Jobs was a demanding perfectionist who always aspired to position his businesses and their products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in innovation and style. He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007, by quoting ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky
There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple.
Since the very very beginning. And we always will.
Ever a stickler for quality, Jobs once famously quoted:
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
Steve Jobs announcing the transition to Intel processors in 2005.
Much was made of Jobs's aggressive and demanding personality. Fortune wrote that he was
"considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs".Commentaries on his
temperamental style can be found in Michael Moritz's The Little Kingdom, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young &
William L. Simon. In 1993, Jobs made Fortune's list of America's Toughest Bosses in regard to his leadership of NeXT.
NeXT Cofounder Dan'l Lewin was quoted in Fortune as saying of that period, "The highs were unbelievable ... But the lows were unimaginable", to which Jobs's office replied that his personality had changed since then.
Apple CEO Tim Cook noted, "More so than any person I ever met in my life, [Jobs] had the ability to change his mind, much more so than anyone I’ve ever met... Maybe the most underappreciated thing about Steve was that he had the courage to change his mind."
In 2005, Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs. In its 2010 annual earnings report, Wiley said it had "closed a deal ... to make its titles available for the
iPad." Jef Raskin, a former colleague, once said that Jobs "would have made an excellent king of France", alluding to Jobs's compelling and larger-than-life persona.Floyd
Norman said that at Pixar, Jobs was a "mature, mellow individual" and never interfered with the creative process of the filmmakers.
Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting in 1987 when Jobs first criticized Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes". On October 6, 1997, in a Gartner Symposium, when Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he ran then-troubled Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." In 2006, Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple's market capitalization rose above Dell's. The email read:
Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.
Findings
His saga is the entrepreneurial creation myth writ large: Steve Jobs cofounded Apple in his parents’ garage in 1976, was ousted in 1985, returned to rescue it from near
bankruptcy in 1997, and by the time he died, in October 2011, had built it into the world’s most valuable company.
Along the way he helped to transform seven industries: personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing.
He thus belongs in the pantheon of America’s great innovators, along with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney.
Steve and the Apple design team have created a lot more than computers. The iPod has made a huge impact on the developed world. The iPod is created by something Apple calls ―Generations‖.
The iPod first generation was the first iPod ever made they have created more than 10 versions of the iPod, even a morph of a phone and an iPod.
In 1984, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and others co-invented the Apple
Macintosh computer, the first successful home computer with a mouse-driven graphical user.
Steve jobs is one of the most influential business personality of this era.
He used to love his products like his own kids.
He was the firm beliver that he going to change the world and he did it.
CONCLUSSION
Conclusion
So here’s where we are today. Apple, on the verge of bankruptcy a decade ago, is now one of the most powerful and influential high-tech company in the world. It is the most innovative brand in the computer industry, a leader in the music and phone businesses, and a likely consumer
electronics powerhouse for decades to come. As for Pixar, it is the single most successful movie studio in the history of Hollywood, having yet to release a dud after more than twenty years of existence. It has defined the future of animation and is now at the center of this industry after it s merger with Disney. The founder of both these companies, Steve Jobs is now routinely voted one of the world’s most important business leaders, after having been called a one-time fluke for years.
Now that we have followed together the most important events in Steve’s life — especially his career of course — it is time to step back and try and look at the big picture.
I am going to get personal here: it is hard for me to put into words how much admiration and huge respect I have for Steve Jobs, and how much inspiration I draw from him. Let’s face it, business history has seen many another genius entrepreneur, inspirational leader, or industry visionary. But among them, who has had as big an impact as Steve Jobs on the rest of humanity?
Who has faced greater glory and worse shames, all in one life? Here we are talking about a man who has dedicated his life to giving the power of technology to the masses. He has democratized computers with the Apple II. He has made them human and even friendly with Macintosh. He has almost single-handedly made possible the desktop publishing revolution. Here is a man whose company, Apple, is so innovative its products inspire the whole high-tech world, whose corporate culture is so powerful, it has millions of fans worldwide whose following is akin to
that of a cult. Here is a man who has changed the way we all listen to music with iPod, who has shaken the music business with iTunes and the phone business with iPhone. Here is a man without whom 3D animation might have never taken off, or certainly would not have taken off the way it did thanks to Pixar. Here is a man who has made millions of lives so much easier by making technology seamless, intuitive, exciting and beautiful, instead of complicated, arcane, dull and ugly.
The question remains open to me: which business figure can claim so many achievements?
Whose influence has been greater? That’s why I struggled for so long to find appropriate words to summarize the essence of Steve Jobs, a genius, but also a man, an icon with flaws, full of paradoxes, a visionary who has sometimes proven dead wrong. I thought hard — until I realized Steve himself had found these words. So let me conclude with the voice from Apple’s Think Different commercial:
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
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