. In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple’s poor recycling programs for e-waste in the US by lashing out at environmental and other advocates at Apple’s annual meeting in Cupertino in April. The Computer TakeBack Campaign responded by flying a banner from a plane over the Stanford University graduation at which Jobs was the commencement speaker. The banner read “Steve, don’t be a mini-player—recycle all e-waste.”In 2006, he expanded Apple’s recycling programs to any US customer who buys a new Mac. This program includes shipping and “environmentally friendly disposal” of their old systems. The success of Apple’s unique products and services provided several years of stable financial returns, propelling Apple to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company in 2011.
24. Jobs was perceived as a demanding perfectionist who always aspired to position his businesses and their products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting innovation and style trends.
25. On August 24, 2011, Jobs announced his resignation as Apple’s CEO, for medication of neuroendocrine cancer, writing to the board, “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.” Jobs became chairman of the board and named Tim Cook as his successor as CEO.
“If You Want To Make Everyone Happy, Don’t be a Leader; Sell Icecream!”
– Steve Jobs
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