I take pleasure in presenting hereunder an article on
the legendary Steve Jobs, written prior to his demise recently. This Should be
an inspiration and motivation for all those looking for challenges in life.
Ramakrishnan. R
The Life and Times of the Legendary Steve Jobs
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has resigned, handing the reins of the company he
co-founded over to his long-time right hand man, Tim Cook. At his retirement,
Apple had eclipsed oil giant Exxon Mobil as the world’s largest corporation,
with a $350 billion market capitalization and nearly $80 billion in cash. Steve
Jobs’ storied life and career is legendary, and truly a case where the truth is
stranger, and more inspiring, than fiction. Steve Jobs was all of these – a
college dropout who recycled bottles just to make ends meet, a vegetarian
Buddhist who frequently experimented with LSD, a pariah exiled from his own
company and finally the founding father of three seminal products – the iPod,
the iPhone and the iPad – which would redefine the landscape of personal computing
forever. Now, as Jobs retires and the entire Wintel empire, which marginalized
Apple during the 1980s and 1990s, lies shattered and broken in burning pieces
at his feet, let’s take a look back at the life of the man who has been called
the Walt Disney, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison of our time.
In 1955, the boy who would become Steve Jobs was given up for adoption
by a Syrian father and an American mother, and adopted by the Jobs family in
Mountain View. As a high school student, he frequently attended Hewlett-Packard
lectures, working there part-time one summer. It was during that fateful summer
that Jobs met the other Steve – Steve Wozniak, Jobs’ so-called “partner in
crime”. The two Steves would remain friends for life, although it would be
decades before their brainchild, Apple, would be born. Jobs dropped out of
college after one semester, slept in friends’ rooms, recycled cans and bottles
for pocket money, and ate free meals at a local Hare Krishna temple. It was
there that Jobs was introduced to Buddhist philosophies, and he decided to
travel to India in search of spiritual enlightenment. After saving up money
from a brief stint at the fledgling video game maker Atari, Jobs traveled to
India and became a practicing Buddhist, returning with a shaved head and
donning traditional Indian clothing. Jobs openly acknowledges that he
experimented frequently with LSD, calling it one of the most important
experiences in his life.
In 1976, the two Steves and investor Ronald Wayne founded Apple
Computers. Wayne was the “adult supervision” for the two Steves, who were both
in their early 20s – similar to Google’s triumvirate of one adult (Schmidt) and
two kids (Page and Brin). However, a mere two weeks later, in one of the worst
business decisions in history, Wayne relinquished his 10% stake, then worth
$800. Had Wayne held onto his shares, his investment would be worth more than
$35 billion today. After several years of increasing profitability, Jobs lured
PepsiCo president John Sculley to become the CEO of Apple in 1983, famously
asking him, “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 Apple’s greatest asset in its formative years. He was
responsible for increasing the company’s annual revenue from $800 million to $8
billion within ten years. Sculley was the mastermind behind Apple’s famed
“1984” advertisement which took aim at IBM’s dominance of the personal computer
market. He spread adoption of the Macintosh and raised its price to increase
profit margins. However, Sculley was soon butting heads with Jobs over Jobs’
“non-linear” management style. In 1985, a power struggle between Jobs and
Sculley ended with the Board of Directors ousting Jobs three months before his
30th birthday.
Being kicked out of Apple didn’t slow down Jobs one bit, though. In
1985, he founded his own computer company, NeXT, which produced very expensive,
state of the art machines years ahead of the technological curve. It was with
these computers that Jobs showed his aesthetic craftsmanship and minimalist
sensibilities. His NeXTCube, enclosed in a sleek magnesium cube, was pure eye
candy compared to the clunky Wintel machines that dominated the early 1990s.
However, these machines proved to expensive to manufacture on a large scale,
and by 1993, he had only sold 50,000 units. While NeXT was a failure, Jobs made
one of his most important investments during this time. In 1986, Jobs purchased
The Graphics Group, a computer graphics subdivision of Lucasfilm, for $10
million. This company, under Jobs’ guidance, would evolve into Pixar – the CGI
giant that produced such hits as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, and countless
other family friendly films. In 2006, his $10 million investment was purchased
by Disney for $7.4 billion in stock, making Jobs Disney’s largest shareholder
with a 7% stake.
Meanwhile, back at Apple, Jobs’ nemesis Sculley was ousted by the Board
of Directors in 1993, after years of shrinking margins and profitability.
Sculley was blamed for waging a pointless, costly war against IBM and the
irreparable fragmentation of its product line, which offered too many variants
of its core Macintosh line, baffling and alienating consumers. Apple replaced
Sculley with Gil Amelio, who didn’t fare much better than his predecessor.
Amelio stated, “Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water,
and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction.” Unfortunately
for Amelio, a mutiny ensued and the crew tossed the captain overboard in 1996.
Before he was replaced, however, Amelio purchased Jobs’ NeXT Computers for $429
million, paving the way for Jobs’ return. Jobs became the interim CEO in 1997,
and by 2000 he had become the permanent CEO.
After ironically borrowing $150 million from his friend and fellow
“Pirate of Silicon Valley”, Bill Gates, Jobs immediately axed several
unprofitable ventures, such as the Newton (which would become the prototype for
the iPad), Cyberdog and OpenDoc to shed dead weight. He then launched the first
“i” product – the all-in-one computer, the iMac, in 1998. With the iMac,
designed by award-winning product designer Johnathan Ive, Jobs started the
theme of sleek minimalist products in an assortment of basic colors. Ive’s
aesthetic theme would eventually carry over to the next major product – the
iPod, and make its way into the iPhone and iPad as well. Ive’s designs have
been credited as the primary reason for the brisk sales of modern Apple
products. Together, Jobs and Ive were able to capture the MP3 player industry
nearly instantly with the iPod in 2001, the mobile handset industry with the
iPhone in 2007, and the previously non-existent tablet market with the iPad in
2010. His moves into the smartphone and tablet markets were sharply criticized
at first, by cynics who believed that the computer maker would crash and burn
in unfamiliar markets, but Jobs proved them wrong with his remarkable ability
to time product releases and cycles with near perfection.
Even as Jobs retires, Apple’s product line is guaranteed for at least
another two years. When Jobs returned to Apple as a prodigal son, Apple shares
were worth $4. Today they close in on $400. Whether or not Apple will survive
the next decade without his innovation remains to be seen, but Jobs’ success as
an entrepreneur and technological savant has already made him a modern day
legend.
