COMPLETE LIFE STORY OF STEVE JOBS
- COMPLETE STORY OF STEVE JOBS AS A BOY/ADULT AND STUDENT
- COMPLETE STORY OF STEVE JOBS ON; " HOW APPLE STARTED ALONG WITH IPHONE
- COMPLETE HISTORY OF STEVE JOB'S, APPLE AND IPHONE AND STEVE JOB'S SUCCESS
" FINALLY A SUCCESS STORY OF STEVE JOBS "
If you had to pick a single individual who personified SiliconValley, you’d have a list of contenders who would probablyinclude Bill Hewlett and David Packard, Bill Gates (even thoughMicrosoft is not in the Valley), Andy Grove and the Google duo.But for a lot of people, the choice would be an easy one – and theywould plump for Steve Jobs. On one hand, he is the epitome of thecool geek, effortlessly blending a love and understanding oftechnology with a slightly alternative, left-of-field world view. Andon the other, he is clearly an incredible businessman. Apple, ofwhich he is Co-founder, Chairman and CEO, has an intuitiveunderstanding of design and user interface that is arguably thefinest of any company in the world.
Indeed Apple, which Jobs personifies, is not so much a company asa cultural phenomenon. Its product launches are ‘events’, itsconsumers have a devotion that sometimes borders on religiousmania, it splits opinion sharply, and anyone with an interest indesign, or just the modern consumer world, should have an interestin Apple. And for many Apple is Jobs and Jobs is Apple.
Jobs was born in 1955; his birth mother was single and he was
given up for adoption. The couple who adopted him were Paul and
Clara Jobs who lived in Mountain View, California. During his childhood
and teens, nearby San Francisco was the capital of counterculture.
But while Northern California may have been the
hippy capital of the world, there was another revolution stirring
nearby too. From the 1950s onward the research at Stanford
University was turning Silicon Valley (the term was coined in 1971)
into a global high-tech centre. Both of Northern California’s 20thcentury
revolutions left their marks on Jobs. He is the quintessential
West Coast liberal – alternative in his views and, for that matter, the way he runs his company. Yet he is also one of the most influential businesspeople of the late 20th century – and when it comes to high-end consumer electronics he is without equal.
After finishing high school in Cupertino, California, Jobs went on
to study sciences – as well as literature and poetry – at Reed College
in Portland, Oregon. He lasted only a term, and returned to his
home town, where he found employment as a technician at Atari.
Already something of a geek, he also joined the now legendary
Homebrew Computer Club, where he met Steve Wozniak. A trip to
India for spiritual enlightenment followed, after which he returned
to Atari. In 1976, Jobs and Wozniak, along with Ronald Wayne
(who is now a forgotten and rather melancholy footnote in Valley
history), co-founded Apple in the Jobs family garage. The Apple I
was launched in 1977, without a keyboard, case or monitor; it was
priced at $666.66, or just under $2,500 in 2010 dollars, and was an
immediate success.
The start-up moved quickly. In 1977, the company introduced theApple II, and in 1979 the Apple II+. In 1980 the company wentpublic, making Jobs worth $165 million. But it was a visit to Xeroxin 1979 that really set Apple on its present path. Jobs had boughtstock in the company and went to see the Xerox Alto, which wasthe first computer with a GUI – the graphical user interface thatvirtually every desktop or laptop uses today. Apple had alreadybeen working on a GUI, but what Jobs saw at Xerox spurred it onand in 1983 it launched the Apple Lisa. Internal politics werebecoming a factor, and Jobs had been pushed off the Lisa project.This was no bad thing, as Lisa was a commercial flop and it led Jobsto join the Macintosh project. In 1984, the Apple Mac launched togreat fanfare with the company’s famed ‘1984’ ad.
Although Jobs and Apple are considered pretty much indivisible,many people forget that he didn’t last very long after the Mac’slaunch, and the two parted ways for over a decade. In 1985, Jobswas pushed out of Apple after a power struggle with the CEO, JohnSculley. The reasons behind this were perhaps unsurprising: Jobswas brilliant and inspiring but could be temperamental andcapricious, and the company was becoming more bureaucratic andcorporate as it grew.
So he left to found NeXT, a computer company that is barely
remembered outside geek circles. In fairness, its product, the
NeXTcube, looked beautiful and it was technologically advanced
– perhaps in some ways too advanced. But the main problem was
its price tag – an eye-watering $6,500. As a result of this, the Cube’s
sales were lacklustre. In the meantime, Jobs had his fingers in other
pies too. In 1986, he bought Pixar from George Lucas for $10
million. In 1995, Pixar released Toy Story, and then came its initial
public offering – Jobs’s stake was worth $585 million. But it was
hard to escape the feeling that Apple and Jobs were like a great rock
band whose difficult but brilliant frontman had left to pursue solo
projects. They were very good apart, but nothing like what they
were together.
Apple did all right until the mid-1990s, when its share price begana steep decline. In 1996 Jobs sold NeXT to Apple for $430 million,which he took in shares. The company made a loss of $816 millionthat year. By 1997, many were predicting its demise – a Newsweekstory from July was typical of the view of many. The headline read:‘A death spiral: after years of decline, Apple needs a strategy – anda savior’. That saviour was the company’s brilliant and difficult cofounder.
Jobs returned to Apple and put NeXT people in key positions. Andalthough commercially speaking NeXT was a bit of a damp squib,its influence on Apple – and the computing world as a whole – wassignificant. Firstly, NeXT represented a big leap forward in terms ofgraphical interfaces. And secondly, at NeXT Jobs had created aculture that he felt was the answer to the stifling bureaucracy.Shortly after rejoining, Jobs became interim CEO; two years later,the position was made permanent.
With Jobs back at the helm, the company became focused andprofitable again. He dumped a series of projects such as the NewtonHandheld and concentrated on the iMac. He also began the processof diversification, which turned the company into as much aconsumer electronics company as a computer seller. In 2001, thecategory-killing iPod music player was launched, and in 2007 theiPhone made its début – it has done much the same for mobiles.Both now comfortably outsell the company’s computers. In 2010,the company launched the iPad tablet. Many were uncertain(especially as tablets have such a chequered history), but itsimpressive sales suggested that Apple’s loyal customers were notamong them. Indeed, the oft-repeated sentiment that Steve Jobsknows what you want before you want it seems to hold true.
Many said that this was all very well, but, while the iPod and iPhonehave carried all before them, these devices did little to boost the saleof Macs. In addition, while the company had 4–8 per cent of theoperating system market, Microsoft has never had under 90 percent, and the Mac has made few gains outside its traditionalstrongholds of the creative industries and image-conscious homeusers. But Jobs may be one step ahead again. Increasingly people doaccess their phones from a broad variety of devices, so perhapstransition from computer company to digital lifestyle company isthe long-term smart move.
The markets would certainly seem to agree. Perhaps because of theboutique image its products have and the anti-establishment pose itstrikes, many people tend to forget just how huge Apple has become.In April 2010 it was second on the S&P 500, beaten only by ExxonMobil (and ahead of arch-rival Microsoft). If you compare its fiveyear share performance with the performance of its main rivals, it isApple that is the star. Indeed, for all its alternative posturing, Appleis a very successful and a very big business.
You find this sort of contradiction all over the company too, andyou could argue that they are key to both Apple and the man whoembodies it. The company portrays itself as an outsider, when itcommands over 70 per cent of the MP3 player market and around50 per cent of the mobile phone market. It affects openness, yet thelockdown it has on its products is far stronger than anythingMicrosoft has (with Apple you buy both the hardware and theoperating system). It somehow carries a whiff of hippy values aboutits products, but if you want a green computer you should buy aDell, not a Mac. And, although Jobs has said that ‘innovation iswhat distinguishes leaders from followers’, Apple has not been theoriginator of any one of its products. Starting with the Xerox Altoand moving on through the iPod and the iPhone, someone else hasalways been first. Indeed, if you had to sum up the company’sstrategy, it would be ‘brilliant second’ rather than genuine innovator.
Lest this sounds like criticism, it isn’t really. The title of the 2004book Fast Second: How smart companies bypass radical innovationto enter and dominate new markets says it all really. Those whodive in first often fail to fully reap the rewards of the new marketthey’ve entered. Better to be second when you’ve learned from yourcompetitor’s mistakes. The first MP3 player, for those who areinterested, was the MPMan F10, manufactured by Korea’s SaeHanInformation Systems. It arrived in 1998, three years before the iPod,and others followed it. But their difficult interfaces and fiddlynatures meant they were for geeks only. The iPod, on the otherhand, was easy to use, and that’s why it came to dominate itsmarket. Six years later, the iPhone repeated the trick, albeit in amuch more mature market. It made something functional beautifuland easy to use.
Apple’s genius lies at the customer interface, not in the nuts andbolts. Jobs knows that what people want is stuff that looks beautifuland is beautifully easy to use. Most people don’t care about openness(as with the iPhone) or raw performance figures (as with the Mac’sprocessors) or even sound quality (the iPod is probably not a musicgeek’s choice). They care about how things look and feel – andApple’s brilliant look and feel have won it not only legions of loyalcustomers, but legions of loyal customers who will pay a significantpremium. These are typified by the stereotype of the Apple ‘fanboi’,a slavish devotee of the company and its products, who is bestsummed by a faux interview on the satirical site the Onion, inwhich a fanboi says ‘I’ll buy almost anything if it’s shiny and madeby Apple.’
However, despite a long run of successes, there are a few stormclouds in Jobs’s universe. iPod sales have levelled off, and Androidphones (which use Google’s free open-source operating system) aremaking serious inroads into a market that the iPhone, until recently,ruled unchallenged. Indeed, for tech observers, it’s interesting towatch the Microsoft–Google–Apple dynamic change. A few yearsback, both Google and Apple were anti-Microsoft. But now thingsaren’t so clear.
By far the biggest worry for Apple (from its fanbois to its staff toshareholders), though, is Jobs’s health. He’s had serious problemsover the last 10 years – first with pancreatic cancer and then with aliver transplant. So the big question that is being asked is: whathappens to Apple if Jobs leaves? The precedent from the mid-1990sis not good. It is often said that in Apple only one person’s opinioncounts – that of Steve Jobs. Can the company continue to be Applewithout him?
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