Apple is the biggest and most well-known technology company on the planet, with an evaluation of over a trillion dollars. However, it was all possible due to the vision of a genius who founded the company and led it to the heights of success. An American entrepreneur and inventor Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple computers, a company that became a remarkable brand in the smartphone and computer industry. Many people view him as one of the most outstanding business leaders of all time and the driving force behind Apple’s growth and ascent to prominence. The iPhone and iPad are two of the company’s most popular devices developed during his leadership. The products from Apple have dictated contemporary technology’s progress and have become a symbol of economic prestige in today’s society because of the company’s success. Even though Apple has a significant dominance on the market today, the journey to this charm and substantial global success was not an easy ride.
Early Days
As of February 24, 1955, Steve was born in San Francisco, California, to two University of Wisconsin PhD students who placed him for adoption. He resided in Mountain View, California, which was subsequently renamed Silicon Valley. As a youngster, Steve was a good learner and a creative problem solver. However, he was caught in the quicksand of conventional educational instruction as a youngster.
A garage in the Jobs household served as a haven for him, where he experimented on electrical devices with his father. Taking gadgets apart and putting them back together was something he learned from his father. These interests developed confidence, perseverance and technical proficiency in Jobs. As a result, his quest for greatness began in the garage of his parent’s home. Because he was a prankster in elementary school, his fourth-grade teacher had to bribe him to complete his studies due to his boredom. Once, he tested so brilliantly that a high school official expressed an interest in letting him skip a year and go straight to high school, but his parents refused.
College Days
At the age of 14, Steve Jobs enrolled in college. In college, he believed that all of his parents’ wages went toward his education. He was unable to comprehend anything at the moment. They had no idea where they were headed or how they would get there. Finally, he dropped out of college because he wanted to pursue something that would benefit his parents. He thought he had made a mistake but eventually realised that he had made the correct choice. In those days, he was forced to sleep on the floor in a friend’s room since he did not have a place of his own. They also hawked Coca-Cola bottles for the sole purpose of gorging themselves on the proceeds. Before returning home, he would travel seven mills to go to Krishna temple, where he would have meals.
After graduating from high school, Steve attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He was also dissatisfied at college, so he dropped out and spent the following year and a half taking lessons at the school for the arts. The calligraphy programme at Reid College was well-known around the globe. Stunning hand-made posters decorated every inch of the university’s campus. He grew fascinated with Calligraphy after seeing this. He mastered both serif and sans serif fonts. Typography was formed by combining letters from the same font to create new words. He took ten years to develop the original design (Macintosh computer).
His first computer design was this. He could not succeed without graduating from college and studying calligraphy. Amid his hardship, he gained an appreciation for typography. In 1974, Atari hired Jobs to work as a video game creator. His departure from the organisation came around six months later when he set out for India. He experimented with psychedelics while in the subcontinent.
Beginning of Apple
The first time Jobs met Wozniak was at Homestead High School, where he was a student. Eventually, the two formed Apple, a company that became a household name. Wozniak has remarked that their cooperation was practical due to their passion for technology. Only a few people had the bright notion of using digital chips in those days. Although Wozniak had created several computers before Jobs, the two men had a similar passion for computing.
Apple was founded in a garage by Steve Jobs and Vojniac when they were 20 years old. Both of them worked hard on it, and within ten years, they had achieved great heights in their respective fields. Initially, Jobs sold his favourite bus, and Wozniak sold his scientific calculator to raise money for their business ventures. At its peak, the corporation employed as many as 4000 people and served more than 2 billion people worldwide.
Macintosh’s most significant innovation came from a collaboration between these three individuals. As the firm expanded, those individuals decided on a capable person to run it. It was a successful first year for the firm, but the ambition of those who worked there for the long term was not realised. Later, the team is recognised for changing the computer business with their firm by democratising the technology and making computers cheaper, smaller and more accessible to regular consumers.
In collaboration with Jobs, who was in charge of the company’s marketing, Wozniak developed a line of user-friendly personal computers, which were sold at a whopping $666.66 each unit. Thanks to the Apple I, a whopping $774,000 was generated for the company thanks to the Apple I! A 700-fold surge in sales occurred after three years of the Apple II, Apple’s second product line, which saw sales rise to $139 million.
On its first day of trading, the product had a value of $1.2 billion, making it one of the earliest publicly listed companies in the industry. As an alternate plan, Jobs urged John Sculley, a marketing guru at Pepsi-Cola, to assume the position of CEO of Apple. As a result of the problems in the items, the firm received unfavourable feedback for numerous more of its products. As a result, IBM overtook Apple in sales, and Apple was forced to compete with a PC-dominated market ruled by IBM.
That magical year of 1984, marked by the introduction of the Macintosh computer, was full of promise for the future of computing. However, despite solid sales and more excellent performance over IBM’s PCs, the device remained incompatible with IBM. As time went on, Jobs was demoted and eventually departed the firm in 1985.
Getting Fired From The Company,He Created Himself
Steve was sacked from his job when he was 30 years old. He got the distinct impression that he had been cast out of his own firm at that point. After this, Steve created a new business named ‘NeXT’ five years later. Pixar came into being after this and was founded by him. Toy Story was the world’s first computer-animated motion picture created by Pixar Animation Studios. It is still widely regarded as the top animation studio in the world. Apple bought the company in 1996 for $429 million after it failed miserably in its effort to market its operating system to the general public. A few months later, Steve returned to work at Apple when the firm purchased his previous startup, “NeXT.” This new technology revived Apple.
Steve would not have done any of this if he had not been fired from Apple. There are times in our lives when we need to calm down and focus on the task at hand. We cannot progress if we do not have any objectives in our lives. Apple welcomed Jobs back to the company in 1997, bringing with him a new management team. Under Steve’s leadership, the team restructured stock options and set a yearly pay cap of $1. Jobs’ products, including the iMac, were well received by consumers, and the business rebounded under his leadership. The Macbook Air, iPod, and iPhone were just a few of the many groundbreaking devices that Apple released in the years to come. Apple’s and Steve Jobs’ success was primarily due to their rivals’ struggles to develop equivalent technology. Apple later rose to prominence as a symbol of modern technology.
Steve bought a George Lucas-owned Pixar Animation Studios in 1986, where he had put $50 million of his personal money. Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles are just a few of the films produced by the company that has made it a household name in the film business. So far, Pixar’s films have brought in over $4 billion in revenue. When the company joined Disney back in 2006, Steve Jobs was the company’s biggest shareholder.
Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and CEO, died in 2011 of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. However, for the time being, millions of people will hold him in high esteem because of his ingenuity, which has left a lasting legacy of brilliance and grandeur for us all. In Steve Jobs’ legendary lecture, “Stay Hunger, Stay Foolish,” he recounted anecdotes from his own life.
