Steve Jobs a Summary of an Epic Life

Steve Jobs a Summary of an Epic Life

Steve Jobs, the man who put a dent in the universe. By Baldur Kjelsvik What man could possibly change how people use personal computers, phones and listen to music in a lifetime? Steve Jobs believed he could, and proved not to fail. Five decades ago, a man that should completely renovate big part of every ones life, was born. This man was Steve Paul Jobs, and he changed the world. The following text is a summary of his life and his importance to the society. Mister Jobs was a rebel.

A shocker? Not really, it is the crazy ones who make an impact. He was a problem-maker in school, and he got expelled several times.As a 17-year-old, the guy went on a psychedelic adventure in India – shaved his head and found him inner self. Following high school graduation in the early 70s, Jobs enrolled at Reed College, a favourite among the hippies. Although he dropped out after only a year, he continued to participate on several classes he found interesting. He pretty much did what ever he wanted. He was known for being a rude, and often times unbearably mean man with serious lack of social-skills.

He was often high on LSD, which he later said was one of the top three most significant things he did in his life, and frequently “far off”.His lack of an education and social intellect would not become an obstacle in his way for success; he only needed the right friends. Steve Wozniak – a true computer-genius, was a man Jobs found interest in. A rebel in his own way, Wozniak was – tricking teachers and elderly with childish and harmless pranks. The two Steve’s were both brilliant and geniuses in their own respect. They became partners: Wozniak was the nerdy engineer, and Jobs the guy who knew how to wrap the technology into a cute box, make it human friendly and sell it to the general people.They would very soon start Apple, a branding name now bigger than “Disney”.

In the garage of Mr Jobs’ stepdad, the two brilliant minds invented “Apple I”. This was the start of something big, and only few years later the company had made more machines and grown a huge fan base. Apple released their next computer – “Apple II” which sold millions, even though Jobs hated it. It was a fantastic computer with all the ports and extensions the nerds wanted, but he did not share the joy – the design did not correspond to his way of thinking.He wanted simple and clean – a typical Zen-philosophy. Wozniak, on the other hand, wanted possibilities to extend the potential of the machine, and have a customizable design. Some people agreed with Wozniak’s philosophy, other with Jobs’.

A spiteful tension began to develop within the company, and Apple got dived into several divisions. One section worked on the Apple II, which frankly was the machine that held Apple in an economic balance, another worked on the overly expensive and poor selling “Lisa”, and the final section worked on Steve Jobs new darling – the Macintosh.Jobs had recently seen the commercial potential of Xerox PARC’s mouse-driven graphical user interface, a completely new type of operating system. As Picasso, the artist, once said: “Good artists copy; great artists steal”, and steal it Mr. Jobs did. Steve had paid the developers of Xerox’s operating system, just to see what kind of magic this graphical user interface was all about. Steve loved it, and made a similar product, with a few enhancements.

Only a few months later Apple released a Lisa, a computer with an operating system one could use almost without reading in the manual beforehand.Sadly, Lisa cost $10. 000 (year 1983) and was way too expensive for the average-Joe. But Steve did not care; he was way into another project – the Macintosh. In 1984 Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial titled “1984”. The film used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh as a means of saving humanity from conformity –”Big Brother”/IBM the at the time biggest computer-company. These images were a reference to George Orwell’s novel “nineteen eighty-four”.

The $900. 000 one minute-film directed by Ridley Scott was a success, and a typical creation of Steve Jobs.It was intelligent, critical and got people to dislike IBM – “the big blue”. The commercial became an immediate classic. The year after the Macintosh’s release, Steve Jobs got fired from Apple for muffled and uncertain reasons. He did not dwell on that, and made NeXT – a computer platform specializing in the higher-education and the business market. As usual, Steve’s extreme focus on details and perfection took overhand.

The company never experienced success, despite terrific products and a new operating system. Only a year later, he acquired the graphics division Pixar Animation Studios.He put an extraordinary amount of money into the corporation, and believed in something few others did. It soon became a reality that Jobs had put his money into the right place, and as a 50 percent shareholder he also became ridiculously rich. For ten years Jobs acted as an owner and CEO for both Pixar and NeXT. In 1996, Apple bought NeXT and wanted him back as CEO. While he had been gone, Apple had kept making machines – but not great ones.

The products Apple had made while Jobs was away at NeXT and Pixar were outright horrendous.They looked like every other beige product out there, and people saw no reason to buy the overpriced products with no difference from the cheaper ones offered from Dell and IBM. Therefore, Apple had lost a lot of money, and was only weeks before bankruptcy. With the reunite of Steve Jobs as CEO, this would all change. The very first thing he did as chief-in-charge at Apple was to scratch of most of the product-line, and introduce a new machine for, once again, the general masses. With the help of his colleague, design-guru Jonathan Ive, they designed the iMac.As an all-in-one, colourful and beautiful computer for everyone, and for only $1299, it was a cheap one too.

The release of the iMac in 1998 was a tremendous success, and won many people over to the world of Apple. This was the start of the new Apple, a bold, fresh and innovative company that would once again change the market. A few years later, in 2001, Apple released iPod – a device that would totally change the music industry and the way people listened to music. “A device with 1000 songs in your pocket”, was the tag line.Apple made a fortune out of the iPod, and still does. They way people, especially the young, thought of Apple also changed. Suddenly Apple was the coolest brand on the planet with their original white ear buds.

And the originality kept going on, and with breath-taking new products every year; Apple’s market share grew. But it was not until they released their first phone that Apple really got popular. The iPhone was a fantastic piece of technology, and was only one in the long line of successful Apple-products released after Steve’s comeback that would come.His last creation before he was done for was the iPad, a product that finally realised his dream of a computer without a physical keyboard and as few buttons as possible. What the iPad has done to the tablet market is what the iPod did to the portable music player market: redefined it, and then dominated it. In October the fifth, 2011, Steve Jobs died. As a 56 year old man he left the world with products, sleek design-philosophies and often times radical decisions many would see as too extreme.

What he did to the electronic market was never revolutionary, but rather improvement – refinement of an already existing product or software. He never made something entirely new; the computer, the music player, the phone was all invented before Apple touched it. What he did was making them human friendly. Steve Jobs did not like people very much, but his goal was always to make electronics easy to use for people. What a strange incident that he would be the man to do precisely that. Sources: Book: “Steve Jobs,