STEVE JOBS

1955–2011

US inventor, designer, and investor Steve Jobs was the cofounder of Apple, Inc., and a pioneer of the personal computer age. His many groundbreaking products, which include the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, revolutionized music, mobile communication, and media and are considered the blueprint for modern computer technology.

Steven Paul Jobs was adopted as an infant and raised in the area of California that later became known as Silicon Valley. At 13, a mutual friend introduced him to 18-year-old Stephen Wozniak, and the pair bonded over a shared love of electronics. Jobs dropped out of college and worked as a video game designer before teaming up with Wozniak, who had built his own computer; together they would set in motion a personal computer revolution.

The birth of Apple

In April 1976, Jobs and Wozniak set up the Apple Computer Company and began assembling Apple I computer boards in Jobs’s parents’ garage, selling them to independent dealers in the area. Wozniak developed the Apple II, an expandable, more powerful system that supported color graphics, while Jobs sourced venture capital. The immediate success of Apple II enabled the company to go public in 1980. Aged just 25, Jobs was worth over $200 million.

Competition in the industry was fierce, and computer giant IBM was a key rival. In 1984, Jobs launched the Macintosh (Mac) computer to huge acclaim. Aimed at the ordinary user rather than experts, its graphic interface and mouse were revolutionary advances; however, its slow speed and limited software meant that it failed to match sales of IBM’s personal computer.

After falling out with Apple’s management board over control of the company, Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985 and sold all but one of his shares. Taking with him a team from Apple, Jobs set up software company NeXT. He developed a new operating system and targeted the education market. While NeXT computers had limited sales, the operating system proved innovative.

Digital animation was another of Jobs’s interests. He had bought animation studio Pixar in 1986 and invested heavily in the company. In 1991, Pixar began work on Toy Story, the world’s first fully computer-animated movie, which was released by Disney in 1995. Pixar floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 1995 and was sold to Disney in 2006. Jobs joined the board and, with 7 percent of Disney shares, was the largest single shareholder.

In 1997, Apple bought NeXT in an attempt to revive its now failing business. Competitors were releasing cheaper, more innovative products, and Apple had failed to match Microsoft’s Windows 95. Apple needed NeXT’s novel operating system, and Jobs agreed to return as CEO.

LARRY ELLISON

Seeing a gap in the market for a database that could efficiently store and retrieve information, Larry Ellison cofounded the Oracle Corporation.

A long-term friend of Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison (1944–) became a computer programmer in California after dropping out of college. In 1977, he cofounded Software Development Laboratories and pioneered the first commercial relational databases, which stored information in table form. This revolutionized the way businesses could access, sort, and compare data. Changing its name to Oracle Systems Corporation, the company went public in 1986, swiftly becoming the largest database management company in the world with Ellison as CEO and later CTO and chairman.

Revival of Apple

Jobs reorganized the business, simplified the range of products, and launched a successful “Think Different” marketing campaign that enticed new customers. In 1998, he unveiled the iMac—the first in a series of innovations. His insistence on the high quality of hardware and software were key to Apple’s new success: products had to be technically brilliant as well as aesthetically desirable. The company’s stylish computers became covetable fashion items and offered high-speed processing for relatively low prices.

When Jobs launched the iPod in 2001, followed by iTunes, he transformed the music industry and also the way that people accessed and stored music. Jobs soon realized that the new touch-screen technology could also be used in phones. The iPhone, released in 2007, allowed users to make calls, listen to music, surf the internet, and purchase a growing range of apps from a dedicated app store. The first touch-screen tablet—the iPad—followed in 2010. By the time of his death, a year later, Jobs was lauded as an innovator and one of the pioneers of the digital revolution. His unique, user-friendly products had launched a new era of personal technology and had established Apple as one of the world’s leading and most iconic brands.

Jobs allegedly suggested the name “Apple” to future business partner Steve Wozniak when he returned from a stint picking apples at a commune in Oregon after dropping out of college.

▲ Jobs’s obsession with detail and form fed into the minimalist aesthetic of Apple products, making them desirable as well as functional.