Steve Jobs: from Mac to iPad
From the launch of the first Macintosh in 1984, to the birth of the tablet, Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs has proved again, and again, to be a technological visionary.
Steve Jobs has changed the way we view and experience the world, Robert Colvile writes.
One Sunday morning in 2008, Vic Gundotra, a senior executive at Google, received a message from Steve Jobs, asking him to call him at home immediately. ''So, Vic'', said Jobs, ''we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow.''
What was this critical problem, so important that it was disrupting the weekend of two of the most important men in Silicon Valley? ''I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone'', said Jobs, ''and I'm not happy with the icon. The second 'O' in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have Greg fix it. Is that OK with you?''
It is this attention to detail, this fanatical preoccupation with aesthetics, that turned the head of Apple into the world's first auteur chief executive, the creative titan behind the coolest, most lucrative and most desirable devices on Earth. As he prepares to step back from day-to-day control of the company, following health problems, can Apple continue to flourish?
Out of the limelight ... Steve Jobs, who resigned as Apple CEO this week, has been the heart and mind of the company. Photo: AP
To many, Apple and Jobs have long been synonymous. It is not just that he founded the company with Steve Wozniak, or has guided it (since his return in 1997 after a decade-long exile) to the point where it vies with Exxon Mobil for the status of most valuable corporation in the world. It is that Apple and its products are constructed in the image of their creator.
Where Bill Gates, his great rival, represented the All-American nerd, Jobs was a college drop-out who went to India to find himself, returning as a shaven-headed Buddhist. As Robert Cringely wrote in Accidental Empires, a history of Silicon Valley: ''Gates sees the personal computer as a tool for transferring every stray dollar, pound, peso, franc and kopeck into his back pocket. Jobs looks on it as a way of changing the world.''
The way Jobs planned to do that was to turn the computer into something you wanted - needed - to use. It was his vision that brought to life the Macintosh computer in 1984, which introduced revolutionary concepts such as computer mice and screens filled with adjustable windows. The irony is that this commitment to quality and beauty made Jobs something of a control freak: he offered users liberation, but only on his terms.
In its first incarnation, Apple lost its grip on the market because its products could not be modified, functioning only according to restrictions Jobs imposed. Once others - most notably Gates - copied Apple's innovations, the industry shunned Macs in favour of PCs. Jobs was booted out.
In 1997, a near-defunct Apple begged its founder to return. The result was the most dramatic turnaround in corporate history - inspired by a vision of computing that Jobs had been espousing all along. Apple's new products, which drew upon the genius of British designer Jonathan Ive, were more gorgeous and tactile than ever. Anything clunky was stripped away. Users fell in love with the sleek iMAc; Mac OS X, a beautifully intuitive new interface; cathedral-like Apple stores; paper-thin laptops. And then the big three: the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.
Just as Jobs clung to his obsession with aesthetics, he still insisted on controlling every aspect of his products. The iPod or iPad would link seamlessly to Apple's online store, where the applications had to meet the company's high standards. The aim was to create a beautified version of the internet.
All were welcome, as long as they obeyed Apple's rules, and paid its entry fees.
Yet the company's culture, dictated by its boss, came to resemble its products: mysterious, perfectionist, with the inner workings sealed away. Even when Jobs developed pancreatic cancer, followed by a liver transplant, he remained Apple's public face - leading many to believe that when he steps back he will take the magic with him.
But there is more to Apple today than Jobs. In 2008, the company recruited the dean of the Yale School of Management to establish an ''Apple University''.
This was intended to codify the values and processes that made Apple tick, and inculcate them into its workers.Even if Apple's aura starts to dim, his successor Tim Cook is being handed an inheritance to make any executive weep.
The company has $76 billion in ready cash, more than the United States government.
Telegraph, London
