Remembering Steve Jobs, the former iCEO
By all accounts, Steven Paul Jobs was a hard man to work for, an “erratic and temperamental manager”. The co-founder of Apple Inc. was known for twisting facts and taking credit for the ideas of others.
Yet Jobs, who passed away today after a long battle with pancreatic cancer at the age of 56, was also known as a charismatic and visionary leader. He was a man who broke all established rules in the business world, made a black shirt and jeans cool, revolutionized the tech industry, and along the way built a following like no other. Jobs was loved by friend and foe alike.
The front page of Apple.com features Jobs in his signature pose, his name, and the years of his birth and death. Clicking on his thoughtful portrait leads to the following message: “Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.”
Reacting to Jobs' death, longtime competitor Bill Gates said: “The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”
With a string of hit gadgets Jobs rescued his company from the brink of bankruptcy, starting with his return as interim CEO (jokingly called “iCEO”) in 1997. Now Apple is one of the most valuable and profitable companies in the world. At one point earlier this year, the company had more financial reserves than the US government. The “interim” was dropped from Jobs' title in 2000.
Success wasn't always in Steve Jobs life. He founded Apple with friend Steve Wozniak in 1976, and the company quickly grew based on the success of the Apple II and Macintosh. However, in 1985 Jobs found himself ousted by then CEO John Sculley, an executive he lured away from PepsiCo with the famous pitch “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?” In Job's absence, Apple suffered, losing market share as Microsoft dominated the PC industry with Windows.
Within the same year, Jobs had founded NeXT. That company produced expensive computers that were commercial failures, but it still had a long-term impact on the industry. Tim Berners-Lee, credited as the inventor of the Internet, created the first ever web server on a NeXT Computer. When Apple bought NeXT in 1996 (bringing Jobs back to the company he founded as an advisor), the NeXTSTEP operating system would become the basis of Mac OS X, the software that currently runs Apple's entire line of PCs.
A year after NeXT's foundation, Steve Jobs bought The Graphics Group from George Lucas. The company struggled for many years to sell its high-end imaging computer, finding that it had to create computer-animated commercials to pay the bills. But the group, which was renamed Pixar shortly after its acquisition by Jobs, entered into a three-film contract with Disney starting with Toy Story. In 2006, Pixar was acquired by Disney in a stock-swap deal, leaving Jobs as the largest stockholder of the company behind Mickey Mouse and Co.
Though Jobs has found success as a business leader in many ways, he will be forever known for the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, devices that were built to his exacting standards. All three changed the way we listen to music, transformed the cellphone market, and created a new product category, respectively. Even as Jobs has passed away, competitors still try to recreate the success made possible by the “revolutionary” portable music player, cellphone and tablet PC.
Jobs displayed an innate understanding of what the market wanted, and pushed Apple to provide it. “It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them,” said Jobs in a 1998 interview with BusinessWeek. In recent times, Apple became known for the user experience it provided, releasing gadgets with elegantly simple interfaces that were intuitive on a basic level.
The former Apple Inc. CEO, who had resigned mere weeks before his death, never put stock in what others said about him — or what others believed in. “Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
Death was apparently welcome for Steve Jobs, who leaves behind a wife and four children, with one from a previous relationship. “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose... There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
