There was a time when hearing the word Apple brought into picture the fruit, but today when we hear Apple, the smartphone and Steve Jobs comes into picture. Such is the power of Apple of Steve Jobs, which has transformed its meaning.
Jobs once 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.” Stepping down from his post as the CEO of Apple, he has created a big vacuum for the company and the entire technology industry too. Let us glance through the journey of Jobs – taking Apple from a garage startup to a billion dollar business.
An American business mogul, Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, and was adopted by Paul and Clara. He is the co-founder, chairman on the board and the former CEO of Apple. He always had distinguished ideas much ahead of the time, which the world did not readily accept. Jobs always said “Have patience and wait until the world changes its mind and accepts your idea.”
After graduating from high school, Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland. However, he dropped out after attending only one semester. But, he still continued auditing classes at Reed. Jobs used to sleep on the floor of his friend’s rooms, return Coke bottles for food money and grab weekly free meals at the Hare Krishna temple. Jobs later stated that if he had never dropped the single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.
Back home in 1974, Jobs started attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with his friend Wozniak and later took a technician’s job at Atari who manufactured video games,just to save money for a spiritual retreat to India. He returned from India as a Buddhist along with Daniel Kottke, with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing. Later, he resumed his job at Atari.
Apple came to life in 1976 when Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne co-founded the company in a garage. With expansion of Apple, the company looked in for an experienced executive thus appointing Mike Scott as the CEO. Jobs introduced the Macintosh in 1984 in Apple’s annual shareholders meeting, which became the first commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface. The development of Mac was eventually taken over by Jobs from Jef Raskin.
Jobs founded NeXT Computer around 1985. He marketed the products to the scientific and academic fields due to the innovative, experimental new technologies it incorporated. NeXT Mail was one of the first to support universally visible, clickable embedded graphics and audio within e-mail. With the announcement of Apple to buy NeXT for $429 million in 1996, Jobs was back into the company. After taking charge as the CEO of Apple in 1997, Jobs took several intricate decisions like termination of a number of projects. He also changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines. Under his guidance, the sales of Apple increased significantly with the introduction of iMac. Jobs brought into picture appealing designs and powerful branding which played an important role in the success of Apple.
In recent years, the company sprouted in to various digital appliances. Jobs brought in innovative products in the market with the introduction of iPod, iTunes Stores, iPhone and finally iPad. The world finally started accepting his concept and thoughts and realized that just a machine doing the job is not enough; you require a machine that matches your style statement along with high-performance thus providing you every possible technology in your hand.
But, with Steve Jobs resigning from his post and Tim Cook taking over, the question stands that what’s next in and for Apple and what’s next for the world of technology. Time will only answer the question. Michael Gartenberg, Research Director at Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company, says, “While this marks the end of an era for Apple, it’s important to remember the there’s more to Apple than any one person, even Steve Jobs. Continuing as chairman Mr. Jobs will continue to leave his mark on both the company and products even as he transfers the reigns to Mr. Cook.”
Whatever may be the case, the world is going to miss the charismatic man, who with his great vision, technology expertise and vivid talents mesmerized the world. Let us wait and watch the further journey of Apple.
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