Remembering Steve Jobs
By: Jon Peters
Tags: Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Technology, Apple

Remembering Steve Jobs

Eight years on, we take a look at the life of a man whose innovations changed the world

Known for charismatic presentations, perfectionism and his signature turtlenecks, Steve Jobs was a pioneer of the computing industry. From co-founding Apple Computers Inc. in 1976 through to his death in 2011, Jobs was one of the most polarising figures in the technology industry, whose ideas and ingenuity have impacted billions of people worldwide.

But his life was so much more than technological innovations. In a world where we have force-fed children from a young age the idea that the road to success is through academia, Steve Jobs is an example to us all of how life is so much more satisfying when you are doing what you love, as opposed to doing what you have been told you should do.

Born To Be A College Graduate?

Born in 1955, Steve’s hadn’t even left his mother’s womb before she made the decision that he would go to college. She wanted him to have a better future than the one that she could provide, so following his birth, he was immediately put up for adoption to a college-educated, Catholic couple.

But unfortunately for Steve, the couple passed on adopting him, explaining they wanted to adopt a girl instead. As a result, Steve was passed on to Paul and Clara Jobs, neither of whom were college-educated. It was only after they promised his biological mother that Steve would go to college that she agreed to sign the adoption papers.

Throughout Steve’s childhood, it was clear for all to see that he was an incredibly gifted individual, but his dislike of formal education was just as apparent. And while his parents used their savings to send their son to college and keep their promise to his biological mother, what they perhaps didn’t anticipate was him dropping out after just six months.

‘Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.’ — Morpheus, The Matrix

Steve’s high school yearbook photo, taken before he discovered Turtlenecks. (Image credit Seth Poppel)

Giving a commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005, Jobs joked that the speech he was giving was the closest he ever came to college graduation. When discussing his time at college, he said:

‘I couldn’t see the value in it, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all of the money that my parents had saved their entire life.’

Looking back, he said that dropping out of college was one of the best decisions that he ever made, as he was no longer burdened with studying things that didn’t interest him, which allowed him the freedom to study the things that did.

He recalls the opportunity he had to take a class in calligraphy, as it is something that he found fascinating. The information learned in that class manifested itself more than ten years later when he incorporated it into the design of the original Macintosh. Without that class he argues, the Mac would never have had the varied typefaces and fonts that were built into it.

The First Bite Of The Apple

Apple was famously co-founded in Steve’s parent's garage in 1976, a far cry from the $5 billion, 2,800,000 square foot building that currently serves as Apple HQ in Cupertino, California.

For the following nine years Apple was on the rise. Beginning with the Apple I, through to the release of the first Macintosh in 1984, the company had begun to establish itself as one of the premier computing companies in the world.

Steve Jobs public demonstration of the first Macintosh computer in 1984 (Image credit www.businessinsider.com)

But in 1985 things began to unravel. Then CEO John Sculley believed that Jobs was hurting the company, and the two had extremely opposing views on what direction the company should be going in. After failing to regain control of the company, Jobs resigned from his position at Apple, leaving behind the company which he co-founded aged twenty in his parent’s garage.

The Inbetween Years

When discussing the years that followed his departure from Apple, Jobs said that being fired was the best thing that could have happened to him at that point in his life. After leaving Apple he went on to found not one, but two successful companies. One of them went on to become the most successful animation studio in the world (a small company you may have heard of by the name of Pixar), while the other, a computing company called NeXT, was subsequently bought by Apple in 1996, bringing Jobs back to the company which he had co-founded twenty years previously. What happened in the following years can only be described as a complete revolution in personal computing technology.

Returning To The 'Not-So-Big’ Apple

By the time he had regained his position as CEO of Apple in 1997, the company was a stone’s throw away from declaring bankruptcy. After what had been a very prosperous decade for the company, sales were starting to decline.

Microsoft had increased its market share by offering personal computers that were much more cost-effective than those offered by Apple. Jobs knew that continued competition between the two companies would spell the end of Apple. So, upon his return, he announced that Apple would be going into partnership with Microsoft.

In his address to the Macworld Expo in 1997, he made it clear that there was no reason that the two companies couldn’t both be successful. He said:

‘We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job.’

As part of the deal, Apple received $150 million from Microsoft, and Microsoft Office would be made available on Mac, with the additional announcement that Internet Explorer would be the default web browser on the Mac going forward.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Starting with the iMac, Apple went on to develop a huge range of products that went far beyond the realm of computers, such as iTunes, the iPod, and the iPad, in addition to its MacBook range.

But you know as well as I do, that there is one product that is most associated with Apple. There is one product that has dominated the market since it was first released in 2007.

I’m talking of course, about the iPhone.

Steve Jobs unveiling the first generation iPhone at the Macworld Conference in 2007 (Image credit www.time.com)

Having sold over 2 billion units since it was released in 2007, Apple has recently launched the 11th iteration of the iPhone. When Steve Jobs first announced the iPhone back in 2007, he said that the company’s aim was to capture 1% of the global mobile phone market. It’s safe to say that they succeeded. As of the financial quarter ending December 2018, Apple had garnered over 50% of the global smartphone market.

Final Days

In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Following his diagnosis, he delayed having surgery, preferring to opt for alternative medical treatment in his attempts to beat the disease. It wasn’t until 2004 that he finally bowed to pressure from doctors and underwent surgery, in which the tumour was (apparently) successfully removed.

In the years running up to his death, Jobs began to take more of a backseat at Apple. Having spent most of his time with the company taking the lead at Apple events and product unveilings, his retreat from the public eye fuelled speculation of his deteriorating health.

He took several medical leaves of absence from his duties at Apple in the years prior to his death. On August 24th 2011, Steve Jobs officially resigned from his position as CEO of Apple. In his letter to the board he stated:

‘I have always 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. Unfortunately, that day has come.’

He died six weeks later at his home, surrounded by his family, after enduring a relapse of his pancreatic cancer.

His Legacy Is Much More Powerful Than Any iPhone.

We live in a world that loves to tell you how to live your life.

Steve Jobs showed us that even the best-laid plans don’t always come to fruition, yet he is an example of why that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Had he stayed in college instead of pursuing what he was truly passionate about, would the Macintosh have ever been invented? Would you be reading this on your iPhone, iPad, or Macbook? Possibly not.

We can’t control most of what life throws at us. But what we can control is our response to it. Instead of wallowing in negativity after being fired from the company that he co-founded, he went on to found not one, but two companies. If he had never been fired from Apple in 1985, he may have never founded Pixar, and the world might never have known the delight that is the adventures of Woody, Buzz and the rest of the gang in Toy Story.

Had he never have founded NeXT, he may have never developed the technology which Apple then went onto use in its core range of products.

Remember Steve Jobs. Not only because you have him to thank for the iPhone in your pocket. Remember him because he was a man that didn’t waste his time on Earth doing things he didn’t want to do, because he was too busy doing the things that he loved. Because isn’t that the kind of life we all want to lead?

“If you live every day like it was your last, one day you will most certainly be right." — Steve Jobs