Steve Jobs, the head honcho at Apple Inc., has been hailed as one of the world’s most important and influential people by Time magazine on numerous occasions and has shaped the technological landscape forever. Let’s take a look at how he got there.
Steve Jobs is the main man at Apple. He is the Chief Executive Officer of the leading personal technology company in the world, the biggest shareholder at the Walt Disney Company, has served as Chief Executive Officer of Pixar Animation Studio’s and is listed as an Executive Producer of the 1995 movie, Toy Story, along with many others.
Jobs was born in San Francisco and adopted. He grew up in Mountain View, California, and attended Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. Whilst at school he attended summer classes at the Hewlett-Packard Company, and soon was hired alongside Steve Wozniak as a summer employee. He enrolled in Reed College after high school, lasting just one semester before dropping out. He got by returning Coke bottles for money and getting free weekly meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. In 1974, he and Wozniak started attending The Homebrew Computer Club meetings, and took a job as a video game technician at Atari to save for a spiritual retreat to India.
Jobs went to India, and came back a Buddhist with a shaved head and a new sense of himself. He began experimenting with psychedelics, and describes his experiences as two or three of the most important experiences of his life. He returned from his travels and, along with his friend Woz, began concentrating on the development of their own computer (at this point a circuit board). Steve Wozniak was a computer genius, and Jobs realised many people were interested by his work. Jobs suggested they sell some computer circuit boards, and what is now Apple Inc. was born.
Jobs founded Apple alongside his long-time friend, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976, building the circuit boards in a garage and then distributing them at computer stores. Wozniak began work on a new computer, The Mac 2. Far more advanced than anything else on the market (such as the addition of colour) and was sure to be a success. They just had one problem, capital. Steve Jobs went in search of a venture capitalist, and it was semi-retired Intel executive Mike Markkula who invested $250 000 in their company and predicted Apple would be inside the Fortune Top 200 companies in the next two years. He was right.
IBM was threatening to enter the market, and the Mac 3 had already failed. Jobs knew he had to come up with something great, and began work on his biggest project yet, Lisa. Named after the daughter of an ex-girlfriend that he denied paternity for and then later accepted, Lisa used a graphical interface instead of a command-line. However, Jobs was kicked off the Lisa project for being considered too temperamental.
Frustrated and angry, Jobs began working earnestly on a new, albeit smaller project, Macintosh.
He was determined to make it cheaper and better than Lisa, sabotaging Lisa’s success. Lisa was also a market failure, and Macintosh became increasingly important to the success of Apple as a whole. Jobs had put together a team of whizz kids with the attitude and moniker, The Pirates, in comparison to the rest of Apple, The Navy. Jobs proceeded to head-hunt John Sculley at Pepsi-Cola in 1983, saying, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” Sculley was sold.
The next year, they aired their famous 1984 commercial at the Superbowl. Jobs introduced the Apple board to the Macintosh on January the 2nd, 1984. The Macintosh became the world’s first successful computer with a graphic interface when it was released in 1984, the response electric.
Simultaneously, Jobs bought the computer-graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd., The Graphics Group, with the dream of creating animated movies using computers. Pixar Animation Studio was born. NeXT Computers proved to be a successful venture, the NeXTcube being referred to as an inter-personal computer. An ‘inter-personal’ computer would solve many of the problems faced at the time concerning communication between users. If people could communicate easily it via computer it would solve a lot of the problems.
“1990 CERN: A Joint proposal for a hypertext system is presented to the management. Mike Sendall buys a NeXT cube for evaluation, and gives it to Tim [Berners-Lee]. Tim’s prototype implementation on NeXTStep is made in the space of a few months, thanks to the qualities of the NeXTStep software development system. This prototype offers WYSIWYG browsing/authoring! Current Web browsers used in “surfing the Internet” are mere passive windows, depriving the user of the possibility to contribute. During some sessions in the CERNcafeteria, Tim and I try to find a catching name for the system. I was determined that the name should not yet again be taken from Greek mythology. Tim proposes “World-Wide Web”. I like this very much, except that it is difficult to pronounce in French…” by Robert Cailliau, 2 November 1995.
NeXT hardware did not sell though. The company struggled and eventually the investors and board began walking out. NeXT dismissed their hardware sector and concentrated on software development. Pixar were also struggling at the time, their graphic work stations not selling and a full-length animated feature film contract falling through. Jobs was at the lowest ebb of his career.
John Lasseter, head of the animation division at Pixar, returned from Disney with an improved script and the movie was earmarked to be released Thanksgiving of 1995. That film was Toy Story. Pixar Animation Studio’s went public a week later, and the only thing to eclipse the success of Toy Story was the rise Pixar Share value on the stock market. Things were looking up! Steve’s net worth had risen to $1.5 billion, five times what he ever made at Apple during the 1980’s.
To be Continued
We take a look at Scott Schuman, fashion blogger of The Sartorialist fame.
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