October, 2011
Remembering an incredible man
Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple and the brain behind products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad, passed away on October 5, 2011. Here is a look back at his inspiring life and the path that led him to be one of the biggest icons of this century.
Steve Jobs didn’t look like a businessman. You would hardly ever see him wearing a suit and tie. Instead, he turned up for official events in a black turtleneck shirt, jeans, and sandals. It would have been easy to be fooled by appearances. But, this man was the boss of Apple, the multinational company that produces Apple computers, iPods, iPhones, iPads, and many other software and hardware products.
He was not only incredibly rich, but also incredibly popular. His fans adored him for the spirit of coolness, creativity and fun he brought to every project. A survey once showed that he was the most admired entrepreneur among American teenagers.
Fortune magazine once named him the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of the Decade, praising the way he had developed his business over the last ten years. You can ask your parents about this: they’ll remember that before 2000, not many people used Apple products. Now, they’re all over the place.
Mr Jobs’s influence actually goes back much further than the turn of the millennium. He founded Apple in 1976, when he was just a 21-year-old guy with only a thousand dollars to his name.
He revolutionised the technology world the very next year, when he introduced the Apple II, one of the world’s first personal computers. Before this, most computers had been huge machines, to be used only by specialists. Now, they could be brought home or installed in schools, and could be used by everyone.
Ups and downs
However, due to Mr Jobs’s own bad behaviour and poor business judgments, he was thrown out of his own company when he was 30 years old.
He was heartbroken at the time. However, he learnt to take a different view of the situation. “Being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. It freed me into one of the most creative periods of my life,” he said later.
In 1986, he bought a small company that created special effects for movies. That company eventually became Pixar, the animation studio that brought us Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Up. Because of this, Mr Jobs became a Hollywood celebrity.
He also started a computer company called NeXT, which was a failure. However, in 1996, he was invited to return to Apple. He was able to use the technology of NeXT to create the new generation of electronic products that’s made Apple so popular today.
Since 2000, he completely changed four different areas of business: computers, music, mobile phones and movies. Nobody else in business history can be said to have had such a wide-ranging influence. He was celebrated as a “comeback kid”: a leader who’d risen, fallen, and risen again.
What made Steve Jobs special?
Branding
Mr Jobs was a master of persuasion. His colleagues joked that he was surrounded by a “reality distortion field”: when you were around him, he could convince you of anything, no matter what your logical mind would tell you.
Because of this, he truly understood the importance of advertising. He commissioned several memorable ad campaigns, which projected the image of Apple as a hip, alternative brand.
Now, when we purchase Apple products, we feel as if we’re actually buying a personality. Simply owning these gadgets make us feel like we’re cool, creative people.
Design
Most people assumed Mr Jobs was a software genius. That’s not quite true. He had always been better at hardware than software, and today, his engineers do most of the work. What he did understand was design. Apple products are beautiful things, often brilliantly coloured, sleekly shaped, and small enough to carry around easily.
He was careful to make each product as simple to use as possible. Often, he did this not by adding features, but by reducing them. Just look at how few buttons there are on an iPod or an iPhone.
He was also creative enough to come up with solutions to problems that hardly anyone had noticed. For instance, people sometimes trip over laptop power cables, causing the machines to fall on the ground. He made Macbook power cables magnetic. When you pull them, they come away cleanly, causing no harm to the computer.
Foresight
Mr Jobs was always looking to the future. He didn't just focus on what customers wanted that day: he tried to create something that customers would want tomorrow.
In the 1990s, for example, he noticed that record companies were losing money because of online music piracy. These companies tried to hold on to their old way of business by suing the downloaders. Mr Jobs had a different idea. In 2001, he released iTunes, an online application which people could use to download songs for just 99 American cents. Both artists and audiences embraced this new technology for sharing their music cheaply.
More recently, he introduced the iPad. It’s a tablet computer that’s useful mainly for looking at photos, watching videos and surfing the Internet, not for work. There’d been no real demand for something like this before, but customers loved it. They bought 3 million units within the first 80 days of its release. It just proves one of his insights: “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
Self-control
As admirable as Mr Jobs was, he was also a very flawed person. In the 1970s and ’80s, he behaved disgracefully at Apple. He stole other people’s ideas, and sabotaged the projects of his competitors in the same company. He was rude to clients, swearing in front of them, and even cancelling dinners if the food wasn’t vegetarian.
In his personal life, he was just as horrible. When he got his first girlfriend pregnant, he abandoned her and refused to admit that the child was his. For years, he wouldn’t give them any money, even though his was already a multimillionaire.
When others criticised him, he wouldn’t listen. He strongly believed only he knew what was right for Apple. As a result, he ended up creating some beautiful computers that were almost useless, because they didn’t work with other programs.
Fortunately, when Mr Jobs returned to Apple, he was a much calmer, more co-operative person. He still made bad decisions sometimes: when there was a problem with the iPhone 4 antenna, he responded by blaming users for holding their phones wrong. However, he was mostly able to control himself, actually learning from his mistakes and working with others in his company.
This article by NG YI-SHENG first appeared in the November-December 2010 issue of What's Up. It has been republished here in October 2011.
Steve Jobs didn’t look like a businessman. You would hardly ever see him wearing a suit and tie. Instead, he turned up for official events in a black turtleneck shirt, jeans, and sandals. It would have been easy to be fooled by appearances. But, this man was the boss of Apple, the multinational company that produces Apple computers, iPods, iPhones, iPads, and many other software and hardware products.
He was not only incredibly rich, but also incredibly popular. His fans adored him for the spirit of coolness, creativity and fun he brought to every project. A survey once showed that he was the most admired entrepreneur among American teenagers.
Fortune magazine once named him the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of the Decade, praising the way he had developed his business over the last ten years. You can ask your parents about this: they’ll remember that before 2000, not many people used Apple products. Now, they’re all over the place.
The iPhone4, one of the popular Apple products that you see nowadays.
Picture credit: WIKIMEDIA/Jorge Quinteros
Mr Jobs’s influence actually goes back much further than the turn of the millennium. He founded Apple in 1976, when he was just a 21-year-old guy with only a thousand dollars to his name.
He revolutionised the technology world the very next year, when he introduced the Apple II, one of the world’s first personal computers. Before this, most computers had been huge machines, to be used only by specialists. Now, they could be brought home or installed in schools, and could be used by everyone.
Ups and downs
However, due to Mr Jobs’s own bad behaviour and poor business judgments, he was thrown out of his own company when he was 30 years old.
He was heartbroken at the time. However, he learnt to take a different view of the situation. “Being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. It freed me into one of the most creative periods of my life,” he said later.
In 1986, he bought a small company that created special effects for movies. That company eventually became Pixar, the animation studio that brought us Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Up. Because of this, Mr Jobs became a Hollywood celebrity.
He also started a computer company called NeXT, which was a failure. However, in 1996, he was invited to return to Apple. He was able to use the technology of NeXT to create the new generation of electronic products that’s made Apple so popular today.
Since 2000, he completely changed four different areas of business: computers, music, mobile phones and movies. Nobody else in business history can be said to have had such a wide-ranging influence. He was celebrated as a “comeback kid”: a leader who’d risen, fallen, and risen again.
What made Steve Jobs special?
Branding
Mr Jobs was a master of persuasion. His colleagues joked that he was surrounded by a “reality distortion field”: when you were around him, he could convince you of anything, no matter what your logical mind would tell you.
Because of this, he truly understood the importance of advertising. He commissioned several memorable ad campaigns, which projected the image of Apple as a hip, alternative brand.
Now, when we purchase Apple products, we feel as if we’re actually buying a personality. Simply owning these gadgets make us feel like we’re cool, creative people.
Design
Most people assumed Mr Jobs was a software genius. That’s not quite true. He had always been better at hardware than software, and today, his engineers do most of the work. What he did understand was design. Apple products are beautiful things, often brilliantly coloured, sleekly shaped, and small enough to carry around easily.
He was careful to make each product as simple to use as possible. Often, he did this not by adding features, but by reducing them. Just look at how few buttons there are on an iPod or an iPhone.
He was also creative enough to come up with solutions to problems that hardly anyone had noticed. For instance, people sometimes trip over laptop power cables, causing the machines to fall on the ground. He made Macbook power cables magnetic. When you pull them, they come away cleanly, causing no harm to the computer.
Mr Jobs presenting the MacBook Air to the world. It is one of the world's thinnest notebooks.
Picture credit: WIKIMEDIA/Matthew Yohe
Foresight
Mr Jobs was always looking to the future. He didn't just focus on what customers wanted that day: he tried to create something that customers would want tomorrow.
In the 1990s, for example, he noticed that record companies were losing money because of online music piracy. These companies tried to hold on to their old way of business by suing the downloaders. Mr Jobs had a different idea. In 2001, he released iTunes, an online application which people could use to download songs for just 99 American cents. Both artists and audiences embraced this new technology for sharing their music cheaply.
More recently, he introduced the iPad. It’s a tablet computer that’s useful mainly for looking at photos, watching videos and surfing the Internet, not for work. There’d been no real demand for something like this before, but customers loved it. They bought 3 million units within the first 80 days of its release. It just proves one of his insights: “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
Self-control
As admirable as Mr Jobs was, he was also a very flawed person. In the 1970s and ’80s, he behaved disgracefully at Apple. He stole other people’s ideas, and sabotaged the projects of his competitors in the same company. He was rude to clients, swearing in front of them, and even cancelling dinners if the food wasn’t vegetarian.
In his personal life, he was just as horrible. When he got his first girlfriend pregnant, he abandoned her and refused to admit that the child was his. For years, he wouldn’t give them any money, even though his was already a multimillionaire.
When others criticised him, he wouldn’t listen. He strongly believed only he knew what was right for Apple. As a result, he ended up creating some beautiful computers that were almost useless, because they didn’t work with other programs.
Fortunately, when Mr Jobs returned to Apple, he was a much calmer, more co-operative person. He still made bad decisions sometimes: when there was a problem with the iPhone 4 antenna, he responded by blaming users for holding their phones wrong. However, he was mostly able to control himself, actually learning from his mistakes and working with others in his company.
This article by NG YI-SHENG first appeared in the November-December 2010 issue of What's Up. It has been republished here in October 2011.