iSad
RITAM MITRA’s tribute to the man who changed the world of technology into its present innovative avatar
iPhone. iPad. iPod. iMac. They are terms synonymous with innovation, products reflective of brilliance in engineering, yet simplicity in design. They have reshaped the way we communicate, entertain and work. They have, quite simply, changed the world in just a few years. The one main man behind the revolution, Steve Paul Jobs, was far more than just a CEO, an inventor or an entrepreneur. A more complete visionary of his type will not be seen in this generation; already there are comparisons between the turtleneck-clad Apple co-founder and Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. Quite simply, Steve Jobs alone was Steve Jobs.
Jobs, who passed away on October 5 at the age of 56, is credited with the incredible rise of Apple Inc., originally offered to the public at $22 a share. The current share price sits at around $400, and the company itself is valued at over $350 billion, making it the largest technology company in the world by both revenue and profit. It is a far cry from the company that found itself close to bankruptcy and “within hours of acquisition” in the mid-1990s – a period during which Jobs was not associated with the company. And it all started through meetings between co-founders Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne amongst others in the garage of a California home in 1975, with the trio founding Apple Computers Inc. in 1976.
Jobs was born to Syrian and Swiss-German ancestry – and put up for adoption almost immediately. He dropped out of university after just a single semester, although he typically enjoyed auditing classes, while sleeping on the floor of his friends’ bedrooms and returning Coke bottles in order to pay for food. He would attend the local Hare Krishna temple for a weekly meal; Jobs visited India in 1974 and although he did not enjoy the experience, having picked up lice and dysentery, it remained an important trip for an ambitious man in his teenage years. Jobs returned from India a Buddhist.
Apple was established on April 1, 1976, with the Apple I – a personal computer kit. It was purely a motherboard, featuring CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips. It sold for $666.66, which is roughly $2572 in today’s money, adjusted for inflation. A few years later, after a number of successful and failed ventures, Apple introduced the first Macintosh, an iconic moment of 1984. Although it initially sold well, it had a prohibitive price and follow-up sales suffered as a result. However, the foundations had been laid – the Mac’s advanced graphic capabilities led it to being a must-have in the desktop publishing sector.
In 1983, Apple signed a new CEO, John Sculley. His subsequent power struggle with Steve Jobs remains a turning point in the company’s history. Jobs resigned in 1985 after being removed of his managerial duties, and went on to found NeXT Inc. – a computer company that specialised in manufacturing a series of workstations aimed towards the business and higher education markets. In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group, later renamed Pixar, for $10 million. The Disney-Pixar partnership went on to produce films such as Toy Story (in which Jobs was credited as an executive producer), Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life and the more recent hits Up and Toy Story 3.
Apple offered to purchase NeXT from Jobs for $429 million in 1996, bringing Jobs back to the company he founded. Jobs was interim CEO for 3 years until he was announced as the permanent CEO in 2000. In typical Jobs fashion, at the time, he quipped that he would use the job title “iCEO”.
The rest is history. Apple’s first iMac sold almost 800,000 units in the first five months. Apple, along with Jobs, who designed the first personal notebooks amongst other inventions such as the mouse, was finally being rewarded for their innovative ways and enjoyed a return to profitability in the early 2000s. Their ability to churn out technological innovations in the last decade is unmatched – the iPod in 2001, selling over 100 million units within 6 years; the iTunes store in 2003, paving the way for over 5 billion media downloads in 5 years; the MacBook, Mac Pro and MacBook Pro in 2006, and more recently the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Jobs wasn’t, of course, the only mind behind these projects – but he was definitely at the forefront. Jobs holds 317 patents – including portable laptops, the graphical user interface of several products, and even the staircases iconic of Apple retail stores. His genius is without a doubt the reason Apple is what it is today, but it is easy to forget that he has not just reshaped Apple – Jobs’ contribution was to the world.
It is near impossible to conceive one man solely changing the way the world works in such a short period of time. It is even harder then, to completely comprehend the enormity of what Steve Jobs has done while battling cancer for the last 7 years of his life. It is no wonder that Apple stocks fell 5% when Jobs resigned from his post as CEO in August this year. Speculation about his health has continued ever since he announced the pancreatic cancer in 2004, but Jobs remained typically unconcerned – in his now-famous commencement speech at Stanford in 2005, “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
Apple has always been a pioneering and innovative brand, from its grassroots over 30 years ago in the Apple I, to the iPhone 4S released this month. It will continue to be so, even in the absence of Jobs. However, there is still an underlying feeling that Jobs had a lot more to give. His passing marks the sad and early end of this generation’s most brilliant visionary, a pioneer in product design and genius innovator who was, for many, the “exemplar for all chief executives”. However, at heart, he was a witty man who loved his privacy, and valued life above all else. As he put it, “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.”
Steve Jobs can rest in peace – he has truly done something wonderful.
