Archived // Cover Story
POWER IN TECHNOLOGY:
Steve Jobs
Business Executive/Computer Programmer/Entrepreneur/Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc.
By: Mimi Makabi
Business Executive/Computer Programmer/Entrepreneur/Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc.
By: Mimi Makabi
Steve Jobs is arguably the greatest innovator of the digital age. With his vision of affordable personal computers, he has launched one of the largest industries of the past decades, while remaining one of the most inventive and energetic minds in American
technology.
His innovative idea of what a personal computer should be, led him to revolutionize the consumer computer hardware and software industry in 1976. When Jobs was 21, he and a friend, Steve Wozniak (a.k.a. Woz), built a personal computer that they called the Apple. Thanks to the Apple, people's image of computers changed from being a gigantic and inscrutable mass of vacuum tubes only used by big business and the government to a small box used by ordinary people. No company has done more to democratize the computer and make it user-friendly than Apple Computer. Jobs explains, “I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.”
In the early 1980’s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven graphical user interface. In 1984, the development of the Macintosh set a new standard for the functionality of software interfaces created for computers and has since been copied by every operating systems manufacturer in the world and become the standard interface format for both personal and super-computers.
After losing a power struggle with the board of directors, Jobs left Apple in 1985 and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business markets. NeXT’s subsequent 1997 buyout by Apple Computer Inc. brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he has served as its CEO since then. “I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” say Jobs. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
Today, as CEO of Apple, Jobs leads the industry in innovation with its award-winning desktop and notebook Mac computers. He has also revolutionized the digital music industry with the iPod, a portable music player that offers over 2.5 billion songs to be legally downloaded from its iTunes online store. In 2007, at the height of his creative and promotional powers, Jobs orchestrated Apple's entry into the wireless phone industry with the iPhone— which was named “Invention of the Year” by Time Magazine, and has become arguably Apple's most profitable device to date. According to Jobs, "Every once in a while, a revolutionary product
technology.
His innovative idea of what a personal computer should be, led him to revolutionize the consumer computer hardware and software industry in 1976. When Jobs was 21, he and a friend, Steve Wozniak (a.k.a. Woz), built a personal computer that they called the Apple. Thanks to the Apple, people's image of computers changed from being a gigantic and inscrutable mass of vacuum tubes only used by big business and the government to a small box used by ordinary people. No company has done more to democratize the computer and make it user-friendly than Apple Computer. Jobs explains, “I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.”
In the early 1980’s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven graphical user interface. In 1984, the development of the Macintosh set a new standard for the functionality of software interfaces created for computers and has since been copied by every operating systems manufacturer in the world and become the standard interface format for both personal and super-computers.
After losing a power struggle with the board of directors, Jobs left Apple in 1985 and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business markets. NeXT’s subsequent 1997 buyout by Apple Computer Inc. brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he has served as its CEO since then. “I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” say Jobs. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
Today, as CEO of Apple, Jobs leads the industry in innovation with its award-winning desktop and notebook Mac computers. He has also revolutionized the digital music industry with the iPod, a portable music player that offers over 2.5 billion songs to be legally downloaded from its iTunes online store. In 2007, at the height of his creative and promotional powers, Jobs orchestrated Apple's entry into the wireless phone industry with the iPhone— which was named “Invention of the Year” by Time Magazine, and has become arguably Apple's most profitable device to date. According to Jobs, "Every once in a while, a revolutionary product
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